How to Disable Comments on WordPress Globally or Per Post

There are certain instances where you may not want comments on your site, whether it be too much spam or you have no use for them. Here is how you can disable WordPress comments site-wide or for a single post.

If you don’t have many posts, you can log into WordPress, bulk select posts, then click disable comments. This will disable all of the existing comments.

First, Disable Comments by Default

1. Click on Settings – Discussion
2. On the Discussion Settings page, uncheck the option, “Allow people to submit comments on new posts”

Now any new posts will have comments automatically disabled. Don’t worry, it’s semi-permanent: You can always change the status on a per-post basis.

Disable WordPress Comments with phpMyAdmin with MySQL

Click the SQL tab in phpMyAdmin, and copy/paste the next MySQL statement in it:

UPDATE `wp_posts`
  SET `comment_status` = "closed"
  WHERE `comment_status` = "open";

Now all of your comments will be disabled!

Disable Comments Per Post

1. Find the post you want to remove comments from and click edit form the WordPress menu or front-end when logged in.
2. If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, you should find “discussion” settings in the right hand sidebar. Click on the arrow to reveal the discussion settings.
3. Uncheck “Allow Comments” and you’ll be all set.