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WordPress – Disable comments on attachments

After stopped and cleaned the WordPress pingback and trackback spams, those spammers have changed strategy to start spamming comments and trackbacks on the post attachments.

Solution

1.1 Stop commenting on new and existing attachment. Add below PHP script in theme’s function.php

${theme_folder}/function.php

//disable comments on attachment
function filter_media_comment_status( $open, $post_id ) {

    $post = get_post( $post_id );
    if( $post->post_type == 'attachment' ) {
        return false;
    }
    return $open;

}
add_filter('comments_open', 'filter_media_comment_status', 10 , 2 );

1.2 Update existing attachments, in wp_posts table, update post attachment ping_status and comment_status to closed

phpMyAdmin or MySQL consoles

UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_type = 'attachment';

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status='closed' WHERE post_type = 'attachment';

1.3 Delete the existing comment spam. The attachment comments are indicated as trackback comments.


DELETE FROM  `wp_comments` WHERE  `comment_type` =  'trackback'
Note
WordPress should really consider turning off the pingback and trackback features by default, it is attracting many spammers and add less value to the WordPress platform. Btw, who is using trackback?

References

  1. How to Stop WordPress Pingbacks and Trackbacks Spam
  2. WordPress Post Types

About Author

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Founder of Mkyong.com, love Java and open source stuff. Follow him on Twitter. If you like my tutorials, consider make a donation to these charities.

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Bernard Kuipers
6 years ago

I got the same, however.. ping_status and comment_status where both closed on the attatchment a spammer commented on. To me it looks like my theme just missed the code you provided. Anyway – thanks for not being alone on this one!