Disable Comments
by WPDeveloper
Switches comments off globally or per post type and strips the leftover comment markup and menus.
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What Disable Comments does
Switches comments off globally or per post type and strips the leftover comment markup and menus.
It sits in the maintenance part of a WordPress stack and is sold by WPDeveloper on a free basis. We recommend it in our maintenance guides because it does that one job well without asking you to rebuild the rest of the site around it.
Every plugin adds work to a page request, so treat this as a decision with a cost. Record a speed test before you install it and run the same test afterwards, on the same page, so you know exactly what it charged you.
Real user ratings
Score
4.7/5
Reviews
280
Active installs
1,000,000+
Downloads
35.2M
Latest version
2.9.0
Last updated
2026-09-01
These figures come straight from the public WordPress.org plugin directory API for version 2.9.0, not from us. Check them yourself on the WordPress.org listing. Our own editorial score is 4.7/5.
Where Disable Comments ranks elsewhere
Disable Comments does not appear in the published "best of" lists we track from WPBeginner, TechRadar, Kinsta, Themeisle and similar sites. That is not a mark against it - those roundups are short and skew towards the biggest names.
What changed in the latest version
- New Feature: Conditional rules - disable or re-enable comments by taxonomy term, page template, or post age, instead of by post type alone
- New Feature: Dry-run preview for Delete Comments - see which comments a delete will remove before running it, and download them as CSV first
- New Feature: Blocked-attempt counter - see how many comment, trackback and REST attempts the plugin has turned away, reported in Site Health
- New Feature: Export and import settings as JSON, with a diff preview before anything is written
- New Feature: WooCommerce product reviews are now a first-class setting, separate from ordinary comments, including closing reviews while other product comments stay open
- New Feature: Theme conflict scanner - diagnoses a theme that still renders a comment form after comments are disabled
- New Feature: Abilities API write support (WordPress 6.9+) - AI assistants and MCP clients can change comment settings and delete comments, gated on the same capabilities as the admin screens
- New Feature: The advanced tools now have a Settings tab of their own, leaving the first screen to the core choice of where comments are off
- New Feature: WordPress Abilities API support (WordPress 6.9+) - AI assistants, the command palette and MCP clients can now ask the site where comments are disabled, via the read-only disable-comments/get-status ability
- Fixed: Page caches are now purged when settings are saved or comments are deleted - previously a cached page kept serving the comment form after comments were disabled
- Compatible with WordPress 7.0
- Improvement: General improvements
Release notes are the developer's own words, published on WordPress.org. Read the full changelog
Pros and cons
- Removes an entire spam surface in one click
- Free with no licence to renew
- Actively maintained and used on production sites we test
- Deleting existing comments is permanent
- Support is community-led rather than guaranteed
How to use it
- 1Install on a staging copy first if the site takes money.
- 2Work through the setup wizard and connect any external accounts it needs.
- 3Configure the one feature you installed it for, and leave the rest off.
- 4Test the result as a logged-out visitor on both mobile and desktop.
- 5Re-run our speed test to confirm the plugin has not cost you load time.
How it compares
Other maintenance plugins we recommend, with their rating and pricing model.
| Plugin | Our rating | WordPress.org | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disable Comments | 4.7 | 4.7 (280) | Free | Removes an entire spam surface in one click |
| Simple History | 4.9 | 4.9 (489) | Free | Answers who broke the site, with a timestamp |
| WP Crontrol | 4.5 | 4.5 (165) | Free | Finds runaway cron jobs that quietly eat CPU |
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