How to Disable WordPress Comments: A Helpful Guide

Disabling WordPress comments can be useful if you don’t want to allow user-generated comments on your website or blog. Whether you want to reduce spam or simply prefer not to have comments on your site, WordPress provides an easy way to disable this feature. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to disable WordPress comments:

Note: Before making any changes to your WordPress site, it’s always a good practice to create a backup in case you need to revert the changes.

Disable Comments on New Posts:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- In the left-hand menu, go to “Settings” and click on “Discussion.”
- Under the “Default article settings” section, uncheck the box that says “Allow people to post comments on new articles.”
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Save Changes.”
Disable Comments on Existing Posts:
- If you want to disable comments on specific existing posts or pages, follow these steps:
- In the WordPress dashboard, go to “Posts” (or “Pages”) and click on “All Posts” (or “All Pages”).
- Locate the post or page you want to disable comments for and hover your mouse over its title.
- Click on the “Quick Edit” link that appears.
- Look for the “Allow Comments” checkbox and uncheck it.
- Click the “Update” button to save your changes.
Disable Comments Globally Using a Plugin:
- If you have a large number of existing posts and want to disable comments across all of them at once, using a plugin can be more efficient. One popular plugin for this purpose is “Disable Comments.”
- To use the “Disable Comments” plugin:
- Go to “Plugins” in the WordPress dashboard and click on “Add New.”
- Search for “Disable Comments” in the search bar.
- Install and activate the plugin.
- After activation, go to “Settings” and click on “Disable Comments.”
- Choose the post types where you want to disable comments (e.g., posts, pages, media).
- Click “Save Changes.”

By following these steps, you should have successfully disabled comments on your WordPress site. However, please remember that disabling comments might impact user engagement and interaction on your website. If you decide to enable comments in the future, you can easily follow the same steps and reverse the changes.