How to disable comments in WordPress?
Good and bad reasons to disable comments in WordPress
WordPress comment systems can be beneficial as they let people leave reviews of your posts, which is a vital way to improve audience engagement. However, commenting is not a mandatory feature for most websites.
Allowing commenting can create an environment for spam, bad links, and offensive remarks. Therefore, some websites do not allow comments. You can turn off comments in various ways, such as for specific posts, pages, special post types, or your entire website.
There are two possible scenarios for comments:
- Comments are not displayed on the website
- Comments are displayed on the website
Comments are not displayed on the website.
Most websites don’t display comments. But it doesn’t mean that it can stop commenting. Even if you’re not displaying comments, commenting is still possible, and it is mostly done by commenting (spammy) bots. It causes database bloat because, in WordPress, everything is kept in one database.
To avoid this situation and additional work with removing unnecessary comments in WordPress, you need to switch off commenting for the whole website. Read below how to do it.
Comments are displayed on the website.
If your template allows to display of comments, you need to manage comments and use the best settings for the purpose. You need to use WordPress discussion settings (Menu Settings – Discussion) to choose the best solution for your site.
Why to disable comments in WordPress?
Avoiding the database cluttering
As we mentioned above, WordPress comments are causing a bloating of the database. As a consequence, the website is getting heavier, and it can impact the website’s general performance and Core Web Vitals. also
Preventing spam comments
To combat spam, some websites deactivate comments completely. You can delete comments in WordPress manually, but in some cases, it can be a time-consuming activity.
Time save (time is money)
You don’t need to moderate, respond or delete comments. Disabling comments in WordPress might save you a lot of time for other essential duties. You don’t need to spend time on comments moderation.
Move the discussion to social media.
Moving comments to social media can boost your engagement and visibility. It can also build an audience that can support your company or brand. Social media offer good moderation features to ease comments management and maintain quality. And last but not least, it expands your social media content reach, sending extra people back to your site.
Improve page performance and UX (user experience).
Removing comments decreases the amount of data loaded when someone visits your site. It might be with page loading speed. Another benefit is to reduce the clutter of a huge amount of comments. It will result in a cleaner, more user-friendly layout.
Visitors can focus on the website content and enjoy a website free of unwanted spam or bad remarks. When you don’t have comments WordPress database collects less data. It can improve website speed and performance, resulting in a better user experience.
Comments are not in line with the brand guidelines
Some brands don’t want random comments to appear on their WordPress site. You can imagine a situation when, for example, the Government Taxation Office has comments… it can be challenging for the website webmasters to deal with it. Other companies with strict brand policies also want to avoid having random comments on their website.
Avoid legal issues
When an individual feels that information published about them has caused harm to their reputation, they may explore the possibility of taking legal action for defamation. This can encompass a range of media, including written statements, verbal comments, and visual content.
How to disable comments in WordPress?
WordPress allows administrators to control comments. If needed, you can disable comments on the whole website or from certain web pages. There are two places to manage comments, WordPress discussion settings in the “Settings” menu and single post or page discussion settings.
Learn how to disable comments in WordPress for:
- Disable comments globally in the WordPress discussion settings. It works for future posts only and won’t impact existing comments.
- Disable single post comments in the post discussion settings work for the specific post
- Disable single media attachments – the same as in the single post (media attachment is a post)
How to disable comments on a whole website?
Go to the WordPress “Settings” menu. You can see the “Discussion” link in the menu, click on it, and the discussion settings page will open. In the “Default post settings” section, untick a checkbox next to the “Allow people to submit comments on new posts”.
This setting will work only for new content. This disables commenting in all your later posts. If you changed settings in the single post or media attachment before, you must change them manually.
How to disable comments in a single post comments?
There are two ways of disabling comments in a single post. The first method is in the full edit. In the post menu on the right side, at the very bottom, you will notice the “Discussion” link. Click on the arrow to drop the menu with checkboxes and untick the “Allow comments” tickbox.
Another way is a “Quick Edit” option. On the posts list, mouse over specific posts and see the quick menu. Click on “Quick Edit”, and the editing panel will open. On the right, unmark the “Allow comments” checkbox and click “Save”, and you are done 🙂
How to disable comments in a single media attachment?
Disabling comments for media attachments is the same as the first method for posts. Go to media in the WordPress admin panel, and change a view option to the list. On the media attachment list, mouse over specific posts and see the quick menu. Click on “Quick Edit”, and the editing panel will open. scroll down, unmark the “Allow comments” checkbox, and click “Save”. If you can’t see this option, go to the top of the page and click on the “Screen Options” tab in the top-right corner. Tick the “Discussion box” and go back to the previous step, now you will have a discussion menu, and you can make changes.
Frequently Asked Questions about disabling comments in WordPress.
“Disable comments” in WordPress refers to turning off the commenting feature on your posts, pages, or entire website. This can be done for various reasons, such as preventing spam comments or controlling the conversation on your site.
Comment moderation in WordPress is a feature that allows you to control the comments appearing on your site. Instead of automatically publishing all comments, this feature ensures that comments don’t appear on your site without your approval.
The comment moderation area in WordPress shows comments for all posts and pages. You can view the comments left on a particular post individually. It’s also possible to allow users to moderate comments by selecting the ‘General’ tab and checking the ‘Moderate Comments’ option.
Moderating WordPress comments allows users to track the comments left on their posts and pages, enabling them to remove inappropriate ones or respond to them. The process involves approving comments based on a set of restrictions instead of just allowing any and every comment on your site.
There are numerous guidelines for moderating WordPress comments, such as keeping things civil by weeding out blatantly offensive comments, being fair and avoiding bias.
Comment moderation in WordPress is an important process where, when visitors comment on posts, the comment is not published directly until the admin approves it.
It is possible to disable commenting on posts older than a specific time. To do this:
– Go to ‘Settings’ and then click on ‘Discussion’.
– Look for the section that says “Other comment settings”.
– Check the box next to “Automatically close comments on articles older than” and enter the number of days you want WordPress to wait before it automatically disables comments.
– Click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the page.
It will not remove old comments. It will disable comments for posts older than the number of days you entered. It is useful to disable commenting on content that, for example, is news-type or other time-related.