How do I enable comments or trackbacks in WordPress?

By default, our one-click installer for WordPress disables comments and trackbacks because these often lead to spammers adding thousands of comments.

If you want to allow comments or trackbacks, you can easily do so. Be sure you’ve enabled some kind of anti-spam measure to limit spam.

Allowing comments on future posts and pages

To allow comments on new posts or pages you create:

  1. Click Settings > Discussion in the WordPress dashboard
  2. Check the boxes to Allow people to post comments on new articles and/or Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).

You might also want to enable the other options that require users to register first, or that close comments on older posts.

Allowing comments on existing posts and pages

For existing posts or pages, you'd need to edit the post or page, scroll down to the “Discussion” section, check Allow comments or Allow trackbacks and pingbacks, then click Update.

(If you don’t see a “Discussion” section, click Screen Options to enable it.)