How to Disable WordPress Comments: A Helpful Guide

Comments can be wonderful. They’re a way for readers to interact with you. You can get new insights from thoughtful comments, and stimulate discussions that could build a dedicated community. But that’s not always the case. Spam and hateful comments can be an unfortunate occurrence. And when this happens regularly, you might want to consider disabling the comments on your post or page. Want to know how? Then read on!

Should you disable comments?

There is no right or wrong answer. However, consider the consequences of a barrage of spam comments. They take up a lot of space, and you need to delete them all by hand. This can be annoying and time-consuming. After all, you want to work on your business or your brand.

Another thing to consider are offensive or harmful comments. Even if your site made its commenting rules very clear, these can still creep in. With horrible results! Your readers can be alienated and hurt by these comments, preventing them from returning to your site. And the worst case scenario: your website’s reputation could be damaged. That’s why it might be good to disable comments for a particular piece of content. Especially if it could be seen as controversial.

Top reason to disable WordPress Comments: Time

It’s always good practice to manage your comments. Depending on your website’s comment settings, comments must be moderated, approved, or marked as spam and deleted. As we said before, this takes time. Especially if you’re also using other channels to connect with your customers and readers. If you don’t have time for consistent monitoring, it might be a good idea to disable comments on your blog posts or website.

Note: it’s good to offer website visitors a way to contact you. For example, by providing an easy-to-use contact form or setting up a link to another platform where they can contact you, such as social media.

Other popular reasons to disable comments include:

1. Spam: Websites often attract a lot of spam comments. Even with filters in place, some spam comments might still get through, requiring time and effort to moderate and delete.
2. Trolls and Online Abuse: Not all comments on a website are constructive or positive. Some websites might attract trolls or other abusive comments, which can create a toxic environment.
3. Legal Reasons: Some topics or content might expose the site owner to potential legal issues due to users’ comments. Disabling comments can help mitigate such risks.
4. Professionalism: Depending on the nature of the site, having comments enabled might detract from the professionalism of the site. This can particularly be the case if the site is meant to serve as a digital portfolio or showcase for professional work.
5. Resource Constraints: Moderating comments requires resources. For small businesses or individuals, this could prove to be burdensome and detract from other important tasks.
6. Off-topic Comments: Sometimes users might post comments that are unrelated to the topic at hand. This can distract from the main content and confuse other visitors.
7. Consistency: If some posts have lots of comments and others have very few, it can make the site look inconsistent or poorly trafficked.
8. To Encourage Engagement Elsewhere: If a site owner wants to drive conversation and engagement on other platforms (like social media, forums, or email), they might disable comments to encourage users to engage there instead.
9. Performance: Large numbers of comments can impact the performance of a website, slowing down load times and affecting user experience.
10. Quality Control: By disabling comments, site owners can ensure that all content on their site meets their own standards for quality, without the unpredictability of user-generated comments.

A helpful guide to disabling WordPress comments

Good news! WordPress offers ways to disable comments on single posts, pages and even your entire website. You can either use the tools included in your site’s default settings, or use a variety of free and premium WordPress plugins. We’ll discuss both options below.

Disable comments on a specific post

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post and you want to disable comments on that specific post. Click on the cog icon in the upper right corner. 

Scroll down to ‘Discussion’. Here, you can uncheck the box in front of ‘Comments’. 

If you want to enable comments on a post again, simply return to the ‘Discussion’ section in the settings menu and check the ‘Comments’ box. From then on, readers can comment on that specific post.

Disable all comments using the dashboard settings

If you want to disable all comments, you need to head to your Admin dashboard. On the left, you’ll see the menu. Hover over ‘Settings’, until you see a little menu.

Next, click on ‘Discussion’. You’ll see a page with lots of different options regarding comments on your website. It’s good to read through them all and see which appeal to you. For now, we’ll focus on ‘Default post settings’. 

Here, you’ll see a box called ‘Allow people to submit comments on new posts’. Simply uncheck this, and you’re good to go! People won’t be able to comment on new posts that you upload.

Disable comments with WordPress plugins

Now you know how to disable comments for a specific blog post and for every new blog post you publish. However, sometimes it’s more effective to completely eliminate the comment function for your website. Luckily, there are multiple free and premium WordPress plugins that remove the commenting feature on your entire site.

Plugins such as Disable Comments and No Page Comments both have their own settings and options available for disabling the comment feature. You can choose whether you want to disable comments on an entire WordPress website or a particular page. Both plugins can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory or purchased from third party plugin developers. 

Keep in mind that when you use Disable Comments or a similar WordPress plugin, it’s important you delete any existing comments before you activate the plugin. Otherwise, the old comments will still be visible, which might confuse your audience.

Decide what works best for your business

As we’ve discussed before, there is no right or wrong way when it comes to managing comments on your website. Comments can boost your brand’s authority and create a way for readers to interact with your site. On the flip side, they can become a nuisance if managing your comments becomes too time-consuming. Especially if you receive a lot of spam messages! Luckily, you can control whether comments appear on your blog posts or WordPress website by using default WordPress tools and free plugins.

Do you want more information on how to build a WordPress website? Or do you want to learn about our different web hosting plans available? Then check out our blog, or call one of our Bluehost representatives. We’d be more than happy to talk to you.