Hi! This is Alex from Webcraftic. In this post I’m going to show you how to completely disable comments WordPress posts, pages and any post types in just few clicks.
Initially, WordPress was created as a blog management system. But over time it overgrew with the community and became a platform to make websites, landing pages, Learning Management Systems or even online stores.

Why to disable comments in WordPress

Usually a blog implies not only articles but interaction with the audience as well. Besides, it is a commenting system. But what if you don’t need this feedback? What if all you want is to write posts only? Perhaps, you even create a plain website or landing page where comments are not necessary.

How to disable comments with embedded WordPress features

Okay, you need to disable comments. But there are lack of resources to disable comments in WordPress. Surely, there are discussion settings (Settings > Discussion > uncheck “Allow people to post comments on you articles” to disable comments for new posts only). If you have a brand new project this option will satisfy your needs. But if you have a real working project with posted comments, this action will do you no good.

Someone could say that you can do the following: Go to all posts > check all > Select Edit > click Apply. Select comments > do not allow and click Apply. Now you’ve disabled comments in selected posts.
Let’s take look at our post. First, reload it. Now you see that comments are closed. However, all existing comments are still there.

To delete it go to Comments > remove all comments.

In most cases, users of WordPress disable comments performing oo many actions to do, don’t you think? You disable comments for new posts, then disallow existing comments and remove all afterwards.

What if you don’t want to delete all comments and need to save them in your database? You may even want to block comments for now with a perspective of enabling it somewhere in the future.

How to disable WordPress comments with Clearfy plugin

That’s why we’ve added a special feature to our free Clearfy plugin helping you to manage comments. You can download our WordPress disable comments plugin from here. Clearfy is very powerful tool helping you to improve SEO, optimization, performance and the website security. But if you don’t need all of these features you can also get our free plugin named “Disable Comments for any post types”. The features are the same as in Clearfy, but valid for managing comments only.

Install & activate the Clearfy plugin. Now you see a special link in the Clearfy settings called “Clearfy menu”. Go to the comments section. If you want to disable comments everywhere, click here and save the changes.

This option removes the whole WordPress commenting system, and the Comments link from the lest menu disappears.
Now reload the post with existing comments and commenting form. You’ll see that only previous and next links are available.

This is super convenient, because you have all comments in handy – in your database, and you can restore them if needed.
But the most important thing in here is that we don’t just hide comments, but completely cut them off of the WordPress theme. So no extra database queries, and services like Gtmetrix, Google page speed insights, Pingdom anymore – that give you some scores where needed. Everyone wants to gain a higher grade in there, doesn’t it?

However, you can disable comments for particular post types too. Define types that you need, save changes and check the result.

Whenever you’d like the comments back, click here and save settings.

As I’ve already told, Clearfy is very powerful tool. Check out other posts explaining Clearfy features.

How to disable WordPress comments with a light plugin

Now let me say some words about our small plugin called “Disable Comments for any post types”.

First of all, important thing! Deactivate Clearfy, because duplication of options can cause errors.

Install & activate the Disable Comments for any post types plugin.

Go to Settings > Disable comments and follow the same steps as in Clearfy. You have the following options available: don’t disable, disable all or disable selected comments.

Conclusion

As you can see, disable comments on WordPress is pretty easy.

You can also check our other useful WordPress plugins. Try them – perhaps, you’ll find them very helpful.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please, feel free to leave a comment below. Subscribe to our blog to check out the newest posts about WordPress promotion, performance and optimization.

I wish you to fully enjoy WordPress in general and our plugins in particular. Thanks for reading and have a nice day!