How to disable comments in WordPress?

Posted in Tutorials

To Disable Comments Globally

In WordPress 3.5, you can globally disable comments in all new post by going to “Settings -> Discussions” and uncheck the “Allow people to post commetns on new article” …

However, this only applies to new posts.   The existing posts with comments enabled will still have comments enabled.  Pingbacks and trackbacks are kind of like “remote comments” to your site placed on other blogs.  So you might want to disable those as well.

To disable the comments of individual posts …

Go into the edit post, and pull down the screen options and checkmark “Discussion” and “Comments”.

This way you can see the settings options below …

In the Discussion section, uncheck the “Allow Comments” and the “Allow trackback and pingbacks”.  This will close the post off to any new comments.  The post will display “Comments are Closed”.

Deleting Existing Comments

However, existing comments will still be there.  In the Comments section, you can delete individual comments by moving them to Trash (see above picture).

To Disable Comments on All Post

It is a bit tedious to have to disable comments on each post individually.  Fortunately, WordPress has a bulk edit where you can disable comments on many posts all at once.

Go to “Posts -> All Posts” and select all the posts.   In the drop list, select “Edit” and click “Apply”…

You will get the bulk edit screen for which you can set the “Comments” and “Pings” to “Do not allow”…

Click the update button to update all selected posts.

 

 

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