• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Wordpress / How to Disable Comments in Wordpress Temporarily or Permanently

How to Disable Comments in WordPress Temporarily or Permanently

April 27, 2015 at 9:40 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

disable wordpress commentsIf you have ever needed to disable comments on an active WordPress blog, you have probably discovered it is easier said than done.  While you can turn off commenting for all new posts in WordPress in the “Settings -> Discussion” section, it only applies to new posts and pages, it is not retroactive to old posts and pages that have already been published.

So how can you disable comments on older posts and pages?  Unfortunately, the way WordPress has it built into the system, you need to go through each post individually to disable commenting… there is no way to do it automatically.  You can edit the setting to disable commenting to posts older than X days, but the setting cannot be made to “0” so all posts are disabled.

What if you just want to disable comments temporarily across an entire site?  Perhaps Akismet is down caussing a ton of spam comments to sneak through or there is a WordPress exploit that is comment based that means you want to disable all comments.  Fortunately, there is a plugin that will do it, and you can use it temporarily and simply disable later when you want comments re-enabled.

Disable Comments is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to disable comments permanently or temporarily.  You can also disable comments only on certain types of content – such as disable on pages but enable on posts and media.

disable comments 1It is pretty simple to set up.

disable comments 2For temporarily disabling, use the “Everywhere” option.  This will disable comments site-wide.  If you want to re-enable comments?  Simply disable the plugin and you are good to go.  This will also retain all comments made on the site, so once you disable the plugin they will re-appear.  Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to still display older comments while disabling comments.

If you want to retain the comment menu options still (the everywhere option hides them), you can use the “On certain post types” option.

This is a pretty handy plugin if you need to disable comments on a blog quickly, such as when an exploit is found that is not yet fixed or you are being overrun with spam that Akismet isn’t catching.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google - July 8, 2020
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations - December 6, 2019
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites - September 13, 2019

Filed Under: Wordpress

Sign up for our newsletter


Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2049)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met

Google has released a brand-new Google quality rater guidelines, coming close to a year after the … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials
  • Google Local Service Ads Display Pricing Estimates for Specific Locations
  • Google Testing “Relevant History” Section in Mobile Search Results
  • Google Converts PDFs, DOCs, XLS etc into HTML for Indexing

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
February 2021
MTWTFSS
« Oct  
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in