WordPress allows users to send and receive pingbacks and trackbacks to other websites. If your WordPress based site is getting popular then you’ll observe that there is an increase in spam trackbacks. It may also be possible that you’re receiving hundreds of trackbacks everyday. We can disable trackbacks and pingbacks from WordPress admin > Settings > Discussions and uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blog (pingbacks and trackbacks)”.
But doing this will be useful only if you’re just starting out with your blog. This won’t turn off trackbacks and pingbacks on existing WordPress posts. This trick is useful only for new posts and pages that you create and this won’t change the behavior of existing posts and pages.
How to Disable Trackbacks and Pingbacks on Existing Posts and Pages
We’ll need to run a MySQL query for achieving this and therefore its highly recommended to backup your database first and then execute this MySQL query. Login to your Webhosting control panel, also known as cPanel and click on phpMyAdmin.
Select your WordPress database table from left sidebar.
Click on the SQL tab.
In the text area provided, run the below SQL query:
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post'; UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'page';
That’s all you need to do. Now all your existing WordPress posts and pages will have trackbacks and pingbacks disabled.