Hide the Comment Form on LearnDash Courses, Lessons, Topics, Quizzes & Essays

WordPress is designed to encourage discussion, and it does so by allowing comments on all types of content. This is the default behavior. In many cases, this makes sense for those who run a blog, discussion forum, etc. But for LearnDash courses, comments don’t make a whole lot of sense 🤔.

There are several ways to handle comments in WordPress, and I’ll cover all the ways to disable/hide the comment form on every type of LearnDash content, including course pages, lessons, topics, quizzes & essays.

There are three different ways to hide the comment form:

• Disable Comments plugin (best solution)
• Manually, using Bulk Edit (only retroactive)
• Using code (not recommended)

It’s not often that my preferred solution is to just use a plugin, but this is one of the rare exceptions. The Disable Comments plugin is:

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• easy to use
• does an incredibly thorough job
• is used on over 1 million sites
• is actively maintained
• has a near-perfect 5-star rating with over 200 ratings

Folks, you really can’t ask for much better 💯.

⭐ Use the Disable Comments Plugin

In your WordPress admin area…

• navigate to Plugins > Add New
• search for “Disable Comments”
• install & activate the Disable Comments plugin by Samir Shah

Choose Comments to Disable

Now it’s time to choose which types of LearnDash content you want to disable comments for. Disabling comments will completely remove the comment form from all pieces of content of that type. This includes content published in the past and anything you publish in the future.

1. Navigate to Settings > Disable Comments
2. Choose either “Everywhere” or “On certain post types”
   • Everywhere: If your site doesn’t have a blog, or you just don’t ever want to use comments on your site at all, you can choose this option.
   • On certain post types: For most people, I would recommend this option.
3. After choosing “On certain post types,” you then need to check the box next to each post type that you want to disable comments for. The LearnDash post types are:
   • Courses
   • Lessons
   • Topics
   • Quizzes
   • Submitted Essays
4. You might also want to check “Media” and “Pages,” as most people don’t want to allow comments on those types of pages either.

You might see other post types listed on this page. Some plugins, page builders & even themes will use additional post types. If you’re not sure, leave it unchecked. If you’re navigating your site and see a comment form that you don’t want, try to figure out which post type it is, come back here and check the box.

Recommended settings for most people

Make sure you click Save Changes when you’re finished. Then check your live site and the comment form should be hidden from all LearnDash content types.

Manually, Using Bulk Edit

This method only works for previous & existing courses, lessons, topics, quizzes & essays. Any new content that is created will need to have this process completed again, after the fact.

Because it’s not very future-proof, I don’t recommend it as a way of globally disabling comments for LearnDash. But…

1. Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Courses
2. Check the box at the top, next to the word “Title”
3. Click the Bulk Actions dropdown & choose Edit
4. Click the Apply button
5. In the Comments dropdown, choose Do not allow
6. Click the Update button

You can repeat these steps for each LearnDash content type.

If you have more than 1 page worth of courses (or lessons or topics, etc.), you’ll need to either:

• do this multiple times, on each page… or
• go to Screen Options at the top, and change your “Number of items per page” value to be much higher

Disable Comments Using Code

I really wouldn’t recommend this option. While it is very lightweight, and ensures you are in complete control of the code, it doesn’t do as thorough a job as the Disable Comments plugin. But if you’re a developer, and like to keep all edits within your complete control, here’s how you disable comments using your own code.

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You would add this either to a custom functionality plugin, your child theme’s functions.php file, or use the Code Snippets plugin.

add_action( 'init', 'ldx_disable_comments' );

function ldx_disable_comments() {
    remove_post_type_support( array( 'sfwd-courses', 'sfwd-lessons', 'sfwd-topic', 'sfwd-quiz', 'sfwd-essays' ), 'comments' );
}

That would disable comments for all LearnDash content types. You could update the array() to add or remove any post type you’d like.

If you’ve found a better way to disable the comment form for LearnDash content types, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. But I think you’ll be very pleased with how easy it is to use our recommended option.