WordPress comments are closed is one of the most common problems faced by many bloggers. It usually happens due to some settings in your wordpress, and it’s easy to fix the problem.
WordPress has a setting that automatically closed new comments on a post if a post is older than 14 days. If somehow you unknowingly checked that option, then this problem occurs.
So, in this post, I am sharing 4 easy fixes for this problem and how to stop this from happening again. So let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Method to Fix WordPress comments are closed
There are 4 easy ways to solve this issue and also stop it from happening again.
1. Tweaking Settings in WordPress Settings
Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “Settings” > “Discussion” tab.
Now under Default article settings, check if “Allow people to submit comments on new posts” is on. If not, then check this option. If this was the problem, then now you will have your comments section available in your wordpress posts.
The next thing is to check if, under Other comment settings, you have checked the “Automatically close comments on posts older than 14 days” options. Uncheck it and click on the Save Changes button below.
Now check if your problem is solved or not. If the problem is there for some of your posts, then you need to allow it manually for those posts.
To allow comments for any particular post or page, go to All Posts/Pages and click on Edit for the post on which you are facing this issue.
Now under the Discussion tab, check if “Allow Comment” is checked or not, and check it and click on Update post.
If you are unable to find the Discussion tab, then you need to enable it from the Screen Options as shown in the image below, and then follow the instructions again.
You need to allow comments from all of your posts, which is having this problem. If there are too many posts, then you might need to edit in bulk using SQL. For SQL command methods, follow the next fix.
If you are having any cache plugin installed in your wordpress, then you need to clear cache after changing your setting in the WordPress
2. SQL Commands
If your wordpress blog has many posts with the problem of comments are closed, then editing all the posts in bulk with SQL is the best method for solving this issue easily.
For allowing comments at once, you need to go into your phpMyAdmin, for you can also use MySQL from your ssh.
Just run the commands.
UPDATE wp_posts SET `comment_status` = ‘open’ WHERE comment_status = ‘closed’;
Note: If your wordpress prefix is not “wp_” then change it accordingly in the given MySQL Query before executing.
After executing the MySQL query, clear the cache of your wordpress if you have installed any cache plugin and check if your problem of comments are closed is resolved or not. If the problem still persists, then it might be due to some faulty theme or plugin.
3. Deactivating/Activating Plugins & Themes
Many of the time, some of the themes or plugins crash each other, causing problems like comments are closed and others. So to solve such an issue, the first step is to change your theme to any default theme by wordpress.
You can change your theme by going to Appearance > Themes. Activate any other theme to check if you still get comments are closed errors on any other theme or not.
You also need to follow the same step by deactivating your plugins one by one and checking if your problem is solved or not.
If you find any faulty plugins or themes, remove them and find any alternatives to them.
4. Commenting Plugin
Even after doing everything, you still weren’t able to solve the problem of comments are closed in wordpress, and then you need to use any other commenting plugin.
Various commenting plugins are available, like Disqus, which provides more advanced features and experience of providing a comments section to your website.
Conclusion
I hope we were able to help you with your problem of comments are closed in your wordpress. These are the only working method through which you enable the closed comments in wordpress.
If you like this guide, please share it with your friends, and do let me know if you know of any other methods to solve this issue.
