How to Turn Off Comments in WordPress 4.6.1

Depending upon the nature of the WordPress website that you are creating, you may not want or need to allow comments on the site. WordPress is set up to allow comments at first, however, so you are going to need to change some settings to stop them from coming through.

While many comments can add value to an article, the unfortunate truth of the situation is that most comments are spam. Handling all of the comments can require a lot of time, or it might require you to install a plugin. But you can elect to turn off comments in WordPress by following the steps below.

Step 1: Hover over Settings, then click Discussion.

Step 2: Change the settings so that they look like the picture below. You can then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save changes button.

For reference, I like to disable comments on my WordPress sites by changing the following settings:

• Uncheck the Allow people to post comments on new articles option.
• Check the Users must be registered and logged into to comment option.
• Check the Automatically close comments on articles older than x days option, then change the x value to 1.
• Check the box to the left of Comment must be manually approved.
• Check the box to the left of Comment author must have a previously approved comment.
• Change the value in the Hold a comment in the queue if it contains x or more links, then change the x value to 1.

This combination of comments is probably overkill in making sure that no comments sneak onto your site, but it gets the job done.