If I were you I would’ve also been confused about the topic i.e., Enable/Disable comments. To me, it wouldn’t have made sense of why anyone would want to disable comments on their posts. And also a question can occur that ain’t comments enabled automatically or by default?
Don’t worry you I know for sure what title I have given to my write-up. I also know to answer all your queries. All you have to do is follow along the lines.
WordPress is the perfect platform for blogging with many built-in features. Comment management is one of the important features allows users to manage the comments at an individual post or page level. In this article let us explore the different ways to Enable/Disable comments for posts and pages in WordPress.
Why disable comments in WordPress?
Comments can enhance a blog in many ways. They convert a monologue into a discussion and build community. Besides, they can give a minor boost to SEO as search engines index the comments as well. So, why would anyone want to disable comments in WordPress?
Mostly because comments can often be self-promotional, spammy and sometimes hurtful. More than that, moderating comments can eat into your productive time. But it’s also true that a post devoid of comments somehow seems incomplete and therefore, many websites welcome comments with open hands.
In other cases, bloggers may publish certain posts like announcements that they don’t want to allow comments to trolls. In these cases, you can easily disable comments on those specific posts or pages. The other scenario is some business blogs choose to disable comments entirely to prevent spam. Although you can always use spam protection techniques (which we’ll share later in this article), disabling the comment section will definitely solve the problem.
Whatever your reason may be, you can certainly disable comments and even remove the comment section from your WordPress site.
How to Enable/Disable comments in WordPress?
By default, WordPress enables comments on all posts, and disables comments on all pages. You can change this to disable / enable comments completely (site wide), or selectively on some posts and pages. You can also regulate comments in many ways using the options in the Settings page.
The place to start managing comments in Settings > Discussion in your WordPress Dashboard.
How to disable comments in WordPress:
Uncheck the option “allow people to post comments on articles”. You can also disable pingbacks and trackbacks here. This will stop comments and pings entirely on all future posts on your site. (Pages are disabled by default).
If you wish to allow comments on individual posts or articles, you can do so by changing the settings under Discussions in the individual post or page.
How to disable comments in WordPress Pages?
In your WordPress admin, navigate to the pages screen: Pages > All Pages. Click the checkbox on top of the title’s column like in the picture below. This will select all your pages.
Then, open the Bulk Actions dropdown list like in the picture below, choose “Edit” and click on the “Apply” button.
At this point, you should see a Bulk Edit block with all your selected pages on the left, and a list of dropdown options on the right. Open the “Comments” dropdown list and select the “Do not allow” option (see the screenshot below). Then click on the “Update” button at the left bottom corner of the Bulk Edit block.
Now your pages won’t display any comments or comment form anymore.
If you want to stop comments on selected posts and pages:
If you only need to disable the comment in one page, then it’s even simpler.
In the Page Screen (navigate to Pages > All Pages), hover the mouse over the page title for which you’re willing to disable the comments. It will reveal some options for this page: Edit | Quick Edit | Trash | View.
Click on the Quick Edit link. (see the screenshot below)
It will open an inline edit block under the page title where you can set some items in the page like the Title, the URL slug, etc. Uncheck the “ Allow Comments” checkbox to disable comments for this page.
If you want to stop comments on existing posts individually:
Select the specific post from All Posts and click Edit Post. Below the writing area, you’ll see a heading Discussion. If you cannot see this option, enable “Discussion” under “Screen Options”. In the Discussion box, uncheck “Allow comments”.
If you want to disable comments on media files only:
We’re still not done, as the posts may continue to receive comments on the media files. When you upload an image to your post, an attachment file is created. This file will continue to receive comments, even if you’ve disabled them on the corresponding post. To disable comments in WordPress for those attachments, visit Media Library, select the media file and click on Edit.
You’ll find a “Discussion” box similar to to the one in the text editor for posts, and you can disable comments there. It’s not possible to do a bulk edit for media files using settings in WordPress, but you can do this by adding some code to your theme file.
If you want to delete all WordPress comments:
While the above methods will disable comments on your posts and pages, it will not remove the existing comments from your WordPress site. To delete all the comments from your site, click on Comments from the left sidebar of your admin panel.
Next, select all the comments, choose to Move to Trash option from the Bulk Actions dropdown box, and click on Apply. This will delete all the existing comments from your site. If your website has a lot of comments, then you will have to repeat this step multiple times
OR
Disable Comments plugin:
If you don’t want to Enable/Disable comments manually, then you can use the Disable Comments plugin to do it with just a click.
It allows you to completely disable comments everywhere on your WordPress site. You can also disable them on specific post types like posts, pages, media, and others. It also removes the comment form and stops displaying existing comments.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Disable Comments plugin. You can follow our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for detailed instructions.
Selecting the first option allows you to disable comments on your WordPress site. The plugin will also remove the comments menu item from your WordPress admin area.
After activating the plugin, head over to Settings » Disable Comments from the left sidebar of your admin panel.
When you’re done, simply click on the Save Changes to complete the process.
Hope this article was helpful to you and you get the idea of Enable/Disable comments. For more such articles log on to the official website of Webful Creations.
How to remove Pingbacks and Trackbacks in WordPress
We also have a spearate post related to disable pingbacks and trackbacks. The post also help you to remove pingbacks and trackbacks also. Visit How to disable pingbacks and trackbacks in WordPress for details.