Disable Comments for Page Option

Unchecking the Comments checkbox in Screen Options in Pages or while editing an individual page does NOT remove comments.

Yes it does – assuming you’re using a decent theme. Why not simply edit page.php and remove the comment codes from there? Or create a no-comments custom page template?

I am talking about Twenty Ten theme. It’s supposed to be decent, isn’t it, being WordPress official default theme? And yet for some reason the only way to disable comments on a page is through Quick Edit.

I agree with your suggestions, Diva, they are great, but that wasn’t the point of my post. Yes, I can totally recode the entire WordPress if I want to, but what I’m saying is, I shouldn’t have to. I just wish the next version would eliminate the bug, that’s all.

Thank you for your suggestions!

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov

You can disable comments on a per-page basis. On Edit Page, click Screen Options and ensure that the Discussion box is checked.

Thank you very much Esmi, but alas, what you’re suggesting is exactly what doesn’t work. That is why I wrote my post here in the first place.

Do you think I would write this: “Unchecking the Comments checkbox in Screen Options in Pages or while editing an individual page does NOT remove comments.” if I actually could disable comments the way you describe?

That’s the whole point, it doesn’t work! Try it.

Also, please see the comment made by Larry Leveen near the bottom of this page.

In the most current version of WordPress, in Twenty Ten theme, the only way to disable comments for a page is through Quick Edit – because this option does NOT work in the normal edit – and I think this issue needs to be fixed in the next WordPress update. Perhaps, it should be called Twenty Eleven theme.

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov

Dimitri is right – for me, at least. Unchecking the Comments checkbox doesn’t work. In fact it was unchecked anyway when I looked. So I tried various combinations of checked and unchecked for ‘Discussion’ and ‘Comments’, but nothing worked. And I’m pretty sure I saved my changes each time. I certainly did for both options ‘Off’.

??

I’ve been searching for an answer to this for hours. So in that respect I’m grateful to Dimitri for pointing out that it can be done from Quick Edit.

Cheers

Peredur

This works fine for me on TwentyTen without any changes to anything. I tested turning comments on and off via the edit page feature and it works exactly right.

Pages don’t have comments.

So ?? Time to test your plugins!

No plugins have been activated on my site so far, Ipstenu

And it’s not the only WordPress site where I experienced that issue. It’s been a problem ever since they moved the comments option inside the sliding screen options tab.

Ok, so turning off comments via the normal Edit works for some people and doesn’t work for others. Isn’t it time the issue is investigated and addressed?

I mean, I probably should be just happy that I found the “Quick Edit” solution and relax, but if WordPress prides itself on being such an advanced framework, maybe fixing a bug would further improve its reputation among the business site owners.

Just an idea.

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov

P.S. Now that I think about it, it would be nice to have a button or checkbox that would remove “Comments are closed” string, too, without digging into PHP.

It’s been a problem ever since they moved the comments option inside the sliding screen options tab.

*blink* The what now? That should have had NO bearing on this at all. Also, it’s ALWAYS been inside the screen options, it just used to be turned on by default and now isn’t (unless you’d previously customized your page edit layout).

To test, I changed mine to HIDE “Discussion” (which is the option that controls if you can see this or not). Made a new page. Comments are off. Un-hide Discussion. Comments remain off. Toggled on and off. No problems.

If it works for some people and not others, then this is gonna be hell to reproduce and debug. Toss it up as a bug report on trac, but I suspect it’ll be punted as ‘works for me’.

(Dissing WP because a bug FEW people are seeing wasn’t fix is being a bit petty, by the way. If this was a huge bug seen by lots of people, it would be addressed. The odds are that this has to do with something on your server/browser more than JUST WordPress, and those are hellish to track down :/ Your personal help may be needed to create the error and show what’s happening, so this will be a lot of work to debug, and you’ll need to be involved.)

Nobody is “dissing” WordPress, dear Ipstenu. In fact, somebody (me) is trying to help WordPress to get even better than it is, and help others to find solutions to problems they may have encountered. That’s what this forum is for, isn’t it?

And of course, if further help is needed, I would be eager to help. The WordPress team knows how to get in touch with me.

I can see that you’re passionate about WordPress, and that’s a good thing. Those “few” people you are mentioning are still WordPress users, and user experience is what WordPress is supposed to be all about, correct? So any improvement, even a minor one, should be welcome.

If you search Internet for “disable comments wordpress”, you’ll have a very clear idea of just how many people have a problem with it. Which means, the way it is now, is not intuitive, and needs improvement.

One way or another, I think I made my point and I’m now leaving this discussion.

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov

I can’t help feeling that I must be missing something here.

What if I do a virgin install of WP into another folder on my development box and then go through things step-by-step in response to suggestions?

There’s got to be a logical reason why the problem arises for some people but is absent for others.

Any takers?

Cheers

PAE

(edited to add: peredur – I DID make a fresh install of WP. No issues.)

if WordPress prides itself on being such an advanced framework, maybe fixing a bug would further improve its reputation among the business site owners.

That quote is … well it struck me as sounding whiny and nitpicky and petty. It may not have been meant as such, and if so, I apologize. It just looks like you’re saying WordPress prides itself on something it’s not achieving which … it is.

Those “few” people you are mentioning are still WordPress users, and user experience is what WordPress is supposed to be all about, correct?

Oh I agree, but my point stems more from over a decade of support work, and it’s this: If a SMALL percentage of your user base has a weird problem you cannot reproduce, the likelihood is they did something really way out there without knowing it, and you will be in hell trying to solve it. And many times you will NOT be able to fix it because of how arcane the problem is.

I did a quick skim of “disable comments wordpress” and I don’t see your specific problem. I see what I expect to see. How do I turn off comments? How can I close comments on all my posts? How do I edit my theme to not say ‘comments are closed’? etc etc.

Unchecking the Comments checkbox in Screen Options in Pages or while editing an individual page does NOT remove comments.

THAT issue I don’t see. I can’t reproduce it on a fresh, clean, install of WordPress (yes, I made one to test this).

“Unchecking the Comments checkbox in Screen Options…” doesn’t turn on/off comments. That just turns on if you SEE the discussion field in your page editor. Looks like this: Page editor ‘Discussion Widget’

Wait a minute!

Now we’re getting somewhere!

I know I pledged to leave the discussion for good, but Ipstenu wrote something important that drew my attention.

So: the Discussion checkbox in screen options turns the Discussion Widget in the page editor on and off. That’s why there is no way to edit comments in the normal Edit! Because the Discussion checkbox is unchecked by default!

When the Discussion checkbox in the sliding panel is checked, the discussion widget appears at the lower part of the page editor and provides the option to disable the comments!

Well, that makes sense. Whew!

What doesn’t make sense though is having WordPress installation come with the Discussion checkbox un-checked by default.

Think of it: how in the world can a normal user figure out that there is a discussion widget that supposed to be there but isn’t, if that widget is disabled by default and the checkbox that can enable it is hidden in a sliding panel that’s virtually invisible unless you click a tiny tab that is also kinda hard to find? And how are people supposed to deduce intuitively this logical progression: click on the camouflaged gray on gray “Screen Options” tab to open the hidden sliding panel, and check the Discussion checkbox to enable the hidden Discussion widget, and then uncheck the Comments checkbox in the discussion widget to hide the comments?

It’s just not intuitive. I suggest that in one of the future versions of WordPress it should be re-done in a way that it’s immediately obvious, because more and more people are using WordPress as a non-blogging platform, and they all need to turn off comments easily, without spending ours searching Internet discussion forums for the answer. Ditto “Comments are closed” thing.

The best way to do it, is to make sure that the Discussion checkbox is checked by default, the way it used to be in the older versions.

I just installed the new WordPress, simply to double-check, and guess what? The Discussion widget is indeed disabled by default.

I suspect maybe it’s not the case with some of the installations, even though I have no idea how that can be. It seems that maybe some people get the new WordPress with Discussion checkbox checked, and others get it with the Discussion checkbox unchecked. Those who get it unchecked, can’t find it because it requires too many steps, and all the steps are hidden somewhere.

Or maybe it’s just that some people who have years of WordPress development and support experience behind their belt (like our mutual friend Ipstenu) know about the secret, “easter egg” style Discussion widget hidden inside another “easter egg” hidden panel, and that explains why they can’t reproduce the issues. They just open and click the Discussion checkbox without giving it a second thought. Well, I think it’s best if a user can do it without having those years of experience.

THAT is the issue that I think should be corrected.

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov

What doesn’t make sense though is having WordPress installation come with the Discussion checkbox un-checked by default.

[…]

THAT is the issue that I think should be corrected.

Now that I understand what you were (rightly!) losing your mind over, on THAT we both can agree ??

I’d add in a way to turn comments off JUST for pages would be nice too, but that’s really something you can do in a theme. If you don’t want comments on pages, you just remove the ‘comment’ section from the page.php file.

Glad we came to an actionable conclusion about this, Ipstenu.

Until you posted that link to the Discussion widget image, there was no way for me to know that the Discussion widget even existed in WordPress 3. I really thought that it has been deprecated or left out for some weird reason, because all my WordPress 3 installations came “as if without it”.

Now I understand what’s going on and I hope this thread helps other (probably few ?? people like me who were struggling with the same issue and felt forced to create custom page templates to remove comments (not that there’s anything wrong with adding custom page templates).

It’s a minor thing, but fixing it would make the overall WordPress experience so much better.

How can this be escalated to reach the people who make decisions about what improvements to include to the next version of WordPress?

Best regards,

Dimitri Vorontzov