AOS Comment Spam Cleanup vs Disable Comments & Delete All Comments

AOS Comment Spam Cleanup helps you remove comment spam in bulk using URL pattern matching, and prevents future bot submissions with a honeypot and quality scoring. Whether you have hundreds of shortlink spam comments or want ongoing protection, this plugin has you covered. It works alongside Akismet and other spam filters, not instead of them. ✨ What you can do 🔍 Pattern Scanner Type a URL fragment (e.g. shorturl.fm) into the scanner, click Check Count to see exactly how many comments match, then choose your action: mark as spam, move to trash, or delete permanently. 👀 See the matches before you act A count tells you how many, not which ones. Show matches lists the matching comments — author, comment excerpt, the post it sits on, the date and the current status — so you can spot a pattern that also catches real comments before you run an action that cannot be undone. The list is read-only and closes itself whenever the pattern changes, so it can never describe a different search than the one in the field. ⏱ Scheduled Auto-Cleanup Set a WP-Cron job to run hourly, twice daily, daily, or weekly. Configure your patterns and action once — the plugin keeps your comment section clean automatically. 🤖 Honeypot Bot Protection An invisible form field is added to your comment form. Real visitors never see or fill it. Bots that automatically fill every form field get rejected with a 403 error — silently, without affecting real users who never see or fill the field. 📊 Comment Quality Scoring Every new comment is automatically scored based on: – Number of external links (+2 per link) – Shortlink in author URL (+4 points) – Very short text under 15 characters (+2 points) – High symbol/punctuation density (+3 points) – Known spam keywords like “casino” or “viagra” (+3 points) – Excessive ALL-CAPS usage (+2 points) If the score exceeds your threshold, the comment is held for review or marked as spam automatically. 🚫 Gravatar Privacy (GDPR-friendly) Optionally block all external requests to gravatar.com. When enabled, avatar images are suppressed completely, preventing third-party data transfers without visitor consent — helpful for GDPR / DSGVO compliance. 💬 Disable Comments Globally Close comments and trackbacks / pingbacks on all posts, pages, and custom post types in one click. Existing comments are not deleted — only new submissions are blocked. Disabling the toggle restores original comment status immediately without any database changes. 🛡 WordPress Blocklist Integration Add URL patterns directly to WordPress’s native disallowed_keys list — new comments containing those patterns are caught before they even reach the scanner. 📋 Spam Domain Analysis Automatically scans your existing spam and trash comments to surface the most common offending domains, so you always know what to block next. 🎯 Who is this for? Site owners who suddenly find hundreds of shortlink spam comments (you know who you are) Bloggers who want passive spam protection without a heavy third-party service Developers managing multiple WordPress sites who need efficient bulk moderation Anyone frustrated by shortlinks like bit.ly, shorturl.fm, cutt.ly in their comments ❓ Why not just use Akismet? Akismet is great for real-time filtering — but it doesn’t help you clean up existing spam, and it doesn’t support pattern-based bulk actions. AOS Comment Spam Cleanup fills that gap. Use both. 🔒 Privacy This plugin does not collect, transmit or store any personal data on external servers. All processing happens on your own server. No external API calls are made during normal operation. 🌍 Translations Ships with English and German (de_DE). Help translate at translate.wordpress.org. 👨‍💻 Developer Made by AOS Digital — WordPress development from Germany.

Disable comments across your entire site or only for selected post types. This removes comment forms from the front end, hides comment-related menus and widgets in the dashboard, and disables pingbacks and trackbacks. Delete comments in bulk with a simple cleanup tool. You can remove all comments at once or filter them by post type or comment status. Manage links in comments by disabling the website field from the comment form for cleaner, safer comment submissions. Replace external links in comments with safe span tags so they no longer act as real, followable links. Key Features Disable comments – Disable comments globally or by post type – Hide all comment-related admin menus, dashboard widgets and settings – Disable pingbacks and trackbacks – Disable comments in RSS/Atom feeds Delete comments – Delete all comments in WordPress at once – Delete comments by post type – Delete comments by comment status (spam, unapproved, trash) Manage links in comments – Replace all external comment links with span tags via JavaScript, removing their SEO impact while keeping the text visible to users. – Remove the website/URL field from the comment form All features can be enabled or disabled safely, and comment disabling does not remove existing comments unless you choose to delete them. Why use this plugin? WordPress still loads comment features even when you don’t use them, which can clutter your dashboard, expose unused functionality, and create unnecessary moderation work. This plugin gives you complete control over WordPress comments, whether you want to disable comments globally, bulk delete comments, or just manage them more efficiently. Advanced Configuration To prevent the plugin from replacing your theme’s comment template, define the following constant: define('DISABLE_COMMENTS_REMOVE_COMMENTS_TEMPLATE', false); You can add this definition either to your wp-config.php file or to your theme’s functions.php file. Support We’re here to help. Feel free to open a new thread on the Support Forum. Useful Resources If you like this plugin, you’re sure to love our other plugins as well. Our blog is a great place to learn more about WordPress. Get the most out of your website with our helpful WordPress YouTube Tutorials.