Description

Instantly allow or disallow comments from any post type in WordPress (Pages, Posts or Media) to stop the spammers and gain complete control over your full website. WP-CLI Suppprt & Control comments via XML-RPC and REST-API too!

More About Plugin ◼️ Documentation ◼️ Support Forum

Take Global Control Over Your WordPress Site

Override all comments-related settings throughout your website & manage your comments just the way you want.

Disable Comments On Posts, Pages & Media

Choose which posts, pages or media should allow comments from site visitors & configure Disable Comments accordingly

Disallow Comments On Multi-Site Network

Have multiple websites? Get rid of irrelevant comments on the entire network using Disable Comments Plugin

KEY FEATURES OF DISABLE COMMENTS

All “Comments” links are hidden from the Admin Menu and Admin Bar;
All comment-related sections (“Recent Comments”, “Discussion” etc.) are hidden from the WordPress Dashboard;
All comment-related widgets are disabled (so your theme cannot use them);
The “Discussion” settings page is hidden;
All comment RSS/Atom feeds are disabled (and requests for these will be redirected to the parent post);
The X-Pingback HTTP header is removed from all pages;
Outgoing pingbacks are disabled.
[New] Delete comments by type.

Please delete any existing comments on your site before applying this setting, otherwise (depending on your theme) those comments may still be displayed to visitors. You can use the Delete Comments tool to delete any existing comments on your site.

🌟 WHAT’S NEW WITH DISABLE COMMENTS 2.0

AMAZING USER FRIENDLY INTERFACE
Easily configure your comment-related settings with an amazing and attractive app-like user interface.

WP-CLI COMMANDS TO DISABLE COMMENTS
Use WP-CLI control for comment-related settings to disable comments on posts, pages, attachments or everywhere on your website.

GET STARTED WITH QUICK SETUP WIZARD
Use the quick setup wizard after activating the plugin to instantly configure comment-related settings for your WordPress website.

DISABLE COMMENTS ON DOCS
Instantly disable comments on your documentation pages or WordPress knowledge base with a single click.

DELETE CERTAIN COMMENT TYPE(S)
Permanently delete certain comment types from your WordPress website including WooCommerce product reviews as well as generic comments.

DISABLE COMMENTS VIA XML-RPC And REST API
Block any comments made on your WordPress website via XML-RPC specification and REST API.

Important note: Use this plugin if you don’t want comments at all on your site (or on certain post types). Don’t use it if you want to selectively disable comments on individual posts – WordPress lets you do that anyway. If you don’t know how to disable comments on individual posts, there are instructions in the FAQ.

If you come across any bugs or have suggestions, please use the plugin support forum. I can’t fix it if I don’t know it’s broken! Please check the FAQ for common issues.

Want to contribute? Here’s the GitHub development repository.

A must-use version of the plugin is also available.

Advanced Configuration

Some of the plugin’s behaviour can be modified by site administrators and plugin/theme developers through code:

Define DISABLE_COMMENTS_REMOVE_COMMENTS_TEMPLATE and set it to false to prevent the plugin from replacing the theme’s comment template with an empty one.
Define DISABLE_COMMENTS_ALLOW_DISCUSSION_SETTINGS and set it to true to prevent the plugin from hiding the Discussion settings page.

These definitions can be made either in your main wp-config.php or in your theme’s functions.php file.

THIS PLUGIN IS NOW MAINTAINED BY THE TEAM WPDeveloper.

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Visit WPDeveloper to learn more about how to do better in WordPress with Help Tutorial, Tips & Tricks.

Screenshots

Setting Screen for Disable Comments
Delete Comments under Tools menu.

Installation

Modern Way:

Go to the WordPress Dashboard “Add New Plugin” section.
Search For “Disable Comments”.
Install, then Activate it.
The plugin settings can be accessed via the ‘Settings’ menu in the administration area (either your site administration for single-site installs, or your network administration for network installs).

Old Way:

Upload the plugin folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
The plugin settings can be accessed via the ‘Settings’ menu in the administration area (either your site administration for single-site installs, or your network administration for network installs).

FAQ

Nothing happens after I disable comments on all posts – comment forms still appear when I view my posts.

This is because your theme is not checking the comment status of posts in the correct way.

You may like to point your theme’s author to this explanation of what they are doing wrong, and how to fix it.

How can I remove the text that says “comments are closed” at the bottom of articles where comments are disabled?

The plugin tries its very best to hide this (and any other comment-related) messages.

If you still see the message, then it means your theme is overriding this behaviour, and you will have to edit its files manually to remove it. Two common approaches are to either delete or comment out the relevant lines in wp-content/your-theme/comments.php, or to add a declaration to wp-content/your-theme/style.css that hides the message from your visitors. In either case, make you you know what you are doing!

I only want to disable comments on certain posts, not globally. What do I do?

Go to the edit page for the post you want to disable comments on. Scroll down to the “Discussion” box, where you will find the comment options for that post. If you don’t see a “Discussion” box, then click on “Screen Options” at the top of your screen, and make sure the “Discussion” checkbox is checked.

You can also bulk-edit the comment status of multiple posts from the posts screen.

I want to delete comments from my database. What do I do?

Go to the tools page for the Disable Comments plugin and utlize the Delete Comments tool to delete all comments or according to the specified post types from your database.

Reviews

lechon December 10, 2020

This use to be a simple an efficient little plugin that worked just great. I used it for years with no problems. Now it's just a data harvesting tool of everything you have on your site. You could have just let this plugin alone the way it was and create a "Pro-Crap" version where you can make some money selling the ridiculous unnecessary features you now offer, while leaving the free version untouched without any data harvesting and no changes. Please don't even try to defend the fact that you will be not collecting data from sites here. You are going to sound like the expensive hotel bills with the fine print below "For your convenience an 18% hospitality charge has been added to your total bill" For my convenience you are charging me 18% more? Gee thanks! In this case you: "For your convenience we will be collecting all the data on your site to make this plugin work better". You said that there is an option out. The problem is that when you update the plugin to the new version you are already "opted in". You have to manually opt out, by then you probably have already collected the information you needed. Looking at your source code sounds like you can reverse it anytime even after opting out. Thank goodness I found a function.php script that will do exactly what this plugin used to do, "Disable all comments" without the bloated version you have implemented. I have deleted your plugin from all my sites.

thomasfw December 9, 2020

Another plugin ruined...

ooksanen December 7, 2020

Still does what it says (hence 2 stars instead of 1), but as noted by others, this used to be a clean, simple, pretty much set and forget plugin, but version 2.0 comes with a flashy (read: tacky) UI completely different from WP UI conventions, notifications etc. that you didn't have to deal with in earlier versions. Just waiting for a completely unnecessary top level menu with colorful icon and ads to appear... To each their own, but this one isn't for me anymore. Fortunately the plugin is still on GitHub and I've forked my own branch without all the recent changes UI changes and such and will migrate my clients' sites to my own fork asap so they don't have to deal with admin area bloat.

Manuel Schmalstieg December 7, 2020

Once upon a time, "Disable Comments" was a popular trustworthy plugin that was "simple and clean and just doing what it needed to do". After the recent acquisition by WPDeveloper, the plugin breaks with those good practices: - Asks users to agree to provide "non-sensitive data and usage information". It's annoying and unasked for. - Adds a custom UI that completely breaks with WordPress UI conventions (different typeface, different colors, different UI language, checkbox styles, button styles...). BUT WHY? 🤷‍♂️ This was a simple functionality plugin, as per the Unix philosophy, that provided a service to the community. That's what I liked about it. Thanks to Samir Shah for having maintained it for many years. I'm disappointed to see WPDeveloper turn this into yet another marketing vehicle. Sorry for the 1-star review, but breaking with WordPress UI standards is a no-go.

Stormcrow85 December 2, 2020

Helped me disable comments and feeds on sites that do not require blog functionality

cbirdsong December 1, 2020

Used to just do the job and stay out of the way, but now it puts up a naggy banner asking for tracking permission.

Read all 248 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Disable Comments – Remove Comments & Protect From Spam” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

“Disable Comments – Remove Comments & Protect From Spam” has been translated into 35 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Disable Comments – Remove Comments & Protect From Spam” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

The format is based on Keep a Changelog
and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.
This will be maiintained from August 19, 2020 – @asif2bd

[2.0.2] – 2020-12-01

Removed: Quick Setup Wizard
Improved: Redirection settings page after activation.
Fixed: Text-Domain Issue.

[2.0.1] – 2020-11-28

Bug Fix: Settings page URL issue fixed from plugins page.
Improvement: Quick Setup Wizard instructions.

[2.0.0] – 2020-11-28

Improved UI for Settings page
New feature: Manage Disable Comments settings with WP-CLI
New feature: Quick Setup Wizard
New feature: Disable Comments via REST-API
New feature: Disable Comments via XML-RPC

[1.11.0] – 2020-08-22

Introducing Delete Comment by Type – Contribution by garretthyder
PHP 7.4 Tested
WordPress 5.5 Compatible Tested

[1.10.3] – 2020-07-29

Minor fix – changelog backported.

1.10.0

Disable “recent comments” Gutenberg block.

1.9.0

Fix compatibility with WordPress 5.0 and above.
Remove deprecated “persistent mode” feature.

1.8.0

Added DISABLE_COMMENTS_ALLOW_DISCUSSION_SETTINGS configuration.

1.7.1

Small enhancements to hiding comment-related functionality in the admin.

1.7

Dropped logic to try and hide the comments link from the Meta widget. Administrators should manually add styling to hide this link, or replace the Meta widget with an alternative.
Removed the disable_comments_allow_persistent_mode filter. Define DISABLE_COMMENTS_ALLOW_PERSISTENT_MODE instead.

1.6

Added a tool for deleting comments in bulk.

1.5.2

Fix Javascript errors when the Meta widget is enabled.
Hide comments link from the Welcome panel.

1.5.1

Hide existing comments if there are any.
Filter the comments link in the Meta widget if it is enabled.

1.5

Remove the comments feed link from the head in WP 4.4 and higher.

1.4.2

Delay loading of translation text domain until all plugins are loaded. This allows plugins to modify translations.

1.4

Hide the troublesome “persistent mode” option for all sites where it is not in use. This option will be removed in a future release.

1.3.2

Compatibility updates and code refactoring for WordPress 4.3
Adding a few new translations

1.3.1

Change the behaviour for comment feed requests. This removes a potential security issue.

1.3

Move persistent mode filter into a define.
Add an advanced option to show the theme’s comment template even when comments are disabled.

1.2

Allow network administrators to disable comments on custom post types across the whole network.

1.1.1

Fix PHP warning when active_sitewide_plugins option doesn’t contain expected data type.

1.1

Attempt to hide the comments template (“Comments are closed”) whenever comments are disabled.

1.0.4

Fix CSRF vulnerability in the admin. Thanks to dxw for responsible disclosure.

1.0.3

Compatibility fix for WordPress 3.8

1.0.2

Disable comment-reply script for themes that don’t check comment status properly.
Add French translation

1.0.1

Fix issue with settings persistence in single-site installations.

1.0

Prevent theme comments template from being displayed when comments are disabled everywhere.
Prevent direct access to comment admin pages when comments are disabled everywhere.

0.9.2

Make persistent mode option filter available all the time.
Fix redirection for feed requests
Fix admin bar filtering in WP 3.6

0.9.1

Short life in the wild.

0.9

Added gettext support and German translation.
Added links to GitHub development repo.
Allow network administrators to prevent the use of persistent mode.

0.8

Remove X-Pingback header when comments are completely disabled.
Disable comment feeds when comment are completely disabled.
Simplified settings page.

0.7

Now supports Network Activation – disable comments on your entire multi-site network.
Simplified settings page.

0.6

Add “persistent mode” to deal with themes that don’t use filterable comment status checking.

0.5

Allow temporary disabling of comments site-wide by ensuring that original comment statuses are not overwritten when a post is edited.

0.4

Added the option to disable the Recent Comments template widget.
Bugfix: don’t show admin messages to users who don’t can’t do anything about them.

0.3.5

Bugfix: Other admin menu items could inadvertently be hidden when ‘Remove the “Comments” link from the Admin Menu’ was selected.

0.3.4

Bugfix: A typo on the settings page meant that the submit button went missing on some browsers. Thanks to Wojtek for reporting this.

0.3.3

Bugfix: Custom post types which don’t support comments shouldn’t appear on the settings page
Add warning notice to Discussion settings when comments are disabled

0.3.2

Bugfix: Some dashboard items were incorrectly hidden in multisite

0.3.1

Compatibility fix for WordPress 3.3

0.3

Added the ability to remove links to comment admin pages from the Dashboard, Admin Bar and Admin Menu

0.2.1

Usability improvements to help first-time users configure the plugin.

0.2

Bugfix: Make sure pingbacks are also prevented when comments are disabled.

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