# Why enable wordpress post comments?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592
**Category:** WordPress
**Created:** [September 19, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592 "2018-09-19T20:36:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/1 "2018-09-19T20:36:33Z")
I really don’t want to enable _Wordpress_ comments on posts in order to use _Discourse_ for commenting.
Is there any way we can bypass that requirement?
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/2 "2018-09-19T20:39:12Z")
Sure, just uncheck this box:
It’s under `/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wp_discourse_options&tab=commenting_options`
Although there’s definitely value in having commenting enabled, your content gets exposed to your community (_and_ vice versa), users only have to familiarise themselves with a single interface and if the filtering features appeal you can easily curate the comments which appear on your wordpress front end.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 8:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/3 "2018-09-19T20:42:13Z")
Wait, I don’t understand. I do want (certain) Discourse comments to show up. I was planning on using this option: “Only Import Moderator-Liked” to just show the best comments.
But my understanding is that I have to check the box you showed above _and_ turn on Wordpress comments on the post in order to have it work. Am I wrong?
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 8:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/4 "2018-09-19T20:43:52Z")
Yes, if you don’t check that box then Discourse won’t insert any comments back on your WordPress blog.
Users can’t post to Discourse directly from the WordPress site, if they click to comment they are taken back to the community, what is it you’re looking to disable specifically? Or are you looking to have WordPress comments PLUS Discourse comments?
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/5 "2018-09-19T20:46:03Z")
The question is why I need to also enable _Wordpress_ comments in order to get this functionality. I’d rather leave Wordpress comments off. After all, Im not using them. I’m using _discourse_ comments.
ETA: I may be crazy, but for example, if I need to disable the WPDiscourse plugin for some reason for testing or while Discourse isn’t working or something (this sort of thing happens to me. lol) I don’t want to have Wordpress comments suddenly enabled. I _never_ want Wordpress comments, especially not accidentally, so I hate the thought of enabling them.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 9:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/6 "2018-09-19T21:14:41Z")
If you disable WordPress comments and only enable them in wp-discourse the CTA should still appear.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2018, 9:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/7 "2018-09-19T21:48:27Z")
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> The question is why I need to also enable _Wordpress_ comments in order to get this functionality.
The [WP Discourse](https://github.com/discourse/wp-discourse) plugin hooks into the WordPress `comments_template` filter to load its comments template. You need to allow comments on a post until at least one comment has been added on Discourse to get Discourse comments to display on WordPress.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2018, 4:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/8 "2018-09-20T04:17:35Z")
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> if I need to disable the WPDiscourse plugin for some reason for testing or while Discourse isn’t working or something (this sort of thing happens to me. lol) I don’t want to have Wordpress comments suddenly enabled
This is reasonable. Maybe an option could be added to the plugin to disable WordPress comments when the plugin is disabled.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/9 "2018-09-20T04:47:52Z")
How can the plugin do anything while it’s disabled?
Might be easier to target the usual wp comments divs and hide them with css.
> [@simon](#):
>
> The [WP Discourse](https://github.com/discourse/wp-discourse) plugin hooks into the WordPress `comments_template` filter to load its comments template. You need to allow comments on a post until at least one comment has been added on Discourse to get Discourse comments to display on WordPress.
I thought that but I disabled wp comments site wide on a test site and still see the cta on posts with no comments. Will test further.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2018, 12:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/10 "2018-09-20T12:47:55Z")
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> If you disable WordPress comments and only enable them in wp-discourse the CTA should still appear.
Sorry for my ignorance. What is CTA?
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2018, 2:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/11 "2018-09-20T14:40:55Z")
I’m assuming Call To Action
eg. “leave a comment”
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2018, 3:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/12 "2018-10-01T15:03:34Z")
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> How can the plugin do anything while it’s disabled?
The plugin could add an option that hooks into the WordPress deactivation hook to disable comments for all posts.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/13 "2018-10-01T15:28:46Z")
That might help, but actually, looking closer, I’ve got a bigger problem. I have no way of preventing Wordpress comments, even while the plugin is in use.
Here’s what I want:
1. I don’t want any comments except for on Discourse.
2. I don’t want Discourse comments on every post.
3. I want sensible default settings to avoid mistakes and reduce work for authors/editors on WP.
The problem I have is that if I make comments disabled on my site by default, every post that we want comments on we have to manually intervene and turn comments on, even if I set the WP-Discourse settings to default to create a new topic on Discourse. Of course, if I go the other direction, the same problem occurs, but worse. Changing the Discourse setting to not create a topic over on Discourse seems like it would take care of turning off commenting on a post, but it doesn’t. Instead, I end up with a WP comment form and WP comments!
So to sum up, I think that it’s silly that I have to check two settings in every single post, and make sure they are set to the same thing to get sensible behavior. Both need to be on, or both need to be off. Why not just have a single setting? And even more problematic for me is that if the settings are not kept in sync (both on, or both off), there can be behavior that I really don’t want (WP comments), and I have no way to prevent it with this plugin.
Edited to add:
Even more disconcerting is the fact that turning Wordpress comments off on a post completely makes everything from WP-Discourse disappear, even when I have the “Link to Comments Without Displaying Them” setting enabled (which I’ve been discussing with you [over here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/link-to-comments-without-displaying-them-option-not-working/98296/3), in case others are interested.)
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/14 "2018-10-01T16:27:27Z")
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> - I don’t want any comments except for on Discourse.
> - I don’t want Discourse comments on every post.
> - I want sensible default settings to avoid mistakes and reduce work for authors/editors on WP.
WordPress comments need to be enabled to display Discourse comments. Not wanting to display the WordPress comment form for posts that have not been published to Discourse seems reasonable. There are a couple of ways the plugin could deal with this without requiring the comment settings to be configured for each post. I’ll try to get this added to the next update. Until then, you are going to have to toggle the comment settings for each post to get the behaviour you are looking for.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2018, 6:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/16 "2018-10-02T18:51:09Z")
Can do. Will do. Thanks for helping me understand everything.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2018, 12:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/17 "2018-10-19T00:52:28Z")
If you update to [WP Discourse 1.7.7](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-discourse/), you can now keep WordPress comments and the WordPress comment form from displaying for posts that have not been published to Discourse. To do this, enable the ‘Remove WordPress Comments Template’ option. It’s found on the Commenting Settings tab.
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> if I need to disable the WPDiscourse plugin for some reason for testing or while Discourse isn’t working or something (this sort of thing happens to me. lol) I don’t want to have Wordpress comments suddenly enabled.
If you have [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) available for your site, you can disable comments for all posts with this command:
```plaintext
wp post list --format=ids | xargs wp post update --comment_status=closed
```
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/18 "2018-10-19T01:11:03Z")
Awesome, sounds like I need to try this out on one of our installs. The existing behavior was fine providing you anticipated it, this is even easier though.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2018, 1:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-enable-wordpress-post-comments/97592/19 "2018-10-19T01:17:24Z")
Looking forward to trying this out. Also, that’s a really helpful tip! Thanks on both counts.