What are trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress?

Some WordPress themes display list of trackbacks and pingbacks at the end of post in comment area. In this article you will learn how to disable trackbacks and pingbacks in wordpress in WordPress.

If you current theme does not display trackbacks and pingbacks, then you don’t need to worry but after installing new theme make sure you don’t see a list of pingbacks in the comments areas of certain posts.

How to delete or hide the pingbacks from visitor view altogether?

Hide pingbacks From individual post

Go to Edit post page, and at the very top-right of the screen is an “Screen Options” tab. Click on it, when it slides down make sure you have the “Discussion” option selected.

Now, scroll down below your content editor (same page), and look for the “Discussion” metabox. Inside that box you can see an option to disable trackbacks and pingbacks.

If you have pingbacks on your older post, you can see a list of pingbacks in comments section below article. click on Edit link, you will be redirected to edit page where you can delete pingbacks.

Hide pingbacks and trackbacks on all new articles

Log in to your deahboard, go to Discussion Settings. Click Setting > Discussion and uncheck second option from the top. If

Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles

is checked then uncheck this option.

That’s all. You have done it.

Delete all old pingbacks : PhpMyAdmin method

You can delete old pinkbacks quickly and easily by running this SQL query from within your PhpMyAdmin:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = 'pingback';

Above tip is by Josh.

Remove the pingback, trackback links from all of posts

Christi posted at WordPress discsuion forums that she was able to remove the link from all of her posts by doing a bulk edit and changing Pings to “Do Not Allow.”

If the link persists, it may be something going on with the theme.

Free WordPress Plugin to Hide Trackbacks

Hide Trackbacks free plugin is developed by pacifika, which requires WordPress 3.1.2 or higher.

After enabling the Hide Trackbacks plugin, trackbacks and pingbacks are no longer shown on your posts and the comment count is updated correctly to reflect this.

You can still access them via the admin panel. NOTE: Although the plugin officially requires WordPress 3.1.2 it might very well work on older WordPress versions (if it does please let me know).

Download Hide Trackbacks Plugin

If you are getting a lot of spam comment, you can use Antispam Bee free plugin, a popular WordPress plugin to control spam.

I hope now you know how you can disable trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress easily.

Resources

WordPress Codex Page: Combating Comment Spam
WpBeginner Tutorial: Disable Trackbacks and Pings on Existing WordPress Posts via PHPMyAdmin