Under your services page there is a box that says “Leave a Reply”. Nobody has ever left a genuine reply. The only thing it collects is spam about crypto and cheap watches, and a customer once asked why your plumbing business has a comment section at all. You want it gone, everywhere, for good.
To disable comments in WordPress properly you need to deal with more than one setting, because the obvious one only affects content you have not written yet. Comments can live in four places on a typical site, and it is worth closing them in a sensible order. If you would rather flip one switch, there is a plugin route too, and every step can be reversed.
What it takes to disable comments in WordPress fully
Comments in WordPress are switched on or off per item, not once for the whole site. That is why the job has four parts:
- New content: posts and pages you publish from now on.
- Existing content: every post and page already published, each of which kept the setting it was created with.
- Media attachments: on some sites, every uploaded image has its own page, which can have its own comment form.
- The leftovers: old comments still on display, the comment area in your theme’s templates, and the Comments menu in the dashboard.
Before you start, take a quick backup if you plan to delete old comments, and check whether you sell through WooCommerce. Product reviews in WooCommerce use the comment system, so a blanket switch-off can remove reviews too. More on that below.
Step 1: turn off comments for new posts
- Go to Settings → Discussion.
- Under Default post settings, untick Allow people to submit comments on new posts.
- Untick Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts as well. Pingbacks are automated notices from other blogs and are mostly spam today.
- Press Save Changes.
The note under those boxes says it plainly: changes there apply only to new posts, and individual posts can override them. Everything already published keeps its comment form, which is the part most people miss.
On the same screen, Automatically close comments on old posts closes comments on posts once they pass a number of days you choose. It is a useful safety net for blog posts, but by default it applies to posts rather than pages, so it is not a complete answer on its own.
Step 2: close comments on everything already published
WordPress’s bulk editor can change the comment setting on many items at once.
- Go to Posts → All Posts.
- If you have more posts than fit on one screen, raise the number shown per page using the Screen Options tab at the top right. Our post on the Screen Options tab shows where that is.
- Tick the checkbox at the top of the list to select every post on the page.
- In the Bulk actions dropdown, choose Edit and press Apply.
- In the bulk edit panel, set Comments to Do not allow, and Pings to Do not allow.
- Press Update.
- Repeat for any further pages of the list, then do the same under Pages → All Pages. Pages have no Pings option, so only the Comments field appears there.
Bulk edit only changes the fields you set, so titles, content and other settings stay untouched.
For a single post or page, open it in the editor and look in the settings sidebar for the discussion or comments option, which lets you open or close comments for that item alone. On a classic editor screen, the Discussion box below the content does the same, though you may need to switch it on from Screen Options first.
Step 3: check media attachment pages
Older WordPress sites often give every uploaded image or PDF its own attachment page, a thin page that can show a comment form. Spam bots like these pages because nobody looks at them. Recent versions of WordPress turn attachment pages off on new installations, sending visitors to the file itself instead, but a site that has been running for years may still have them.
To check, open your Media Library, select an image and look at the link it offers. If it opens a page on your site rather than the image file on its own, attachment pages are active. SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math have options to redirect attachment pages to the file or to the post they belong to, which removes the comment form along with the thin page. Look in the plugin’s settings for media or attachments rather than guessing a label.
Step 4: clear up old comments and the theme’s comment area
Old comments still showing
Closing comments stops new ones. In most themes, comments that were already approved stay visible, often with a “Comments are closed” line underneath. To remove them, go to Comments, select them, and choose Move to Trash from Bulk actions. Trashed comments are deleted permanently after 30 days by default, so you have a window to change your mind. If any are worth keeping as testimonials, copy them out first, with the person’s permission before reusing them.
The comment area in templates
On block themes, the single post and page templates usually include a Comments block. With comments closed it may still print a heading or a “closed” message. Open the template under Appearance → Editor and remove the block if you do not want anything shown; our guide to editing Site Editor templates safely explains how to undo it if needed. On classic themes, some offer a theme option to hide the comment area; others simply stop showing it once comments are closed. Page builder templates may contain their own comments widget, removed in the builder.
Spam already in the queue
If there is a backlog of spam waiting, empty the Spam and Pending lists in bulk. The existing post on dealing with WordPress comment spam covers spam in more depth, including what to do if you decide to keep comments after all. Large spam backlogs can also leave clutter in the database, which our post on database optimisation covers.
The plugin route: turn off comments with one setting
If the steps above feel like a lot, or you have many content types, a plugin can do it in one place. Disable Comments is a long-standing free plugin built for this: it can switch comments off everywhere or only for chosen content types, and hides the comment-related menus and widgets in the dashboard. Read its settings screen carefully, because it also offers tools that delete comments, which cannot be undone.
Two cautions with any plugin approach:
- Deactivating the plugin brings comments back on content that still has them open in its own settings. Doing steps 1 and 2 as well means the site stays closed even if the plugin goes.
- WooCommerce reviews run on the comment system. If you sell online and want reviews, leave products out of the switch-off. The same applies to bulk editing products.
Turning comments back on later
Nothing here is permanent apart from deleting comments. To reopen comments, tick the Discussion setting again for new posts, and use bulk edit with Allow on the posts where you want discussion. If you used a plugin, untick the content types in its settings. Restore any trashed comments within the 30-day window if you want them back.
Comments are just one of the dashboard areas covered in our guide to what each admin menu does, and our WordPress help guide gathers the other housekeeping settings in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Will WordPress keep emailing me about comments after I close them?
Once comments are closed everywhere, no new ones arrive, so the new-comment and moderation emails stop by themselves. If they keep coming, something is still open, usually an old attachment page or a content type you missed. The email choices themselves sit under Settings, Discussion, in the Email me whenever section.
Do I lose the comments I already have?
No. Closing comments only stops new ones, so existing approved comments usually stay visible on the page. They disappear only if you trash or delete them from the Comments screen. Trashed comments can be restored for 30 days by default before WordPress removes them permanently, so check before emptying the trash.
Will this stop comment spam completely?
It stops spam arriving through comments on any item you have closed, because WordPress rejects new comments there. Spam that keeps coming usually means something is still open, often old attachment pages or a content type you missed. Spam through contact forms is a separate system and needs its own protection.
Can I keep comments on blog posts but remove them from pages?
Yes. Use bulk edit on Pages only and set Comments to Do not allow, leaving posts as they are. Remember that new pages follow the default in the Discussion settings, so either close comments on each new page as you create it, or use a plugin that switches comments off for pages as a content type.
On an older site with custom post types, a builder and a shop, finding the last open comment form can take some digging. If you would rather not do that digging yourself, it is a reasonable thing to ask of our WordPress support service.
Next in this series: WordPress Screen Options: Find Hidden Boxes and Columns
