README

A lean, internal plugin that disables all comments sitewide for Marshall University's WordPress network.

Package: marshallu/mu-disable-comments
Type: WordPress plugin

What It Disables

New comments and pings on all post types
Existing comments rendered on the front end
Comment feeds
Comment endpoints in the REST API
Pingback methods in XML-RPC
Comments top-level menu in the admin
Discussion settings page
Recent Comments dashboard widget
Comments and Allow Comments meta boxes in the post editor
Comments column in post list tables
Comments node in the admin bar
comments and trackbacks post type support on all registered post types

Installation

Manual

Upload the plugin directory to wp-content/plugins/ and activate it from the WordPress admin.

wp-content/
└── plugins/
    └── mu-disable-comments/
        ├── disable-comments.php
        └── includes/
            └── ...

On a single site, activate from Plugins in the WordPress admin.

On a multisite network, activate from Network Admin > Plugins to enable it across all sites at once, or activate it per-site as needed.

Composer

composer require marshallu/mu-disable-comments

Composer will install the plugin to wp-content/plugins/mu-disable-comments/.

How It Works

Front End

Comment and ping status is overridden at the filter level, regardless of what is saved on individual posts or in WordPress settings. This means no database updates are required — existing post data is left untouched.

Filter	Behavior
`comments_open`	Always returns `false`
`pings_open`	Always returns `false`
`comments_array`	Always returns an empty array

Returning an empty array from comments_array ensures that themes and templates which iterate over comments render nothing, even if comments exist in the database.

Comment feed URLs (e.g. /?feed=comments-rss2, /?p=1&feed=rss2) are redirected to the home page via template_redirect.

REST API

The /wp/v2/comments collection and single-item endpoints are removed from the registered endpoint list before the API responds.

XML-RPC

The pingback.ping and pingback.extensions.getPingbacks methods are unregistered from the XML-RPC server.

Admin

Area	Action
Comments menu	Removed via `remove_menu_page()`
`edit-comments.php`	Redirected to the dashboard
`comment.php`	Redirected to the dashboard
`options-discussion.php`	Redirected to the dashboard
Recent Comments widget	Removed from the dashboard
`commentsdiv` meta box	Removed from all post editors
`commentstatusdiv` meta box	Removed from all post editors
Comments column	Removed from all post list tables
Admin bar Comments node	Removed
Post type support	`comments` and `trackbacks` removed from all registered post types

Development

# Install dev dependencies
composer install

# Check coding standards
./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=WordPress .

# Auto-fix coding standards violations
./vendor/bin/phpcbf --standard=WordPress .

# Run static analysis
./vendor/bin/phpstan analyse

All code follows WordPress Coding Standards. Functions, hooks, and globals are prefixed mu_disable_comments_.

File Structure

mu-disable-comments/
├── disable-comments.php                        # Plugin entry point
├── includes/
│   ├── class-mu-disable-comments.php           # Core singleton, bootstraps all classes
│   ├── class-mu-disable-comments-admin.php     # Admin/dashboard suppression
│   └── class-mu-disable-comments-public.php    # Front-end, feeds, REST API, XML-RPC
└── composer.json

marshallu / mu-disable-comments

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