Turning off comments

Please note that I have just upgraded to 2.1 and I am still getting these spam comments. I just want to turn the comment feature off. How?

admin -> Options
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This won’t stop your problem. You’re likely getting trackback spam.
Install Bad Behavior (google for it) along with Akismet or Spam Karma2.
This will stop that junk cold.

Yes in the dashboard under the options tab, then under Discussion there are two options that you can uncheck

• Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
• Allow people to post comments on the article.

This will disable commenting and pinging.
There are a few plugins that would also help ease the strain of spam and still allow commenting. One is Askimet which is included in every wordpress installation. Just go to the plugins page activate it and follow the instructions here. Another great plugin is Bad Behavior

I have unchecked the two options you mention, but I am still getting spam comments. Why is that? Seems odd since I have unchecked these items.

Please re-read samboll’s first post to you. The key is that these are trackbacks, not comments.