Disable Comments for WordPress

This plugin allows administrators to globally disable comments on any post type (posts, pages, attachments, etc.) so that these settings cannot be overridden for individual posts. It also removes all comment-related fields from edit and quick-edit screens. Additionally, comment-related items can be removed from the Dashboard, the Admin Menu and the Admin Bar.

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.

This plugin requires PHP version 5 or greater.

If you have any problems or suggestions, you can email me. I can’t fix it if I don’t know it’s broken!

Frequently Asked Questions

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

  With most newer themes (including Wordpress’ bundled themes), this message will not appear when you use this plugin, because the plugin notifies them that comments are not just disabled, but unsupported.

  If your theme still displays the message, 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!

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

  This is probably because your theme isn’t using the correct procedure to check whether comments are open or closed on posts. To find out whether this is the case, try switching to the latest default theme (Twenty Eleven) and see whether it works. If it does, then the issue is with your theme, and there is not much I can do about it.

  You may like to contact your theme author and tell them that they should be using the comments_open() function in their theme’s comments.php file to check whether comments are open, instead of querying the post’s comment status directly.

• What happens to the comment status of my posts if I disable the plugin?

  The plugin does not modify the original comment status of your posts, so they will revert to whatever status they had before you activated the plugin. Posts that were created after activating the plugin will revert to the default comment status (set in Settings -> Discussion -> Default article settings) at the time the post was created.

  This means that the plugin can be used to temporarily disable comments across your site without making permanent changes to individual posts.