If you are a blogger, you may have noticed that WordPress has an option to enable or disable comments on your blog. If it is enabled, then visitors can leave comments below posts. How do you know when to use this feature? When should you turn off the ability for people to comment on your articles? We will discuss this in more detail later but first let’s talk about why disabling comments might be beneficial for some bloggers.
Reasons to Disable Comments on WordPress
Comments increase engagement and allow for a conversation to take place between your blog readers. It can also be good if you want feedback on what you are writing or people who have similar experiences to share their stories with others. There is one downside though – sometimes spammy (unsolicited) advertisements might show up in the comment section which could get annoying quickly. You may not like seeing these types of posts so this would give you an incentive to disable commenting altogether!
The other reason why disabling comments might work better for some bloggers is that there will be less moderation required since no one will be able to leave any new messages. This means that time spent moderating content won’t have to go up and you can spend more time working on improving your blog.
The benefits of having commenting disabled are that it will save you a lot of time since there won’t be any messages left by visitors for moderation purposes, spammy comments should also be reduced or eliminated altogether, the quality of content has been shown to improve when users don’t feel pressured into writing something in order to get likes or feedback from others (think about how nervous we all get when leaving public comments) and if someone leaves an inflammatory comment attacking other people who visit your site, then they likely just aren’t worth engaging with anyways! One thing is clear: disabling comments doesn’t mean completely silencing dissenting voices but instead giving them the opportunity to share their thoughts in other ways.
Finally, let’s talk about when you should consider disabling comments altogether on your blog. You are likely going to want to disable comments if you have more than 100 posts and would like people who visit your site only for specific articles instead of scrolling through a never-ending stream of content; if the purpose is educational (e.g., teaching others how to do something) so that readers can focus on what they need without distraction from other commenters; if it’s an informational or news website where all attention needs to be focused solely on new information and not old stories which may spark conversation among visitors with differing opinions; or finally, some bloggers might decide that there is too much negativity in the comments section and it is negatively affecting their mood.
Why You Might Want to Keep Comments Enabled
There are a lot of reasons to keep comments enabled. First, it allows visitors the opportunity to communicate with you and ask questions about your content that they may not have found answers for elsewhere. It also gives them the chance to share their thoughts on what you’ve written which can be very educational! Finally, if people had some constructive criticism or feedback then this could help make posts even more engaging for others who visit in the future – something we all want!
How to Disable Comments on WordPress?
Keeping all of these things in mind, if you decide to disable comments on WordPress, here is how you can do it:
– Go to “Settings” then click on the “Discussion” tab.
– Uncheck the box next to “Allow people to submit comments on new posts.”
Now no one will be able to post a new message in your blog’s discussion section! Disabling this setting is easy but it might not work for everyone so deciding if it’s right for your specific needs may require some testing and experimentation before making a final decision about disabling comments.
How to Disable Comments for Individual Posts?
You can also disable comments for individual posts by going to that particular post, clicking on the “Discussion” tab, and then unchecking the box next to “Allow Comments.”
This is a more advanced option. It might not work well if you have over 100 posts since visitors may want to comment on old stories instead of just reading them!
Disabling Comments using a Plugin
You can also disable comments using a plugin. How?
– Go to Plugins -> Install Plugins from your WordPress Dashboard, search for the “Disable Comments” plugin, then install and activate the “Disable Comments” plugin.
This will disable comments on your entire WordPress site. As an added bonus, this will also remove the “Comments have been disabled” text from the end of the posts.
Deleting Comments in WordPress
Here is how you can disable existing comments on a post:
– Go to the “Comments” tab.
– Select all of the comments which you want to delete.
– Click on the “Move to Trash” button and click “Apply”.
This will move all of the selected comments to trash. From there, you can click on “Empty Trash” to delete all of the comments.
Alternatives to WordPress Comments
If you want a great alternative to WordPress comments (which also has much better spam detection), then you can use Disqus. Here is how to use Disqus with WordPress:
– Go to Plugins -> Add New, search for “Disqus” then install and activate it as you did with “Disable Comments.”
– In your WordPress Dashboard go to Settings > Discussion tab > Scroll down until you find the option for Disqus. Fill in your site name under Site Name if necessary; otherwise, just click on Update Options at the bottom of that section (this will take a minute or two).
Now when visitors come across one of your posts they’ll be able to comment using their Disqus account! How cool is that? You will also have much better automated moderation compared to any other system which means fewer spam comments being submitted.
Verdict
This post has shown in which cases you want to keep comments enabled and how to disable comments if the need arises. Also, I have shown an alternative to the default WordPress comment system. I really hope that this post has helped you understand the benefits of comments and also how to disable them in case you need to.
I agree with told all above.