Disable trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress

We all like comments and discussions on our website. However if you are a site administrator of a WordPress blog or site, there is some kind of comment you may not like or even hate, the Pings from other sites including the pingbacks and trackbacks. The pingbacks and trackbacks if enabled will appear in the comments section of your WordPress posts. They were designed with a very good idea. When other bloggers or sites have a post that links to your post or your site, you will get a pingback or trackback in the comment section of your post. You can think of pingbacks or trackbacks as kind of “remote comments”. Someone else talks about your post in another post from a different site. However the trackbacks and pingbacks, especially the trackbacks have become the target of so much spam.All webmasters hate comment spam, they are useless to posts on a blog, they are often irrelevant to the content of your post. Spammers only want more links to their websites or domain for higher page rank in Google or other search engines.

Admittedly trackbacks/pingbacks are helpful when legit bloggers linked to your WordPress sites. You can know who has linked to your site, then following that up with a response. But if 99% of trackbacks/pingbacks turned out to be SPAM, it is not worth using trackbacks or pingbacks at all.

How to disable WordPress pingbacks and trackbacks on new articles?

Log on your WordPress dashboard as site administrator, go to Settings >> Discussion >> Default article settings, uncheck to disable “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles.” Make sure to scroll down to the page bottom and click the Save Changes to save the changes you have made to the comment settings.

Note that above methods can only apply to new posts or pages of your WordPress site or blog. Existing trackbacks and pingbacks will not be removed or deleted due to this settings change. So if you found a lot of trackbacks and pingbacks SPAM on your WordPress site, it is best to take this action early on, rather than ignoring the issue.

Also even if you use a third party comment system, notably the Disqus, the trackbacks and pingbacks will still persist. Your site visitors can’t see them because they are hidden, but you can still find them in the page source, they still use your server resources until you follow above instructions to turn off WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks.

Turn off WordPress pings (trackbacks and pingbacks) on existing posts

When you create a new post or editing an existing WordPress post, you can find the option to disable pings from the post. In the post or page editing screen, scroll down to find the “Discussion” section, you can find two options below: (1)Allow Comments; (2) All trackbacks and pingbacks on this page. You can uncheck the section option to turn off the pings from the selected post or page of WordPress site.

If you like to quickly deactivate pings from two or more posts, you can go to WordPress dashboard >> Posts >> All Posts, select multiple posts, choose Edit from the Bulk Actions box, click Apply, you will then find the Pings item at the right hand side, choose Do not allow from the drop-down menu list and click Update button to turn off pings from all selected WordPress posts quickly.

Disable WordPress pings (trackbacks and pingbacks) on existing posts from database

The first method above will prevent any new trackbacks and pingbacks for new WordPress articles. The second method is time-consuming when you have many posts need to close the pings. For existing articles, an easier way is to follow this tutorial to close all pings on WordPress articles from its database.

Bulk Delete trackbacks and pingbacks from WordPress

Above methods can only prevent new pingbacks or trackbacks in WordPress. These change will not remove existing pings from WordPress. Delete pingbacks or trackbacks from WordPress posts is just like you delete other regular comments. You can go to WordPress dashboard >> Posts >> All Posts, then open the post editing window to delete pings of the post. This method can help you remove pings from WordPress article after article.

To batch delete pings from WordPress, go to WordPress dashboard >> Comments. Select Pings as the filter and click Filter button to show only pingbacks and trackbacks; select multiple pings or click the box before Author to select all pings in the whole page; choose Move to Trash from the Bulk Actions box and finally click Apply button to move all selected pings to the Trash folder. When you have move all pings to the trash, you go to the the Trash category and one-click to empty trash and complete delete all pings from your WordPress site.