Enable or Disable Comments

Comments allow your website’s visitors to have a discussion with you and each other. You can turn comments on or off by following the steps in this guide.

To turn commenting on or off across your website’s posts, follow these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings → Discussion.
3. Locate the “Default Article Settings” section (or, “Default post settings” if using WP-Admin).
4. Toggle the option “Allow people to post comments on new articles” on (to enable comments) or off (to disable comments).

This will enable comments for all future posts you publish. If you previously published posts while comments were turned off, and now wish to enable comments on those posts, you can activate comments on specific posts by following the steps in the next section.

You can require visitors to log in to comment, or you can allow anonymous comments. You can choose which fields are required and if you want to approve comments before making them public. See the Discussion Settings guide to learn more about all the available settings to control your website’s comments.

To enable or disable comments on a specific post (or page) you’ve already published, follow these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Posts or Pages.
3. Click on the title of the post or page you want to enable or disable comments on.
4. Open the post/page settings in the sidebar on the right.

5. Click on the Discussion section of the page/post settings.
6. Select “Open” to enable comments or “Closed” to disable comments:

7. Tick or untick the box for pingbacks, as desired.
8. Click the “Update” button to save your changes.

If you want to enable or disable comments for a large group of posts or pages, you can do so in classic view with these directions for Bulk Editing.

To view, reply to, delete, and manage spam comments, visit our guide to Manage Your Site’s Comments.