How To Enable Or Disable Comments In WordPress Posts/Pages?

Comments are an excellent way to engage visitors to your website and build a community through discussions. Plus, it can boost your page’s SEO ranking by indexing with search engines. But you might want to disable comments in WordPress posts/pages for multiple reasons.

disable WordPress comments

You will find a comment form at the bottom of WordPress web pages for visitors to share their feedback on your WordPress-powered website. You can benefit from audience engagement as well. So, why would you choose to disable WordPress comments?

Allowing visitors to comment on your posts cannot always benefit you. For example, people can post self-promotional links, spam, and irrelevant comments. Modifying and replying to multiple comments on a single post might kill your valuable time.

However, you can disable WordPress comments on pages, specific posts, or custom posts. On top of that, you can delete comments from your entire website. Wondering how? Keep reading to find out.

💡 Why Do You Need To Disable Comments In WordPress?

Comments on your posts make your site more engaging and help attract more visitors while increasing SEO criteria. On the other hand, there could be some scenarios where you don’t want comments.

disable WordPress comments

Why? Simply you just don’t need one for a particular page. Or, a few of the visitors might post self-promotional or spam links in the comment field. You can consider the following reasons why someone wouldn’t allow comments on WordPress:

  • Comments can be spammy: People often spam with malicious intent, which is harmful to your website and visitors. WordPress site owners mostly deal with spam comments. So, to combat it, they take various strategies, including disabling WordPress comments on all posts.
  • Unnecessary for a specific website: If you feel that comments will not add value to your content, you may decide not to allow them in your articles. Furthermore, unmoderated and improper comments may make your site look unprofessional. So, you might not want WordPress to enable comments.
  • Running an eCommerce business: Comment areas across an eCommerce website are often irrelevant. Those comments on your product pages might distract potential buyers in a variety of ways.
  • Saves your time: Moderating your comments and responding to them is surely important. But it also kills your valuable time and might hamper your overall productivity. In those cases, you need to know how to disable comments on WordPress.

💡 How Can You Enable/Disable WordPress Comments?

There are many options to go for when you need to disable WordPress comments. The three primary choices are to utilize the WordPress dashboard, a plugin, or custom code. Each strategy has benefits and is more effective in certain situations.

📖 Method 1: Disable WordPress Comments From Dashboard

There are several settings in your WordPress dashboard that allow you to enable or disable comments in WordPress posts or pages, although there are some limits. Depending on your requirements, you may deactivate comments in WordPress for a specific post or page or choose to disable WordPress comments on all posts.

disable WordPress comments

How To Disable WordPress Comments On A Specific Page Or Post

  1. Go to your WordPress dashboard’s posts area and look for your post. Once there, find and select Discussions on the right sidebar.
  2. Then, uncheck the Allow Comments box to prevent comments for that particular post.
  3. To bulk edit comments on a certain topic or page, go to the dashboard and choose posts.
  4. Select the posts you wish to bulk modify, then select Bulk Actions> Edit > Apply.
  5. Go to Comments, choose your comment choice, and then click Update. You may also do this with pages under the Pages section.

How To Disable WordPress Comments On Media Files

  1. From the dashboard, go to Media > Library.
  2. Select the media item, and in the right panel, click Edit more info.
  3. Uncheck the box next to Allow comments in the Discussion section. This area might be hidden. If so, choose Discussion from the Screen Options menu.
  4. Click Update under the Save area. This might take some time if you have a lot of media files on your site.

📖 Method 2: Use “Disable Comments” Plugin To Control All Comment Settings In WordPress

The Disable Comments plugin offers you much more flexibility and a wide variety of options to disable WordPress comments on all posts, including media files, articles, and pages.

disable WordPress comments

This plugin will let you:

  • Disable or delete WordPress comments globally on articles, pages, media, or portfolios.
  • Have complete control over the management of your comments and may override any website settings connected to comments.
  • Manage the comments throughout multi-site networks and remove irrelevant ones.

Because the dashboard only displays a limited number of posts per page, removing old comments on WordPress may involve choosing a group of articles at a time. Disable Comments allows you to choose all articles and delete all comments at once.

If you value convenience and don’t mind adding an extra plugin to your WordPress site, this may be a great quick fix.

📖 Method 3: Disable WordPress Comments Using Custom Code

You can deactivate all comments on your WordPress site by copying and pasting a few code snippets into your theme’s page.php and single.php files.

This technique is only suggested if you’ve followed standard procedures for modifying the source code of WordPress themes, such as backing up your site and establishing a child theme. Plus, it might take some technical knowledge.

So, if you are new to WordPress, it will be best to use the other two methods of disabling and deleting comments.

💡 Why Should You Choose Disable Comments Plugin?

The WordPress dashboard has a default comment management tool. But that’s not enough to manage your website comments more dynamically. But Disable Comments is an all-in-one solution.

If you ask why you should choose Disable Comments to stop people from commenting, consider the following features:

  • Using the quick setup, you can quickly alter the settings for your WordPress website related to comments after activating the plugin. It lets you quickly enable or disable comments in WordPress in a few clicks.
  • It features an excellent and engaging user experience that makes changing the settings associated with comments straightforward. You may also disable the display of any comment-related areas from the WordPress dashboard, such as Recent Comments and Discussion.
  • With a single click, you can disable WordPress comments on any page in your documentation or knowledge base. On the other hand, if you want to enable or disable WordPress comments on your posts, pages, attachments, or anyplace else on your website, it provides the option to utilize the WP-CLI control.
  • You should be able to delete all instances of certain comment kinds on your WordPress website, such as WooCommerce product reviews and general comments.
  • It has fully distributed multi-site network support. Handle comments ahead of time for several website networks, whether they occur in specific subsites or throughout the whole network.
  • The User Responsibilities function allows you to change the settings for allowing or blocking comments based on the users’ roles.

📖 How To Turn Off Comments In WordPress Using Disable Comments Plugin?

The Disable Comments plugin will let you disable or delete your post comments or website comments in minutes. You may also turn them off for specific articles, sites, media, etc. It also eliminates the comment form and prevents current comments from being shown.

Step 1: Install And Activate Disable Comments Plugin

disable WordPress comments

To begin, install and activate the Disable Comments plugin. Go to your WordPress dashboard and, on the left side menu, click add new from the “Plugins” section. Look for Disable Comments, install it, and then activate it.

After enabling the plugin, go to Settings » Disable Comments from the left sidebar of your admin panel.

Step 2: Customize Your Comment Settings On WordPress

After installing and activating Disable Comments on your WordPress, you need to go to the Settings area to use it for managing comments.

After clicking on Disable Comments from Settings, you will have two main category tabs:

1. Disable Comments

Under this category, you will find multiple options to choose from to decide how you want to disable WordPress comments on your website.

disable WordPress comments

By selecting Everywhere, you may block comments on your whole WordPress site. Additionally, the plugin will remove the comments menu item from your WordPress administration panel.

If you choose the second option under On Specific Post Types, you may block comments on your posts, pages, and media. For instance, if you want to disable WordPress comments from a particular page, you may pick the specific page types button and check the page.

You may also exclude Disable Comments settings based on the roles of users. This excludes the settings above for the specified user roles.

2. Delete Comments

Under this tab, you will find the same actions to choose like disabling comments, except:

disable WordPress comments

When you delete comments based on the comment type, any existing comment entries in the database for the specified comment type(s) will be removed. This action can only be done by first creating a database backup.

Irreversibly remove from your WordPress website any and all spam comments. This action will permanently erase any spam comments left anywhere on your website.

Prevent Spamming On Your WordPress Website With Disable Comments

Sometimes you’ll want to encourage visitors to your website to ask questions and create conversations with one another. However, if you wish to avoid spam links and comments on your site, you should know how to enable or disable comments in WordPress posts and pages.

As we have discussed, there is more than a single way to do that. But the easiest way to do it is by using the Disable Comments plugin for WordPress.

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Picture of Abdullah Mamun

Abdullah Mamun

Abdullah Mamun is a Content Marketer, passionate about reading and writing. Outside work, he loves to watch films, take photos, and listen to Rock/Metal songs.

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