How to delete all pending comments quickly in WordPress

If you are using default comments of WordPress, your website must be getting many spam comments. If you have not enabled comment moderation and not checking the comments section daily, there could be hundreds of pending comments on your website. Deleting pending or spam comments one by one isn’t an easy task if there are so many comments. You can also select 20 comments at a time for bulk deletion. But what if you want to delete app pending or sam comments quickly? There’s a way. In this article, I will tell you how to delete all pending or spam comments in one go.

Also read: Clean And Optimize WordPress Database

Delete all pending comments

Even if you manage to stop spam comments, they either land in pending or in the spam section. It still takes space in your database. So, it is important to remove them and clean the database.

1. Change Comments per page and bulk delete
2. Delete All Comments Easily Plugin

The second way offers a one-click option.

1. Change Comments per page and bulk delete

By default, WordPress lets you select up to 20 comments at a time. But you can change this number to 999.

Click on Screen Options at the top right side.

Now you can increase the number based on your choice. If comments are more than 999, you will have to repeat the step until all comments are moved to trash.

After you have increased the pagination number, you can click on the checkbox near to Author to select all the comments.

Now click on dropdown of Bulk Actions and select Move to Trash. Then Click on Apply button.

Now go to Trash and you will see the empty Trash option to delete all comments in Trash. Click on the Empty Trash button to remove all comments in one go.

Now you can follow the same way with Spam comments. First, move them to trash and then empty trash to remove all comments.

2. Delete All Comments Easily Plugin

If you want an easy way, you can use Delete All Comments Easily WordPress plugin that can delete thousands of Pending comments at once.

This plugin adds a checkbox to bulk delete all pending comments in one go.

Also see: How to Limit Number of WordPress Revisions

Wrap Up

If your WordPress website has lots of pending or spam comments, you need to know how to clean them. You should always try to keep the size of database as low as possible. Always clean Spam comments if you get too much Spam comments. You can also think of switching to Disqus comments.

If you still have any question about deleting pending comments, ask using the comments section below.