Removing comments from a theme

Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 6:04 am

Toady will be for those that want to use WordPress as a CMS system but not use it as a blog so they want to remove all the comment calls out of the theme.

Todays question:

Everyone has their own use for wordpress, many of us arent really using it for a blog rather a easy simple CMS, try understanding joomla! and youâ€™ll understand why some use wordpress for CMS, anyway the comments are 100% unneeded on my site, I have found that its most likely listed in 3 pages, wp-content/themes/ common.php page.php and single.php havent got a working solution yet, but getting closer

Part of the problem with doing this is that each theme has the calls to add comments in a slightly different place. The calls are similar and you will need to look at the theme code closely to find all of the calls.

The three pages that need to be edited are usually single post, main index and the page and on most themes they will be called single.php, index.php and page.php but like all things that may be slightly different on your theme.

Before I start you should always have a backup copy of your theme before you start editing it. This way you if you make a mistake or have a problem you can go back to where you started easily.

The main page usually only has a link added to comments and that can be removed. The part to remove is highlighted below.

index-edit

This will remove the comment hyperlink you see either at the top near the post title on your home page or it may be below the actual content depending on your theme.

There are usually two places to edit on your single post page because you will need to remove the call to pull in the comment box and there is usually a link near the post title. You can see a sample below where I have highlighted them.

single-edit

Now the call to pull the comment box may be more complex on some themes. In this one it is only a single call but on some themes I have seen it be the full call for the comments.

The page will usually be the same as single.php and needs to be edited the same.

I usually don’t edit comment.php because that is the code that is called into the various pages and if you remove the calls form the pages it is never accessed.

Now WordPress can be used for many purposes including a squeeze page, a sales letter and a membership site along with being a static site and you can see exactly how to do all of these and more at WP Nerds.

Your comments and questions are always welcomed and I look forward to answering your question.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.