Many blogs experience a serious problem with spam comments. The urge to obtain backlinks by exploiting the website url box in the WordPress comment form is the main driver of spam comments.
Since automated bots produce the majority of the spam, you can easily stop comment spam by using free tools and plugins.
Discouragement of manually-submitted spam comments by people is the more difficult component. These unwelcome remarks, which are frequently off-topic and useless and add nothing to the conversation, are posted by actual users.
This post will demonstrate how to get rid of the WordPress comment form’s website URL box. Additionally, we’ll discuss how removing the URL box from the comment form will aid in reducing spam.
Why Do Individuals Post SPAM Comments?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the quick response to that query. Let’s examine that in more detail.
Have you ever had users leave comments on your website with titles like “Best WordPress Themes,” “Make Money Online,” or “MyBlogName”? Why don’t they use their genuine name instead of such generic terms?
Name, email, website URL, and the comment box are the four fields that make up the WordPress comment form by default.
WordPress automatically creates a hyperlink between the commenter’s name and the URL of the website they gave when displaying the comments.
Blackhat SEO marketers and inexperienced bloggers are encouraged by this backlink.
They think that by using this strategy, they will be able to rank higher for particular keywords in search engines.
Although this method typically does not work for SEO, spam comments have continued to be posted.
Due to this, we completely eliminated the URL box from our WordPress comment form. This has significantly decreased the quantity of spam comments on our website.
Authentic users will comment on your posts whether or not they receive a backlink. You should seriously doubt someone’s original motivation if they refuse to leave a remark on your website because they won’t receive a backlink.
Let’s now look at how to quickly delete the website field from the WordPress comment form. You can select the approach that best suits your needs from the two that we shall discuss.
From the WordPress comment form, remove the Website field (Plugin)
Everyone should utilize this strategy because it is simpler.
Installing and activating the Comment Link Remove and Comment Tools plugins is the first step. Please refer to our step-by-step tutorial on installing a WordPress plugin for more specific instructions.
QC CLR Settings will appear as a new menu item in the WordPress admin panel’s left sidebar after it has been activated. You may access the plugin’s settings page by clicking on it.
You must now select the option to “Remove WEBSITE Field from Comment Form” by checking the box next to it.
To save your settings, proceed to the bottom of the page and scroll down to the Save Changes button.
When visiting an article on your website, you won’t see the entire comment form because you are already logged in.
Either log out of the WordPress admin area or launch a fresh incognito browser tab are required. Following that, you can visit any post on your WordPress website and not see the website URL field in the comment form.
Users who merely want to comment on your website to receive a hyperlink will be discouraged if the website option is removed.
The author names and website URLs will still be connected in the comments that have already been accepted.
Return to this plugin’s settings page and select the “Remove links from comment AUTHOR Bio” option by checking the box.
The links from the earlier comments will also be deleted after you save the modifications.
Taking the Website URL Field Out of the WordPress Comment Form by Hand
Some people prefer to learn how to perform tasks without the aid of a plugin. The good news is that a small piece of code will allow you to remove the website field from the comment form.
You must create a complete backup of your WordPress site before you can proceed. If you make any mistakes while modifying the theme files, you can use this to restore your website’s files.
The next step is to copy and paste the following code into a site-specific plugin or your theme’s functions.php file:
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add_filter('comment_form_default_fields', 'unset_url_field');function unset_url_field($fields){ if(isset($fields['url'])) unset($fields['url']); return $fields;} |
The website field on your WordPress comment form is simply removed by this code. To see it in action, open a new incognito browser and navigate to a blog post on your website.
We sincerely hope that this post has shown you how to get rid of the WordPress comment form’s website URL box.
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