Many legitimate reasons cause WordPress blog users to delete all the comments. It may be because your WordPress is filled with dummy comments on the development site to see how they would look like. You may want to delete all those comments before moving to the live site. Before choosing any method to delete all your WordPress posts and comments, you need to first back up your database so that if anything goes wrong you don’t lose your valuable information. Deleting all comment on your WordPress site is an irreversible process that requires a backup because you will not undo it once you have deleted everything. Here is how to delete WordPress posts and comments.
Table of Contents
Manual deletion
If you choose to delete manually many posts, there is a trick you can use to help you cut down the time you will use in the deletion process.
1. You first need to go to your Post section in the admin area of your backend
2. Once you are there, go to “Screen Options” panel in your admin section (there will be an option for it on the upper right-hand corner of your screen)
3. In the Screen Options panel, you can change the number of posts you can view per page. Change that number from the default 20 to something higher (if you have many posts and you change this number to a higher figure, your browser might lock up on you. You can begin with a relatively higher number and see how far it can go without any problems.)
4. Select all the posts you want to delete, and then use the “Bulk Actions” pull-down menu, and select “Move to Trash” and then click the “Apply” button.
5. You can then go to the trash section and click on “Empty trash” if you like. Repeat this process until all your posts have been deleted.
Deleting with a plugin
The Bulk Delete plugin should do the trick if you want to delete your posts and comments using a plugin. The plugin is available in the official WordPress Repo. It has a free version which has about 50,000+ active installs, making it the most popular plugin for this purpose and has a pro version that you can do more with. The plugin allows you to delete WordPress posts with a specific status, such as the draft, scheduled, or pending. You can restrict the number of deletion to post that is older than the specific date. If you are deleting thousands of posts, you are advised to limit posts deletion to 500 posts or less to prevent timeouts. The default selection is to move all the items to the WordPress trash. The items will be kept in your trash until it is emptied. The items will stay in the trash for 30 days, but you can alter this. When deleting many posts, select to delete the posts permanently so that they are removed from the website’s database right away. The plugin allows you to choose to delete WordPress posts and comments based on various options. The plugin allows you delete posts by category. This is useful when removing a specific section of your website. You can also delete posts by tags which is useful if you have a large number of tags. Posts can also be deleted by URL, which is one of the plugin’s salient features. All you have to do is enter these URLs into the URL box and then delete them. Post revisions can also be deleted in this section. It is a quick way of reducing the database by removing unnecessary post drafts. Besides posts, the plugin can also delete pages, custom post types, and custom taxonomies. It also has additional add-ons that include deleting posts by custom field and delete posts by title. Many other add-ons are available to help you schedule the deletion of posts according to certain factors. All of these add-ons retail at $15. You can also use the delete all comments plugin. You can do this by first installing and activating the plugin. You will need to go to Tools> Delete all comments page. On this page, you will see the total number of comments on your website, a confirmation box, and the delete button. Clicking the delete button will delete WordPress comments from your WordPress site including those in the spam trash. Check on the comments page to confirm whether all the comments have been deleted from your WordPress site. You can also delete posts based on:
• Status (Draft, Revision, Pending Schedules, and Private)
• Category
• Age of Post
• Tags
Go to the database
If you feel like the two options are slow and you have thousands of posts to delete, then the best option will be to go directly to the database.
Also, you can read Best Backup WordPress Plugins
Delete all WordPress comments using the phpMyAdmin
Another quick method to quickly delete WordPress comments is by using MySQL or phpMyAdmin. This method is for more advanced users.
1. Login to the cPanel dashboard of your WordPress hosting account. Under the database, section click on phpMyAdmin
2. You will need to locate your WordPress database inside the phpMyAmin. On this page, you will see all your WordPress database tables
3. Check the box next to wpprefix_comments and wpp_commentmeta table. The name of your comments table may differ depending on the table prefix you choose during your WordPress installation
4. After selecting comments table, locate the “With selected:” drop-down menu below the table list and select “Empty” from the drop-down menu. Php MyAdmin will show you a warning whether you want to really empty the tables
5. Click on the yes button to continue. This will delete all the WordPress comments from your database
Conclusion
As you have seen, there are several ways you can use to delete WordPress posts and comments. You can only do this when you have full back up your WordPress site so that all your vital information is kept intact. Whichever way you choose, remember that the process is irreversible.
Here are few more topics that you shouldn’t miss:
Backup Your WordPress Website Using VaultPress
WordPress.com Vs WordPress.org: Which Blog Platform Should I Use?
Best Backup WordPress Plugins
Like This Post? Don’t Forget To Share