WordPress – How to Disable Post Comments in Bulk (Keyword, Category, etc.)

In this WordPress tutorial, we will show you how to disable post comments in bulk. Unlike WordPress bulk actions or disabling comments for new posts from WordPress global settings, our method will show you how to save time by filtering your posts and disabling/enabling comments in a spreadsheet within WordPress.

Some reasons why you might want to disable comments on your WordPress posts:

1. To reduce spam coming from bots swarming the internet spreading fraudulent links.
2. To prevent people from adding their comments on posts that might be “controversial” to the audience
3. To reduce server usage by eliminating interactions from your website visitors

These and other situations may lead you to need to disable comments on your WordPress posts. And we’re going to show you how to use a spreadsheet within WordPress to manage your posts.

Install WP Sheet Editor

The WP Sheet Editor plugin allows you to view and manage posts, pages and custom post types in a spreadsheet.

You can use any field as a search filter, bulk edit any field, export and import posts, pages and custom post types easily.

The best way to disable WordPress post comments in bulk

WP Sheet Editor provides the best way to disable comments on your WordPress posts.

Let’s see, first, how to disable post comments using the spreadsheet, and then we will see how to disable post comments by keyword, category, tag, date, status, etc.

a) Disable post comments individually in the spreadsheet

If you want to disable comments for a few posts individually, you need to go to the Comments column in the spreadsheet, and disable the checkbox.

• Checkbox active = Comments enabled
• Checkbox inactive = Comments disabled

Once you’re done, click on Save to apply the changes.

b) Disable post comments in bulk (keyword, author, category, tag, status)

WP Sheet Editor allows you to disable comments on your WordPress posts by category, keyword, status, tag, or using any other field as search criteria.

You need to start by opening Search tool.

Now you can filter the posts for which you’ll disable the comments.

Using the search filters, you could do any of these things:

• Disable post comments by keyword in post title
• Disable post comments for posts with a specific author
• Disable post comments for an entire category or all posts containing a specific tag
• And much more!

In this example, we will run an advanced search where our posts must contain the keyword “tips” in the title and belong in the “productivity” category.

Once we have selected the search terms, we need to click on Run search.

Once you run the search, you’ll see the posts matching the search terms displayed on the spreadsheet. You’ll see the active search filters above the spreadsheet.

Now you need to open the Bulk Edit tool in order to bulk disallow WordPress post comments.

Once you’re on the Bulk Edit tool, you need to select the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (including non-visible rows)
• What field do you want to edit: Comments
• Select the type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Disable this checkbox.
• Click on Execute now

As you can see in the screenshot below, we have disabled or disallowed the comments from our selected posts.

The normal (UNPRODUCTIVE) way to disable post comments on WordPress

There are at least three ways to disable post comments on WordPress.

1) Disable posts from individual posts

Disadvantage:

• It takes too many hours to disable the comments of your posts one by one.

You need to open a specific post and go to the Discussion section on the post editor.

Once there, you need to disable the Allow comments checkbox and Update the post.

2) Disable posts using bulk actions

Disadvantages:

1. WordPress bulk actions do not allow you to filter products by keyword, category, tag, post status, date (or date range), using custom fields.
2. If you want to edit hundreds or thousands of posts, it will surely overload your server because WordPress will not delete your content in batches.

Select the posts you want to edit, and select the Edit bulk action.

Then change Comments status to Do not allow and click on Update.

3) Disable comments on all new posts

Disadvantage:

• You will disable comments on new posts only.

Go to Settings > Discussion and disable the Allow people to submit comments on new posts checkbox.

Once done, save the changes.

As we have shown you in this tutorial, you can disable comments in your WordPress posts massively, using the WP Sheet Editor plugin.

You don’t need to edit the status of comments in your posts one by one, nor do you need to resort to the limited WordPress bulk actions.

You can use any field as search criteria and disallow post comments in bulk with a few clicks.