Disable Comments Selectively

This plugin only affects the front end by design, so it will look like nothing has changed in the admin; eg. you’ll still see old comments, the number of previous comments on a post in the little comment bubble, the “allow comments” checkbox, and even add comments from the post screen.

But when looking at that same post from the front end, nobody will be able to view its comments nor make new ones.

Better to install a plugin like Disable Comments which will remove them across the site, and hide them in the admin area too.

Then the odds are that the theme you’re using isn’t following the usual WP methods for comments. This plugin has been tested with all the default WP themes (from 2010 to 2023) and works as intended.

It’s probably because it’s been cached, either by your browser or by WP itself. You can quickly force refresh your browser to check that, but if it’s been cached by WP then you’ll need to clear that or wait for it to expire.

I’ve tested this with the default WP Recent Comments widget and it works fine, but I can’t guarantee what happens with any of the hundred other comment widgets out there.

If it uses the normal WP function calls for comments, it should be okay – if it’s making custom database calls directly, then no.