Delete all comments on website

[Karen Fraser]

Help! It seems like I have over 80,000 comments – all are SPAM! I can only seem to “move to trash” 200 of them at a time. Then I have to go to Trash and delete before I can do another batch of 200. This will take forever. I don’t want comments at all.

I was trying to clean-up things on the site because I recently began having an http error every time I try to upload media (seems like this is a common problem with wordpress that I’m just now experiencing). So I’ve deleted old files/pics/etc thinking that maybe it was a space problem. I’ve reinstalled the latest 4.6.1 update; and it doesn’t seem like any of the plugins are causing this either.

Can you help with either/both problem?

[Bill Robbins]

Hi Karen,

There is a plugin that advertises it can delete all your comments for you called Delete All Comments (https://wordpress.org/plugins/delete-all-comments/). I haven’t used it before so I can’t speak to how well it works personally, but that might be a good option for you.

Often times HTTP errors with the media uploader are from WordPress running out of memory. I did some consulting for one of our state universities over the summer and they were having that exact problem due to a lack of available memory. We had to get with the web host to increase the amount of resources available to the site and that took care of the issue.

Take care,
Bill

[Karen Fraser]

Thank you Bill. I was able to upload and activate a plugin “Disable Comments” which is compatible with WP 4.6.1 and not only was I able to turn off all comments, but the 80,000 or so that had accumulated over the past 2 years has disappeared! Yeah!

I’m still having problems with the http error. I deactivated Easy Image Gallery and installed ImageMagick and am able to upload jpg, pdf and other graphic files, but not small .docx files as I had in the past. Very confusing. I think this is a compatibility problem with the newest upgrade 4.6.1. Unfortunately I can’t communicate directly with folks at WordPress. I’m thankful for you!

[Bill Robbins]

Generally software takes up more resources as time goes on. That’s why Microsoft Word could run with 2mb or RAM back in 1994, but you couldn’t even begin to run Windows much less any apps with that small amount now.

New WordPress versions do often take up more memory than the ones they replace. It might not be much, but since most shared hosts are very stingy on resources to begin with it doesn’t take much to push things over an edge.

Sometimes swapping out plugins can fix it since not all plugins use the same amount of resources, but at best that is a stop gap measure. Future updates will almost certainly take more resources so even a “fix” now will likely require revising in the future.

[Karen Fraser]

The moral of this might be to NOT participate in upgrades unless you really need to.
Thanks for your help.

[Bill Robbins]

That’s one way to look at it, but that could ultimately get your site hacked which not be good.

Go with a good web host. That’s the best solution.

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