It is true that WordPress website’s comment form sometimes gets bombarded with comments with the website URLs as the users know how easy it is to build backlinks off from them. It is also a fact that most bloggers do not have the time to moderate each comment and remove any URL from it. The biggest reason for spam comments is that the spammers hope to get a backlink by using the website URL field in the WordPress comment form. These untimely comments are submitted by actual users. This article will show you how to remove the website URL field from the WordPress comment form.
Since WordPress is highly customizable, we are able to edit or add some codes to function.php and alter some functions/fields in the front end. Also, WordPress has got a huge repository of plugins which provides provide us options to alter some elements without manually writing any code. What if you want to remove the URL form from the comment form using a plugin or writing code? This prevents automated bots to post spam links in your comment form.
Remove Website Fields From WordPress Comment Form Using Plugin
First, install and activate the Comment Link Remove and Comment Tools plugins.
After activation, a new menu item named “QC CLR Settings” will appear in the left column of the WordPress admin panel. Click on it to go to the settings page of the plugin.
Here you can check the box next to the “Remove website field from comment form” option and click the Save Changes button to store your settings. That’s all to do in order to delete a website URL field from a WordPress comment form. Deleting a website field will prevent users who only want to post comments on your website to get backlinks. However, approved comments still link their author name to their website URL. To delete them, return to the settings page of the plugin and check the box next to “Remove hyperlinked author information from comments.” After saving the changes, the links in the existing comments will also be deleted.
Manually remove the website URL field from the WordPress comment form
Some users always want to learn how to do it manually instead of using plugins. Let’s do it by adding a code to the WordPress theme files.
First, make a complete backup of the WordPress website. Next, copy and paste the following code into the theme’s functions.php file or site-specific plugin:
add_filter('comment_form_default_fields', 'unset_url_field');
function unset_url_field($fields){
if(isset($fields['url']))
unset($fields['url']);
return $fields;
}
This code only removes website fields from the WordPress comment form.
How to remove all the links/website URLs from the comment section?
Sometimes the visitors insert a lot of website URLs inside the comment and you may need to remove all spammy links from the comment. If you have comment auto-approved setting on, then it won’t take more time to become your comment section as spammy links storage.
Just put below code snippet into your functions.php file and all of your comment links from will be disabled.
remove_filter('comment_text', 'make_clickable', 9);
