How to Disable WordPress Comments for Posts (Step by Step)
How to Disable WordPress Comments for Posts? (Step by Step). In this post, we will show you how to disable WordPress comments for posts.
First of all, using comments is an important engagement metric on your website. Also great for tracking your reach and visibility. In addition, comments can enhance blogs by helping you build a community and give a minor boost to SEO as search engines index the comments.
But with the increase in users on the internet, you can receive self promotion, spam and sometimes hurtful comments on your WordPress website.
Also, if you want to moderate your comments without a dedicated team, it can shrink your productive time. So, disabling comments in WordPress is the only viable option. Let’s understand how to disable comments on WordPress.
Different Reason To Disable Comments in WordPress
Some websites, like CNN, Reuters, and so forth, receive many comments. They have channeled the volume of comments towards their social platforms.
So basically, it helps filter out the controversial comments and remove the direct impact of negative comments on their blog. Social media, being self regulatory, cuts down on inappropriate comments on its own.
Also, if comments are important for your blog, you can use several plugins to improve your WordPress comments section. Or, if your site is receiving loads of comments, you can start a WordPress forum to improve interaction amongst readers.
But if you don’t want to use the above listed strategies, you can disable comments on your website. Here are the reasons you should disable comments on blogs:
Improves load time
Each comment requires another database ask/request, which takes time and adds to the overall load time. All in all, disabling comments can improve your load time and help you deliver a quality customer experience to your users.
In addition, improving load time can help you improve your on site SEO and help you rank better in the search engine page results.
Strengthen brand reputation
Irrelevant constant negative feedback from your readers’ can hinder your brand reputation. Many users visit the site to make a type of negative comment with no perception or create spam.
Therefore, disabling comments can protect your brand reputation from unwanted negative comments. Additionally, you avoid creating a negative brand perception for genuine website visitors.
Manage site security
Another reason is spam comments. They make your website or blog page appear vulnerable online. Also, moderating these unnecessary comments can create a high risk for your site’s security. So, make your website secure by disabling comments from your website.
Be more productive
Certainly, by disabling comments from your website, it eliminates spam and negative comments. In turn, that saves you time moderating them from your end. Use your time to focus on your core business operations and work towards scaling your website to new heights.
Increase social media engagement
Certainly by disabling comments from your website you successfully lead your customers or readers to interact on different social media channels. As a result, it eventually helps you improve your brand value on social media. You can stand out and access the moderation features offered by different social media platforms.
Once you disable comments on your website, you can achieve different benefits for your business, but it also has some negatives.
Drawbacks of Disabling Comments on WordPress
Let’s explore the downside of disabling blog comments. Here are possible reasons being outlined and described:
1. Missing customer positive feedback
Once you disable the comments, you won’t get positive feedback from your readers or users. Also, many customers don’t feel comfortable commenting on social media, so you won’t collect a genuine review on your blog.
A key point is that, it minimizes your chances of attracting your potential customers or new readers.
2. No two way conversation
Also, if you disable comments, you can miss out on two way communication with your customers. You won’t build a friendly relationship through comments. It can also restrict you from giving personalized replies to your visitors.
3. Decrease Customer Engagement Rates
As a result, you may lose engagement on your website, when you disable comments. Many visitors or active readers who visit your site daily and read your blog might want to make a comment and engage with your brand.
Really, disabling comments from the blog removes the reason for them to visit your site and shrinks your website traffic. Now, let’s check our core aspect on how you can disable comments in WordPress.
Up next, with How to Disable WordPress Comments for Posts? Steps included below.
Steps To Disable comments in WordPress
By default, WordPress enables post comments. Besides, it also disables comments on all pages. But you can change them to default disable/enable comment settings completely or selectively on some posts and pages.
1. Stop comments on future posts and pages
You can also regulate comments using the options on the Settings page. To change the default settings, you can go to Settings > Discussion in your WordPress Dashboard.
Once you open the Discussion Settings, you should unmark the option “allow people to post comments on articles.”
You can also disable trackbacks and pingbacks here. It will stop comments and pings on your site’s future posts. If you want to allow comments on specific posts or articles, you can change the settings under Discussions in the individual post or page.
2. Stop comments on published posts and pages
Disallowing comments on future posts and pages will not stop the flow of comments on existing posts and pages. To stop and remove your existing posts and page comments, visit your Dashboard > Comments.
You can select the comments you want to remove and click on ‘Bulk Actions’ to initiate action on the comments for your existing pages or posts. Then select “Move to Trash” and click the Apply button to remove the selected comments.
3. Stop comments on selected posts and pages in bulk
Removing comments on selected posts and pages in bulk doesn’t require much effort. You can go to the All Posts section and select the posts for which you want to remove the comments.
Then click on Bulk Actions > Edit > Apply. You can see a new Bulk Edit option where you can choose the Do Not Allow option for comments.
You’ll only select 20 posts simultaneously because of the default setting for displaying posts in the All Posts screen. But if you can display a higher number on each screen by implementing changes under Screen Options.
4. Stop comments on existing posts individually
If you want to avoid bulk removal of comments from multiple posts, you can also choose a specific post from All Posts and click Edit Post. In the right side of the writing area of a blog post, you’ll see the heading Discussion.
You can enable the “Discussion” section under “Screen Options”. And uncheck “Allow comments” under the Discussion section to stop the comments on a specific existing blog post. You can also achieve a similar result by selecting Quick Edit individual posts.
5. Disable comments on media files
Following the above steps won’t prevent your website from receiving negative comments. Chances are you might receive comments on the media files. WordPress creates a specific attachment file when you upload an image to your post. The file will receive comments, even if you disable them on the corresponding post.
You can disable comments in WordPress for those attachments by visiting the Media Library, selecting the media file, and clicking on Edit.
You’ll spot a “Discussion” box similar to the text editor for posts, and it can help you disable comments there.
It’s impossible to perform a bulk edit for different media files using settings in WordPress. But you can do it by adding code to your theme file.
6. More control over comments
Besides disabling comments, you can get control over comments by adjusting things in the Settings > Discussion panel.
Here are your available options:
Perform a moderator check before publishing the comment
It helps you to catch bots and spam and prevent a comment from appearing right away on the front end of your site. The comment will appear on your dashboard in the comments queue. You can take a specific action.
Blacklist IP addresses, usernames, or emails
You can blacklist specific offenders in WordPress. Also, if they even partially match your list, WordPress will block the IP addresses, usernames, or emails. You can also add code to .htaccess to block specific malicious IPs to prevent your website from unwanted intrusions.
Get the user to register
You can increase the user registration before publishing their comment on your WordPress website. It can bring down both spam and the volume of comments.
Approving comment authors
You can save time by approving comment authors. It can assist you in passing subsequent comments easily.
Closing comments on older articles
You can also specify the days after which comments can stop. Mostly, spammers target older posts, so closing comments can help you minimize spam.
Limiting links
Put a limit on the comments with spam links. Spammers like to leave as many links as possible with their comments to channel your traffic to their malicious websites.
Get notification when you receive comments
Keep yourself abreast with new comments and swiftly act on unwanted ones. Turn on the notifications once you receive a new comment to avoid spammers from flooding your comments sections.
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Thank you for reading How to Disable WordPress Comments for Posts? We shall conclude.
How to Disable WordPress Comments for Posts (Step by Step) Conclusion
Apart from using the manual WordPress settings, you can also use plugins to streamline the disabling process. A plugin can also give you more “managed” control over comments. Different plugins best for controlling spam comments are WP Bruiser and Akismet.
Now you know the aspects of disabling comments on your WordPress posts and pages. It’s up to you to implement the restrictions according to your preference. You can implement partial or full restrictions according to your target audience, current scenario, and future prospects.
Filtering your comments on your WordPress website can improve the experience and the quality.
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