Disable website field in comment section

[longman2020]

Hi,
Please make it possible to hide website field in comment section.
It is not useful at all. Just spammers post fake comments for link building.
I know It can be hide via css code, but not all users know how to do that.
And I noticed that the css code for hiding this field may not be the same for all themes.
Thanks a lot

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi @longman2020, welcome to WordPress Trac!

There are several ways to remove the URL field from comment form:

• Using a code snippet like this in a child theme:

  function wp47926_remove_url_from_comments( $fields ) {
  	unset( $fields['url'] );
  	return $fields;
  }
  add_filter( 'comment_form_default_fields', 'wp47926_remove_url_from_comments' );
  

• Or using any plugin that offers a similar function:
  • ​Comment Link Remove and Comment Tools
  • ​CB Disable Comment URL

[longman2020]

Replying to SergeyBiryukov:

Hi @longman2020, welcome to WordPress Trac!

There are several ways to remove the URL field from comment form:

• Using a code snipped like this in a child theme:

  function wp47926_remove_url_from_comments( $fields ) {
  	unset( $fields['url'] );
  	return $fields;
  }
  add_filter( 'comment_form_default_fields', 'wp47926_remove_url_from_comments' );
  

• Or using any plugin that offers a similar function:
  • ​Comment Link Remove and Comment Tools
  • ​CB Disable Comment URL

Hi,
Thanks you
But most of these kind of plugins are not compatible with every theme.

And everyone is not able to code.

The feature I requested is fine and easy for even novice users.

[SergeyBiryukov]

If the theme does not use comment_form(), then a core option would not work for it either.

If it does, then a plugin should work.

There are other, more effective ways to fight spam, like the Akismet plugin.

Adding a new option here would go against the ​Decisions, not Options philosophy of WordPress, so this seems like plugin territory to me. That said, I'm keeping the ticket open for now, let's wait for more opinions.

[longman2020]

If the theme does not use comment_form(), I think that's the theme problem not wordpress core.

Yes that's true and I know that we can fight spams with many ways, but what I meant was real users who just write fake comments to fill the website field for building links, not robots.
Akismet and other spam fighters block robots not real users.

Fake comments reduces the quality of articles and all the website.
Also most of the links are low quality websites with low domain authority, which is even bad for SEO.

If it will be eliminated, the user who wants to write a fake comment in order to get links, will leave the site, when he/she sees that there is no website field.

[longman2020]

When it is implemented into the core, the developers will have to adapt their themes with the new future.

[longman2020]

Here that we are talking about this topic, we are all experienced users and it's very easy for us to remove it.
But please think of amateur ones and the fake comments that are posted just for getting links.

For example someone writes an article. then these are most of the comments that she/he gets:

Thank you for your great post.
Excellent post.
Great job.

Just to get a free backlink.

Although I myself use a css code to remove it and have no problem anymore, but these kind of comments are really annoying and we should fight with it and let everyone remove this field easily to fight spam if he/she wants.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#49529 was marked as a duplicate.

[ttodua]

There is no thought that the field should be removed by default, or at least, in native settings page, there was ON/OFF option for that (default- OFF).

I really don't understand why this is not done, or what are contr-arguments.
Having that field at all, is just 98% drawback because of attracting spam and has no use in real-world.

and the custom-coding should not be needed, not all people are developers.

That's why i dont agree with WP's "decisions instead of options" dictature, when those decisions are made upon specific peoples opinion.

On all sites daily we have to delete the spammed comments, which are not even caught by spam-filtering plugins, because people just comment:

"Nice article, I had similar problem <link to X site>.."

and as in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/49529 , i even suggested to replace links from comment texts too, to totally eliminate any spamming reason, like this: ​https://jsfiddle.net/5gm3Lsu8/1/

[longman2020]

Replying to ttodua:

There is no thought that the field should be removed by default, or at least, in native settings page, there was ON/OFF option for that (default- OFF).

I really don't understand why this is not done, or what are contr-arguments.
Having that field at all, is just 98% drawback because of attracting spam and has no use in real-world.

and the custom-coding should not be needed, not all people are developers.

That's why i dont agree with WP's "decisions instead of options" dictature, when those decisions are made upon specific peoples opinion.

On all sites daily we have to delete the spammed comments, which are not even caught by spam-filtering plugins, because people just comment:

"Nice article, I had similar problem <link to X site>.."

and as in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/49529 , i even suggested to replace links from comment texts too, to totally eliminate any spamming reason.

I completely agree with you.

It's very useless and annoying.

Even google has declared that links in comment forms are not counted anymore, but I don't know why so many people spam yet in 2020.

I hope the WP team make a decision to eliminate this field or at least make it optional in settings.

[ttodua]

Replying to longman2020:

The problem is that spammers still have reason to spam, because it's not easy for GOOGLE to differentiate the "comments" in html scructure, because comments may be shown in different tags or elements of site, so spammers still have some chance that their links (if approved comment) will have a backlink. and any backlink has "some" (call it tiny, but still) value.

so, the aim is to totally eliminate the existence of backlinks.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#51220 was marked as a duplicate.

[aimutch]

The responses to this appears to fall into the old "we've always done it this way" trap without thinking about why it was done that way originally or whether it makes sense to continue to include it. I did a quick search on Google and found articles going back to at least 2011 of people asking how to disable this field because of the volume of spam it generates through WordPress sites.

I suspect that an analysis would find that this is the number one generator of spam on WordPress sites. And to what end? Is this a feature of the standard comment field that people clamor to have? No. If it went away or was disabled by default, would anyone miss it? Very few people I suspect. But because someone thought it was a good idea to have this field 1000 WordPress years ago, we're stuck having to install a plugin to disable a form field that serves very little purpose and exposes WordPress sites and their visitor to all kinds of bad content.

Isn't it time to have a discussion of whether this is worth all the problems that this form field causes?

[jeremyfelt]

I appreciate that receiving spam comments can be disappointing and annoying to deal with. However, as WordPress remains a strong tool for the open web, I (maybe naively) still think that encouraging conversation on blogs and encouraging people to leave a link to their blog as part of those conversations are important pieces of the open web.

Options exist to either disable comments entirely, to remove the URL field through plugins like the ones @SergeyBiryukov mentions above, and it is possible to create themes that do not display comments in different ways or not at all.

[aimutch]

It's not just that receiving spam comments is "disappointing and annoying". It's that the links in these comments lead back to sites serving up malware or spammy content to unsuspecting site visitors/owners. It's easy to find unprotected WordPress sites where the comments on every article are nothing but these spam comments.

Also, this spam creates a tremendous amount of unnecessary overhead on the sites. I help manage a handful of WordPress sites and even these sites with a fairly low level of traffic are bombarded by spam comments. One site I just checked averaged 1000 spam comments a month. Without fail, every comment flagged by Akismet has the website field completed. Once I blocked this field, the spam comments dropped almost immediately to zero.

Whatever benefit came from this in the past is now outweighed by the massive amount of malware and spam being propagated thanks to WordPress sites. As I said before, someone on the WP side should do an analysis of this. It should be quickly obvious that keeping this field in place is doing far more harm than good.

[aimutch]

I would also note that if you set up a free site at WordPress.com, when comments are enabled, there's no field website field available. Looks like the people managing that side of the operation have come to the conclusion that the upside of allowing that is far outweighed by the downside of disabling it by default.

[ttodua]

@aimutch
Everything is obvious, and even there is no need even to ask website holders for their opinions, as everything was clear already decade ago.
However, this is - someone who has higher access to WP decisions, decides whatever they think personally and force you to obey onto that, without giving any option to you. That is just mindless, however that is how WP is. Lack of some bright decisions. Any fact? sure, this is fact that has no argument against -
give us option in Dashboard to control that field on/off .
No. WP doesn't (hasn't) give that option to us. They think they know better what you want. that is the example dictacy.

Ouch, how I forgot, they are so kind and tell you - "there are plenty plugins that do the job". So, yes Average Joe, you should go and install some hecky plugin (by whoever developer, by possible security issues in those plugins, so if you site gets hacked because of "those plugins", don't blame WP). yeah, that is the story. So, someone out there 1 in 10 thinks that s/he likes the URL field in WP. So, dear universe, bear fighting the spam and deleting comments every day, wasting your precious time of the life for that person, who thinks he likes that illusional useful feature.

[emmaevy]

Consider using plugins like Comment Link Remove or CB Disable Comment URL.
I was tried SergeyBiryukov code. It's working on few themes not all themes.