How to Disable Comments in WordPress for a Clean and Professional Look

WordPress is leading the market when it comes to a content management system that offers unmatchable flexibility. Millions of websites around the globe depend on this platform since it offers features to personalize it the way they prefer. 

The ability to comment management is one of the essential features in WordPress, which encourages user interaction. Besides, the comment feature creates a vibe of a community within a website and makes it more engaging.

However, sometimes, the comment feature needs to be disabled to keep the website clean and professional. There is some valid reason behind doing this, such as minimizing spam, upholding the reputation of your company, or just the fact that your content doesn’t call for user engagement.

No matter the reason, managing comments is a crucial part of maintaining a WordPress site. In this article, I’ll guide you through a step-by-step process of disabling comments on the WordPress site. This will help you curate your WordPress site by maintaining a clean and professional look. Let’s pay attention. 

Reasons Behind Disabling Comments in WordPress 

There are some strong reasons behind disabling the comment feature of your WordPress site. It’s a calculated decision that all adds to the overall objective of improving your website’s usability and outlook.

Here are some major considerations that lead website owners to disable comments: 

Blocking Spam

The comment section is an attractive place for spammers to post irrelevant links and inappropriate comments. Thus, one efficient strategy to combat these unwanted aspects and keep your website safe and trustworthy for visitors is to disable comments.

Maintaining Outlook

A clean and flawless outlook is essential for companies and business portfolios. By removing possible clutter and distractions, such as user-generated comments, disabling comments enables users to concentrate on the main content rather than being distracted by them. 

Minimizing Moderation

It might take a lot of time to moderate and manage the comments on your WordPress site. You may not have the time or resources to properly filter comments if you’re a lone blogger or the owner of a big website. So, by turning off the comments, you can devote more time to content creation. 

Improving Loading Speed

Comments can sometimes take more resources to display and slow down page loading speed, especially when it’s a popular post with more traffic. So, turning off comments can be a good way to improve the speed at which your pages load and the overall user experience that you want for your visitors.

Focusing More Channels

You can put social media and other links to your posts to direct visitors to other platforms. So, disabling comments and putting various channels’ links can be an alternative idea to encourage customers to participate in conversations on those platforms rather than your website. Besides, you can direct them to other content on your website, newsletter subscription, or in polls and surveys.

Reducing Legal Issues

There are some industries like legal or final services where regulatory or legal problems can arise due to user-generated content. Therefore, you can take a proactive step and disable the comments to avoid those legal issues.  

You can disable the comment section of your site at any time based on your site’s type and goals. So, consider the factors that I’ve mentioned and then decide whether you want it disabled or it’s ok for you to maintain it. 

Disable Comments On Already Published Posts in WordPress 

This method is ideal for disabling comments on already published posts on your WordPress site. After going through the following steps and applying the changes,  you can remove as well as disable the comments in all existing posts on your site. Let’s go through the steps below: 

• Log in to your WordPress site and click on Comments. You will be redirected to a page with a c collection of all comments that visitors have already posted on your site’s content.

• Bulk-select all comments from the top left corner of the table and select Move to Trash from the drop-down menu.

• Click Apply to move all comments to trash.
• All the comments are now removed from the existing posts or pages of your site. Yet, people will be able to comment on your site because the comment form is still enabled.
• To disable the comment option from existing posts, go to Posts > All Posts.
• Now, you can view all the existing or published posts on your WordPress site. Bulk select on the box located in the top left corner like before and select Edit from the dropdown menu.

• Now, you can change some post settings from this page. Locate the Comments and select Do not allow from the drop-down menu. 

• Lastly, click Update to disable comments from all your existing posts.

But what about the comments on different pages? Let’s continue reading to learn about that. 

Disable Comments Form All Pages In WordPress 

I must mention that by default, WordPress disables the comment section for all newly created pages. However, if your comment section is still enabled on the pages, you probably have adjusted your WordPress site’s comment settings at some point or were enabled by the theme.  

To personalize these settings and disable comments on pages, follow these steps:  

• After logging in to your WordPress site, Go to Pages> All Pages
• Then, bulk-select all pages and click Edit from the drop-down menu.
• Now, select Do Not Allow from the drop-down menu beside the Comment.

• Click update to execute the changes on your site. 

Now, the comment section won’t be available on the existing pages of your website. But let’s focus on a different approach where you can select the days from when comments will be disabled. 

Disable Comments By Selecting Days on WordPress 

This setting is a lot more straightforward compared to the previously mentioned approaches. But with this method, the comments on pages can’t be disabled. However, let’s check out this method by following these steps: 

• Log into your WordPress site and click Settings > Discussion.
• Explore the options in the Discussion Settings area and locate the options in Other Comment Settings that say Automatically close comments on posts older than  [Number] days. 

• Put the value as 0, which will disable comments for all the posts.
• Click Save Changes to execute the changes.  

Now we will look into how you can disable comments in your future posts. The next approach will also help you disable comments in your WordPress posts globally.

Disable Comments on Future Posts on WordPress 

The first two methods allowed you to disable comments for posts and pages of your WordPress site. But it won’t stop the comment feature on upcoming or newly published articles. But there are settings that you can configure to disable site-wide comments for future posts. Here are the steps to follow and apply this approach: 

• After logging into your WordPress site, go to Settings > Discussion.

• Find the Default post settings and locate Allow people to submit comments on new posts. Uncheck the box to disable comments on future posts. 
• Don’t forget to Save Settings to apply the changes to your site. 

These settings won’t let visitors post any comments on any posts that you will publish in the future. But if you are looking for a method to disable comments in a specific post but not from the entire site, continue reading. 

Disable Comments on Specific Posts and Pages on WordPress

If you don’t want to disable comments on all the posts and pages, then this setting is for you. So, this time, you will disable comments on specific posts or pages. This time, you don’t need to bulk-select the posts; rather, select individual posts where you want to disable the comment. 

Here are the steps to follow: 

• Access your WordPress admin panel and go to  Posts > All Posts.
• Locate the posts for which you wish to disable comments and select the checkboxes next to them.

• In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu, select Edit and click the Apply button.
• Confirm that you have chosen the specific posts for bulk editing.
• In the Comments dropdown menu, select Do not allow to disable comments for the selected posts.

• Finally, click the Update button to save your changes.

You can also disable comments while editing a post rather than bulk editing posts or pages. This alternative approach can override any global settings previously configured. So, let’s check out this next approach.

Disable Comments While Posting on WordPress 

You can disable the comment feature while posting content on your WordPress blog. This makes the comment handling more simple by bringing the settings inside the individual post. You can simply follow these steps: 

• While editing a post in Gutenberg or Classic editor, the process will be similar. So, let’s say you are creating a new post by going to Posts > Add New Post. 
• Now, on the right-hand side of the screen, scroll down a bit in the settings area. Locate the Discussion section and click the menu. 

• Now, you will see the Allow Comment option, which you need to uncheck. 
• Click Publish or Update to apply the changes that you’ve made. 
• If you are unable to see the Discussion option, click the three dots on the top right corner of the screen. 

• Then click on Preferences, and then in the newly prompted window, click Panels and turn on the Discussion. 

Till this point, I’ve shown you all the manual approaches to disable comment, which does not involve any coding or plugin. But now I’ll move on to the process of disabling comments using a plugin since it can be easier to handle comments. 

Disable Comments Using Plugin On WordPress

If you have a big site with lots of posts and comments to handle, using a plugin can be a great idea. I’m talking about the Disable Comments plugin for this instance that can disable or enable comments from your WordPress site’s pages, posts, or media. It gives you the simplest way to prevent spammers from posting comments on your site. 

You can take control over all the site-wide comment-related options and maintain them as you prefer. It will allow you to disable comments on your selected posts, pages, and media. Furthermore, if you have multiple websites, you can disable comments throughout the network. 

After installing the plugin, you will be accessing it from Settings > Disable Comments. With the plugin, you will get two options via tabs. The first one will let you disable comments, and the other one will let you delete comments from your site.

From Disable Comments settings, you can disable comments globally or everywhere or from specific posts, pages, media, or landing pages. Besides, you can disable comments according to the user roles. 

However, you can’t override the comment settings on individual posts. So, to control the comments settings fully and keep some on your website, go with the post type or the manual approach. 

When it comes to the Delete Comments section, you can delete global comments on certain posts, pages, media, and landing pages. Moreover, you can delete certain comment types and, specifically, spam comments.  

The next method is for those who want to dive deep into removing comments using codes. 

Disable Comments Using Codes in WordPress

You can perform the following actions to entirely deactivate comments on your WordPress website. It’s crucial to remember that this procedure should only be used by those who are familiar with modifying WordPress themes. 

Plus, for and who have followed all the safety phases, such as backing up their website or employing a child theme, these are the steps to use codes to disable comments: 

• Start by going to the main dashboard and accessing the Appearance > Theme File Editor. 
• Explore the right-hand side of the Theme Editor, locate the page.php file, and click it.
• Within the “page.php” file, search for the following line of code:

<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>

• Now, replace it with the following line of codes:

<!-- Begin Comment -->
<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>
<!-- End Comment -->

• After making this change, be sure to save it by clicking the Update File button.
• Now, proceed to disable comments on your posts by modifying the single.php file.
• Return to the Theme File Editor in the WordPress admin panel.
• This time, click on the single.php file.
• Inside the single.php file, locate the following line of code:

<?php comments_template(); ?>

• Simply replace it using the following codes: 

<!-- Begin Comment -->
<?php comments_template(); ?>
<!-- End Comment -->

• Once again, save your changes by selecting the Update File option.

At this point, the comments on the pages and posts of your site have been deactivated successfully. Before making any changes to the theme’s code, please remember to proceed with care and make sure you have a backup of your website in place. 

The potential of Comment Moderation in WordPress

Disabling comments is one strategy, but there are instances where managing comments well can be advantageous.

So, here are some methods for handling comments:

Moderate Comments: Consider allowing comment moderation rather than completely blocking comments. This method will still allow comments to show on your website, but they won’t be posted right away. Rather, they will be reserved for your or a moderator’s approval.

Establish Comment Guidelines: Clearly define what is and is not appropriate on your website in your comment policy, and make sure that it is easy for users to follow. This fosters a pleasant and upbeat commenting environment by assisting users in understanding the guidelines and expectations.

Filter Comments: Filter and remove spam and unpleasant comments by implementing automatic comment filters. For this, third-party anti-spam plugins like Akismet can be utilized, though WordPress has a default spam filtering option. 

Notify Commenters: To ensure that legitimate comments are promptly approved, review and monitor comments regularly. Additionally, respond to comments to foster a sense of community and encourage further discussion.

Check Comments Frequently: Review and monitor comments more frequently to make sure that valid comments are accepted right away. Plus, reply to comments to promote a feeling of community and spark more conversation.

Communicate With Users: Reacting to comments from your audience demonstrates your appreciation for their feedback while also promoting additional conversations. As a result, Improved user loyalty and a feeling of community can arise from this.

Use Comment Threads: WordPress includes threaded comments, which facilitates more organized discussions. Thus, users can follow discussions and reply to certain points as a result. 

Personal Messaging: Consider adding private messaging capabilities if you have a large and dedicated user base. This will let you connect and converse directly while controlling public comments.

Maintaining User Engagement While Comments are Disabled 

After disabling the comment, you can still maintain user engagement with proper tactics.

Here are a few successful strategies to maintain audience interest:

• Integrate Social Media: Include social sharing buttons in your individual posts to encourage user interaction on different social media sites.
• Email Newsletter: Gather email addresses from visitors and send out frequent content updates to establish a dedicated readership.
• Surveys & Polls: Leverage surveys and polls to interact with people and get insightful information.
• Interactive Content: Utilize interactive elements like freebies, competitions, and quizzes to keep people interested.
• High-quality content: To keep users interested, make sure your writing is worthwhile, engaging, and relevant to the latest trends.
• SEO: Boost user interaction by using SEO strategies to make your website more visible in search engine result pages.

By implementing these strategies, you can still continue user engagement and retain visitors to your WordPress site. 

Final Thoughts 

I’ve covered some essential and tested methods to disable comments on your WordPress site. Be clear about whether you want to disable all the comments or individual posts. Then, go through the steps and disable the comments as you prefer. 

You can also go through the comment moderation techniques and how to maintain your site after disabling the comment feature. Hopefully, the guide will let you maintain smooth WordPress site management with or without any comments. Have a smooth WordPress Journey!

Next, you may read about how to change the featured image size in WordPress.