Remove WordPress comments in the database
If you can't access your WordPress dashboard, you can remove WordPress comments from within the database. This can also be helpful if you need to remove comments in bulk quickly.
Warning: Always make a backup of your site before making any changes to the database.
- Sign in to phpMyAdmin.
- In phpMyAdmin, on the left menu, select the name of the database your site uses.
- Select the wp_comments table (select the text, not the checkbox).
Note: wp_ is the default database table prefix. If your table prefix isn't wp_, focus on finding _comments. There should only be one _comments table.
- (Optional) If you have more than 25 comments, in the Number of rows menu, you can select a higher number of comments to display per page.
- Select the checkbox next to each comment you want to remove or scroll down to the bottom of the page and select Check All to select all comments from that page.
- At the bottom, in the With selected: section, select Delete.
- Select Yes to remove selected comments permanently.
- If you have multiple pages of comments in the database, repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 until you remove all unwanted comments.
If you were removing spam comments, consider changing your comment settings to prevent spam in the future.
More info
- If you can access your WordPress dashboard, you can remove the comments there.
- If you don't want to remove comments yourself, our WordPress Premium Support team can do that for you.
