Need to remove all comments on your WordPress site? This is rare, but in some cases, the site owner may decide to remove all comments from their site. In today’s article, we will show you how to easily delete all WordPress comments in bulk.
Before You Remove All WordPress Comments
There are many situations where a user really needs to delete all comments without a doubt.
For example, if you filled in comments on a development site with “Lorem Ipsum” just to see how they would look. You will want to remove these comments before transferring it to hosting.
To get started, you will need to create a full backup of your WordPress site.
Deleting all comments in WordPress is irreversible. You will not be able to undo what has been done once you delete these comments. This is why it is important to have an up-to-date backup.
Method 1: Delete All WordPress Comments Using a Plugin
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Delete All Comments plugin.
After activation, go to the Tools »Delete All Comments page. Here you will see the total number of comments on your site, a confirmation box, and a delete button.
When you click on the button, your comments will be permanently removed from your site. Both spam comments and those in the trash can.
Now you can go to the comments page, where you can notice their complete absence.
Method 2: Delete All WordPress Comments With PhpMyAdmin
You can also quickly delete all WordPress comments using MySQL or phpMyAdmin. This method is recommended for more advanced users.
Log in to your hosting control panel. In the Databases section, select phpMyAdmin.
In phpMyAdmin, you will need to select your WordPress database. You will see this page, which will display all the database tables.
Check the box next to the wpprefix_comments and wpprefix_commentmeta tables. The name of your comment table may differ depending on the database prefix you specified during WordPress installation.
After selecting the comment table, find the ‘With selected:’ drop-down menu below the table list and select ‘Empty’ from the drop-down list.
PhpMyAdmin will display a warning to you, where it will clarify if you really want to clear the selected tables.
Confirm your decision, after which all your comments in WordPress will be removed from the site database.
You can also delete all comments in the VI using the MySQL console (command line). Just go to the MySQL console and run the following command there:
TRUNCATE `wp_commentmeta`;
TRUNCATE `wp_comments`;
That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to easily delete all comments in WordPress.
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