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Completely Disable Comments

This code snippet provides a way to completely disable comments on a WordPress website. This may be useful for sites where user interaction is not a requirement or where comments have become a target for spam.

The provided script does several things:

  1. It redirects users trying to access the comments page in the WordPress admin area back to the main dashboard.
  2. It removes the recent comments metabox from the dashboard.
  3. It loops through all registered post types and removes support for comments and trackbacks.
  4. It filters the comments_open and pings_open checks to always return false, effectively closing comments on the front end of the site.
  5. It filters the comments_array to always return an empty array, hiding existing comments.
  6. It removes the comments menu page from the WordPress admin area.
  7. It removes the comments link from the admin bar.

Add this code to your theme’s functions.php file to disable comments on your WordPress site. Note that this should be tested on a staging or local version of your site before implementing it on a live website.

PHP
add_action('admin_init', function () {
    // Redirect any user trying to access comments page
    global $pagenow;
    
    if ($pagenow === 'edit-comments.php') {
        wp_safe_redirect(admin_url());
        exit;
    }
    // Remove comments metabox from dashboard
    remove_meta_box('dashboard_recent_comments', 'dashboard', 'normal');
    // Disable support for comments and trackbacks in post types
    foreach (get_post_types() as $post_type) {
        if (post_type_supports($post_type, 'comments')) {
            remove_post_type_support($post_type, 'comments');
            remove_post_type_support($post_type, 'trackbacks');
        }
    }
});
// Close comments on the front-end
add_filter('comments_open', '__return_false', 20, 2);
add_filter('pings_open', '__return_false', 20, 2);
// Hide existing comments
add_filter('comments_array', '__return_empty_array', 10, 2);
// Remove comments page in menu
add_action('admin_menu', function () {
    remove_menu_page('edit-comments.php');
});
// Remove comments links from admin bar
add_action('admin_bar_menu', function () {
    remove_action('admin_bar_menu', 'wp_admin_bar_comments_menu', 60);
}, 0);