SPAM is the number one problem of many blogs out there, and some blogs need to empty spam comments regularly because of the huge amount of such comments (read huge as around 2000). You might think that is this even possible and why would someone waste time to write such a needless and off-topic comment? The answer is simple – many times the spam comment is generated by automated bots, which means that no one is contributing anything useful to the topic. One way to reduce the spam comments is by removing the website or URL field from WordPress comment form. In this article we’ll learn exactly how to do this.
The best way to hide or remove the website field from WordPress comment form is by inserting a code to your theme’s functions.php file. There’s also a plugin for this purpose, but if you can do this by inserting a short snippet then why not!
Hide Website field in Comment Form
Login to your WordPress admin and then navigate to Themes > Editor. Alternatively, you can also use a FTP client like Filezilla to download the file, edit it and then upload that file once you’ve made the changes.
Now, add the below code in your functions.php file.
function disable_comment_url($fields) {
unset($fields['url']);
return $fields;
}
add_filter('comment_form_default_fields','disable_comment_url');
That’s it. Refresh one of your post pages and you’ll see that it won’t display that website field anymore. You’ll now get only quality comments that add value to your topic, and not useless comments that say “thank you” and “awesome advice”.
Here’s a preview of how your comment form will look like once you add the code:
Your WordPress comment form will now only display Name, email and comment box. This code will remove the Website field from your comment form.
So, what is your thought on hiding the website field in WordPress? Is this a good solution to get quality comments and reduce spam comments? Let me know your thoughts in comments below.