How to List and Show WordPress Posts That Comments and Pings Off (Not Allow)

WordPress blog publishing platform allows individual author to override global discussion setting and set whether to allow reader to post comment on the article, or whether to allow link notification (aka pingback and trackback) from other blogs at single post or page level. The feature allows all new posts and pages to be created with comments and pings on, but can always be turned off on specific posts or pages when needed.

When come to time to housekeeping, WordPress does not provide an easy way to list or show all posts or paged articles that has its comments and pings off. For blog administrators who want to see a list blog posts and articles that have forbid readers and visitors to leave comments, and stop other blogs to pingback or trackback, use the following trick to list out all posts and pages that are currently set to comment and pingback/trackback off.

Log on to the MySQL database that powers the WordPress blog, and then use the following SQL query statement to get all posts or pages that either comment is not allowed, pings (trackback and ping back) is not allowed or both.

SELECT * FROM `wp_posts` where `comment_status` <> 'open' or `ping_status` <> 'open';

Tip: To make the selection from database easier, it’s recommended to use phpMyAdmin or other GUI interface to MySQL DB.

The query above will return all row (both posts and pages in WordPress) that has either “Allow Comments” or “Allow Pings” set to off (untick). To return only articles where comments is not allowed, use only “comment_status”, or “ping_status” for articles that do not allow pingback and trackback.

Both comment_status and ping_status fields have only two easily understand values – open and closed. Open means allow, which closed means disallowed. Once the result is displayed, the posts that have one or both of the criteria can be determined, and changed if required.

Related Articles

• 3 Column Relaxation WordPress Theme comments-paged.php for Paged-Comments WordPress Plugin
• Reduce Server Load Using Akismet to Automatically Discard Spam Comments on Posts Older than A Month
• Integrate WordPress including Comments with bbPress Forum using bbSync
• Moderate WordPress Blog Comments Via Moderator with Desktop Client
• Paginating or Split WordPress Post or Page with NextPage in WordPress Not Working
• Free Download: Akismet for WordPress Plugin 2.0 to Stop Comment, Trackback and Pingback Spam
• Useful WordPress Plugins At A Glance
• Add and Insert to Put Google AdSense Ads Units Between Blog Posts in Blogger.com
• Replace Google Blog Search with Technorati for Incoming Links in Dashboard of WordPress
• WordPress 2.2 Released for Free Download

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 1:17 am and is filed under Weblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.