Brett has been starting, growing, and monetizing websites since 2014. While in college, he began to learn about digital marketing. After graduating, he continued to build a diverse portfolio of websites while working a full time job. After years of building the portfolio on the side, he made the jump to run his websites full time.
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While comments are instrumental in creating engagement and building an audience-facing WordPress website, some ugly scenarios can necessitate turning off comments in WordPress.
When your website comments section becomes the center for spammy messages and harmful links, it destroys your website’s reputation with users and search engines.
So the earlier you turn off comments on your WordPress website, the better.
When you turn off commenting on WordPress, your website visitors can no longer post comments under your posts and pages.
Thus, you protect your website from spam and dangerous links.
You also save yourself the time and stress of responding to comments.
Should you turn off comments on WordPress?
Enabling or disabling WordPress comments is about what’s best for your website.
There’s no need to turn off comments if you can put an end to spam comments and links, or you have the luxury of time to verify comments before they go public.
How to Turn Off Comments in WordPress: 5 Easy Methods
You have a lot of flexibility when dealing with WordPress comments.
You can turn off comments on a single or a collection of posts and pages.
And if you feel like comments are no longer necessary on your site, you can disable comments on your website altogether.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:
Turn off WordPress comments on a single post or page.
Turn off WordPress comments on multiple posts or pages
Turn off WordPress comments on all existing posts or pages
Delete comments on WordPress
Turn off comments on your future posts
How to Disable comments With a WordPress Plugin
How to turn off WordPress comments on a single post or page
When a particular post on your website garners chaotic comments, you can turn off comments for that specific post.
There are two methods to do this.
Method 1: Turn off comments on a single post on the WordPress post editor page.
Log in to your WordPress Admin dashboard.
Hover on Posts on the left panel and click on All Posts from the resulting menu to open the list of posts on your website.
Locate the post you want to disable commenting on and click on Edit under it to open the WordPress post editor page.
Scroll down on the right panel to select the Discussion tile, uncheck the box next to Allow comments, then click the Update button at the top of the page to save the settings.
Method 2: Turn off comments on a single post with WordPress Quick Edit
On the list of posts on your website, hover over the post you want to turn off its comments and click on Quick Edit under it.
Uncheck the box next to Allow Comments. Then click the Update button to apply the changes.
How to turn off WordPress comments on multiple posts or page
Follow the steps below to disable comments on multiple WordPress pages or posts at a time:
Log in to your WordPress Admin dashboard.
Hover on Posts and select All Posts from the menu that pops out.
Check the boxes next to all the posts you want to disable comments on. Go to the Bulk actions menu at the top, select Edit, and click on Apply.
In the Comments dropdown menu, choose Do not allow and click the Update button.
How to turn off WordPress comments on all existing posts or pages
On your WordPress dashboard, hover on Settings and select Discussion from the menu.
Check the box next to Automatically close comments on articles older than _ days and put Zero in the number of days field.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to click Save Changes.
You should know that turning off comments on posts and pages, whether individual, in bulk, or sitewide, will only prevent new comments on your website.
Existing comments will still be visible to users.
You can delete past comments if you don’t want them to appear under your content.
Let’s show you how to do it.
How to delete comments on a single WordPress post or page
You can delete WordPress comments either on a single post or throughout your website.
Here’s how to do it.
Deleting comments on a single post and page
Open Comments on your WordPress Dashboard.
Check the box next to the post you want to delete comments on, select Move to Trash from the Bulk actions menu at the top, and click the Apply button.
Deleting comments on all existing posts and page
The steps are the same to delete comments on all published posts.
You just have to check the boxes of all comments you want to delete before applying Move to Trash from the Bulk actions menu.
While all the examples in this tutorial show how to turn off comments in WordPress Posts, you should understand that disabling comments on WordPress pages also follows the same process.
You only need to go to Pages>All pages instead Posts> All Posts on your dashboard before proceeding to subsequent steps.
How to turn off comments on WordPress future posts and pages
Now that you’ve learned how to turn off and delete comments, you may want to prevent users from posting comments when you add a new WordPress post.
Use the steps below.
Go to Settings on your dashboard and select Discussion from the menu.
Uncheck the box next to Allow people to submit comments on new posts.
Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
How to Disable Comments With a WordPress Plugin
While all the methods above are straightforward, they can be time-consuming and somewhat technical.
A faster way of turning off comments is to use a WordPress Plugin.
Disable Comments is one of the best plugins to turn to.
After activating the plugin, go to settings then Disable comments on your WordPress dashboard.
Once the Settings open, you can turn off and delete comments anywhere on your site by checking the box next to each option. Here are the options you have.
Under the disable comments tab:
Everywhere: To turn off comments on every post and page on your website.
On specific post types: To turn off comments on certain post types
Under the delete comments tab
Everywhere: To delete all comments on your WordPress website.
On certain post types: delete comments on specific post types
Delete certain comment types: delete comments under a category of posts.
The Disable Comments Plugin is easy to use. Play with it!
Wrapping up how to turn off comments in WordPress
There you have it! 5 step-by-step methods to disable WordPress comments.
Now, with or without a plugin, you should be able to disable comments on your WordPress website.
It will also be useful when you don’t have the time to respond to comments.
Is this article helpful? Share your thought in the comment section.
Similar Tutorials to Check Out
How to Delete All Comments in WordPress: For more information on getting rid of WordPress comments, check out this guide on how to delete all comments in WordPress.
By Brett Helling
Brett has been starting, growing, and monetizing websites since 2014. While in college, he began to learn about digital marketing. After graduating, he continued to build a diverse portfolio of websites while working a full time job. After years of building the portfolio on the side, he made the jump to run his websites full time.
