Turning Comments On Or Off

Removing “wp-comments-post.php” and “wp-trackback.php” will prevent comment spam and trackback spam from getting into your blog.
Do delete then while you are away – renaming them isn’t a foolproof way.

That’s the only way? There’s no toggle?

There is a toggle, but it’s cumbersome. The toggle will disable comments and trackbacks for future posts. As far as the past posts go, you’ll have to edit each individually. It’s easier to de-activate/re-activate that comments and trackbacks by deleting/uploading the wp-comments-post.php and wp-trackback.php files.

That’s a pretty ugly alternative: showing people a comment form and then giving them a 404 when they try to post.

I guess I’ll track down the comment-closing plugin I used to use. Didn’t I read somewhere that there are plans to add that feature to the core progam?

Could always do it the database query way:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'closed', ping_status = 'closed';

To return to normal:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'open', ping_status = 'open';

This of course assumes you want all posts open/closed.

Just follow the instructions in the following thread to remove the comment links from your index.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=22389

Thanks, Kafkaesqui. That looks like the best solution for me.