The WordPress comment system may be a valuable feature. Getting visitors to comment on your post can increase participation and provide a variety of other benefits. At the same time, this is not a feature you need or want on every site. Fortunately for
, you can disable WordPress comments if you don’t use them. In addition to removing unwanted features, this is also a wise way to reduce spam and speed up WordPress sites.
in this article, we’ll talk more about why you might want to disable comments in WordPress. Then, we will guide you through three quick and easy ways.
- Why you might choose to disable WordPress comments how
- disables comments in WordPress (3 ways)
through custom code Why you might choose to disable WordPress comments
is now easy to forget, but WordPress started out as a blogging platform. Although it has evolved a lot since then, many of its core features still focus on features that are useful for blogs and similar types of sites, such as fairly powerful comments: the sample comments on the
WordPress website,
WordPress, enable you to allow visitors to comment on the content of your site. By default, this feature is disabled for pages and enabled for posts. This makes sense because you rarely want to allow comments on static pages.
, on the other hand, the comments section does enhance your blog posts, news articles, and other timely content.
however, not every site needs or will benefit from the comments section. In fact, sometimes it’s best to disable WordPress comments altogether. Some meaningful situations include:
- when you don’t have a blog, or when you use the “article” content type to create different types of content (such as product pages).
- your site is primarily dedicated to providing information through static pages rather than generating conversations.
- you are running a commercial website, and you are worried that comments may make your page look less professional.
- you want to encourage your audience to communicate outside of your articles and pages, such as in dedicated forums.
No matter what type of site you run, there are other potential benefits of turning off comments in WordPress.
for example, you don’t have to worry about spam comments that make your site look messy, or fill your articles with spam links. In addition, disabling comments means that your page will be more concise, which will have a positive impact on the performance of your site.
varies from site to site, so you need to weigh the pros and cons of comments for specific market segments and audiences. If you decide to disable comments partially or completely, there are many simple ways to do so. How
disables comments in WordPress (3 ways)
has many ways to disable comments in WordPress. The three main options are to use WordPress’s built-in settings, plug-ins, and some custom code. Each method of
has its advantages and is more useful in specific scenarios. You can read through all three or use the links below to jump to the parts you are most interested in.
- uses WordPress’s built-in option to disable comments
- uses the WordPress plug-in to disable comments
- disables comments
1. 1 through custom code. Using WordPress’s built-in option to disable comments
the first and easiest way to disable WordPress comments is to use the settings already included in the platform. This is a quick solution, although some limitations are involved (we’ll discuss it later).
, however, if you just want to turn off comments completely, this is usually the best way.
you can do this in two ways, depending on whether you want to disable comments for a specific article or page in WordPress or for the entire site.
Option 1: close comments on specific articles or pages
first, let’s look at how to turn off comments on a particular article or page.
, however, remember that comments on the page are disabled by default, so if comments are enabled at some point, you just need to turn them off on a single page.
first, open the WordPress article or page in question. Then, look at the right sidebar. You should see a section labeled “discussion”: continue and open it:
disables comments on WordPress articles
here, you’ll find two options. To disable comments, simply uncheck the allow comment box. Then, be sure to save or update the page or article so that visitors will no longer be able to comment on it.
as a reference, the following is all the look and feel of people using the Classic Editor: the discussion settings in the
Classic Editor and the allow comment check box
, but keep in mind that this does not delete pre-existing comments on the page or article.
to do this, you need to delete them manually under the comments tab of the WordPress dashboard.
Option 2: turn off comments globally
, on the other hand, what if you decide not to allow comments on any posts on your site? In this case, you also need to disable comments globally in WordPress.
you can do this by navigating to “Settings” & gt; “discussion”:
WordPress’s discussion setting
is here, simply uncheck the option to allow people to comment on new articles. This means that comments will be disabled for all future articles created on your site.
has two drawbacks to this particular approach. First of all, very similar to the above option, it does not delete any existing comments from your site (you still need to delete them manually).
In addition, this does not disable comments on existing articles, only comments on new articles. Fortunately, you can also use a few tricks to deal with this content. On the same page, find the option to automatically turn off comments on articles before _ days, select the box, and then add 0 to the field.
this will close all comments on the current article on your site. When used in conjunction with previous settings, this causes your comments section to be disabled globally.
2. Using the WordPress plug-in to disable comments
the settings we saw above are easy to access and allow you to disable comments on the WordPress site. However, they do not give you a great deal of control over the process. In addition, you may do some tedious cleaning work later.
if you want to fine-tune the way reviews work on your site, or just looking for a faster, more elegant solution, you may want to consider choosing a dedicated plug-in.
has some tools that can help you turn off WordPress comments. Let’s take a look at two of them.
Option 1: install free plug-ins
if your budget is limited, or if you want a very simple solution, you can check out the free plug-in disable comments:
disable comments WordPress plug-in
this plug-in enables administrators to disable comments globally, or only for specific article types. Disable Comments has more than 1 million active installations, so it is highly recommended. In addition, it is easy to use. After
installs the plug-in, you will find its new option under “Settings” & gt; “disable comments”:
disables comments plugin settings
as you can see, your choice is very simple. You can disable comments anywhere on the site with one click.
or you can turn them off for articles, pages, or custom article types. This allows you to disable WordPress comments on pictures and other media files as well as WooCommerce products. Finally,
, just click the “Save changes” button. Keep in mind that these settings cannot be overridden by regular WordPress discussion settings or by enabling comments on individual articles and pages.
this is a useful solution if you have multiple users on your site and want to prevent others from re-enabling comments.
, of course, the above plug-ins are not the only option for dealing with the comments section of the WordPress site. You can also consider purchasing advanced plug-ins. One solution is to use the perfmatters plug-in: the
WordPress plug-in-perfmatters
, which is designed to improve the performance of your WordPress website and provides a range of features, such as simplified dashboards and various behind-the-scenes adjustments, to minimize potential deceleration and inflation.
in addition, perfmatters includes a very simple option to turn off comments in WordPress. You can find it in the plug-in settings under the options tab (which is marked “disable comments”). By toggling this option, you can enable or disable comments globally without worrying about any other settings.
does provide less fine-grained control over your comment settings than previous plug-ins. However, if you just want to turn off WordPress comments and want to speed up your site, this tool can easily handle these two tasks for you.
3. Disable comment
through custom code if none of the above options provide enough control, or if you want more options but do not want to add another plug-in to your site, you can use custom code instead.
what you can accomplish in this way naturally depends on your technical skills and experience, but simply disabling the comments section of your site is very simple.
you can use some basic HTML commands to completely delete the comments section of the WordPress topic. Please note that editing the source code of a WordPress theme is risky and may damage your website if done improperly. Most importantly in
, best practices recommend creating a subtheme when performing such activities. If you are not used to doing this yourself, you may want to leave the work to the WordPress developer.
if you are interested in trying this technology yourself, be sure to test it in a temporary environment first and always back up your production website before pushing changes in real time.
now open the page.php file in your favorite HTML editor and find the following line of code:
continues to replace it with this line of code:
this will close the comments section on all pages of your site while deleting existing comments and blocking new ones.
to do the same for articles on your site, navigate to your single.php file and find the following code:
, then replace it with the following code:
, you will disable WordPress comments on your articles and pages.
remember that you need to repeat this process for other article types if necessary.
Summary
sometimes you want to encourage visitors to your site to ask questions and start discussing with each other. However, if you want to prevent spam or improve performance, you may need to disable WordPress comments.
has three main ways to do this. You can disable comments on WordPress by using the following method: the built-in option for
- WordPress.
- a WordPress plug-in, such as disabling comments or performance.
- custom code.
