September 18, 2019
4min Read
Merkys M.
Do you want to delete all comments from your WordPress site, but don’t have the time to do it one at a time? Not to worry, this article will explain how to delete all comments on WordPress in bulk using three different methods.
Feel free to check them out to see which one is most suitable for your needs.
Comments are a great way to build a strong relationship with your audience. However, there are times when you need to remove all comments from your WordPress site.
For example, you want to get rid of spam due to the lack of anti-spam setup. Or maybe you create dummy comments for testing purposes that serve no purpose once the trial is done.
These types of comments will harm your user experience and your site’s SEO. In those cases, you need to delete all WordPress comments as soon as possible, to prevent any issues.
There are three alternative ways to delete all comments on WordPress. Check out the tutorials below to help you decide which one best suits your preferences.
WordPress has a way to delete all comments quickly. You can access this feature from your admin dashboard — the Comment menu, to be exact.
WP Bulk Delete is one of the best plugins that will help you to delete all WordPress comments. It enables you to remove various types of data in bulk, including but not limited to comments. The best part is that you can implement filters and conditions based on your needs.
If you only need the basic features of a comment remover tool, the free version will do just fine. Should you need more filter options, you can upgrade to the Pro version for $29.00 per site.
First, you need to install the WP Bulk Delete plugin. You can check out this article for a quick tutorial.
Once you’ve installed WP Bulk Delete, follow these steps to delete all WordPress comments:
You can delete all WordPress comments directly from your database through phpMyAdmin. Despite so, this method requires knowledge about database and SQL. If you’re not familiar with it, you might want to reconsider using the previous methods instead.
phpMyAdmin offers two options to delete comments from your site — running an SQL query or emptying the comment table. Either way, you’re going to modify two tables where comments usually take place: wp_comments and wp_commentmeta.
Note: the tables’ names might differ depending on your database prefix.
Follow these steps to delete all WordPress comments using an SQL query:
DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '0'
Delete all WordPress approved comments:
DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '1'
Delete all WordPress trash comments:
DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'trash'
Delete all WordPress spam comments:
DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'spam'
If you want to delete all WordPress comments unconditionally, you can follow these steps:
Here you have it! This way, you can quickly delete all WordPress comments.
While comments play an essential role in growing your site, there are times when you need to purge them from the site. The types of comments you’d want to remove are the ones that can harm the site’s SEO and user experience.
Here are three alternative ways to delete comments in bulk on WordPress:
As each method has its pros and cons, it’s best to consider your needs first before making the decision. You can also do a test run on a couple of WordPress comments first to see which method best suits your preferences.
March 19 2018
Hello Merkys, you have described great ways to remove the unwanted comments from the WordPress blog or website. I, however, believe that it is good to remove the plugin from WordPress default admin section. It's really easy. Removing comments through the PHPMyAdmin is the best way but it needs some technical knowledge of MySQL. While removing the comments with the help of plugin can decrease your website speed as it needed you to install another specific plugin for a small task which can be managed from WordPress admin dashboard.
January 17 2019
Thank you! I did this using the SQL query method and worked like a charm!
March 10 2020
Delete All Comments Easily With this WordPress plugin you can delete all comments from a WordPress installation very easily. However, the comments can only be restored from a backup.
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