How to Delete All Pending Comments in WordPress

Opening your WordPress dashboard to a massive pile of pending comments can feel completely overwhelming. Spam bots, moderation filters, and old post discussions can quickly turn that queue into something unmanageable.

We remember that feeling well from the early days of WPBeginner.

What started as a simple moderation task quickly became a daily chore that stole time from creating helpful content. Manually clearing hundreds of comments one by one just wasn’t an option for our growing team.

Thankfully, you don’t have to waste hours on this tedious job.

At WPBeginner, we’ve perfected a few reliable methods that let you safely delete all pending comments in WordPress. And this guide will walk you through each step, so you can get back to what matters – growing your website. 🙌

What Are Pending Comments in WordPress?

In WordPress, pending comments are new submissions from readers that have been held for manual review by a site administrator before they can appear publicly. This moderation step is crucial for preventing spam.

You’ll find them in the WordPress admin area by visiting the ‘Comments’ page and switching to the ‘Pending’ tab. You can also see a notification for how many comments are waiting for moderation.

At WPBeginner, we always recommend users turn on comment moderation on all their websites to combat comment spam. This means all comments on your website will go to the ‘Pending’ queue before they are approved.

Why Would Anyone Want to Delete Pending Comments?

There are many scenarios when you may need to do that. For instance:

• The Akismet anti-spam plugin got disabled on your site, and suddenly, all spam comments are appearing as pending.
• Articles on your website generate a lot of unwanted comments.
• You forgot to turn off comments on older posts.
• You simply ran out of time to manage your WordPress website, and it gathered hundreds of comments that were no longer relevant.

Now, it can take a long time to go through and moderate each comment individually. If you are confident that there are no comments marked ‘pending’ that you want to keep, then you can simply bulk delete them all.

But if you’re not, we’ll show you how to delete them safely.

Here’s a quick overview of all the methods we’ll share in this article:

Ready? Let’s clean up your comment section!

Method 1: Deleting All Pending Comments in WordPress Manually

If you only have a few hundred pending comments, it’s quite quick to delete them manually.

Simply go to the ‘Comments’ section from the WordPress admin area and then click on the ‘Pending’ tab to see a list of all your pending comments.

By default, this list will show 20 pending comments at a time.

To change this, click on the ‘Screen Options’ tab at the top-right corner of the page, as seen in the screenshot above.

Next, you’ll want to type ‘100’ into the ‘Number of items per page’ and click the ‘Apply’ button:

Now that you have 100 comments displaying, you can quickly scan all of them.

If you find nothing urgent or important, simply check the box to the left of ‘Author’ at the top of the list of comments. This will select all the comments on the page.

Then, you can click the ‘Bulk Actions’ dropdown and select the ‘Move to Trash’ option.

Go ahead and click the ‘Apply’ button to move all those comments into the trash.

WordPress will then show you a notification saying that comments have been moved to the Trash.

If you change your mind, just click the ‘Undo’ link to restore the comments to the ‘Pending’ tab. Don’t worry if you miss the notification – you can also manually restore them later.

If that’s not the case, then you can continue this process.

WordPress will show you the next 100 comments on the page. Simply repeat the process to delete all the pending comments.

Please note that when you delete a comment on WordPress, it’s not deleted right away. Instead, it goes to ‘Trash’ and will remain there for 30 days. After that, it will be automatically and permanently deleted.

If you would rather delete comments permanently right away, then you’ll want to switch to the ‘Trash’ tab on the ‘Comments’ page.

Before doing this, we highly recommend taking a quick glance through the ‘Trash’ tab to make sure you didn’t accidentally delete a legitimate comment earlier.

We also recommend making sure you have backed up your WordPress site, and then you can go ahead and click the ‘Empty Trash‘ button.

You will then see a message confirming that those comments have been deleted, but please note that ‘Empty Trash’ permanently deletes ALL comments currently sitting in the trash folder, which could include previously deleted approved comments.

On a side note, you can use ‘Screen Options’ to show up to 999 comments per page.

However, we strongly recommend sticking to batches of 100-200. Trying to load and delete too many comments at once forces the server to work too hard and can overload your WordPress hosting server.

This can cause a timeout error, especially since shared hosting servers often have PHP memory limits of just 128MB or 256MB. It’s often much faster to delete comments in a few manageable batches.

You might also see an error message like this one when you try to move comments to the trash:

If you have more than a few hundred pending comments, then we recommend using a plugin method to delete them.

Method 2: Deleting a Large Number of Pending Comments in WordPress Using a Plugin

The quickest way to delete a very large number of pending comments is to use a plugin.

Since this method will permanently delete your pending comments, we recommend backing up your WordPress site first with a plugin like Duplicator. That way, you’ll have a copy saved just in case you ever need it.

Step 1: Installing a WordPress Comment Plugin

In this guide, we’re going to use the Thrive Comments plugin, one of the best tools to improve WordPress comments.

Apart from allowing you to delete comments, it provides a pro-level moderation dashboard to prevent these massive comment pile-ups from happening again in the future. Plus, it gives you tools to increase visitor engagement, promote discussions, and get more comments.

We’ve tested it extensively to see how well it performs, and you can learn more about the plugin’s features in our extensive Thrive Themes Suite review.

To get started, you’ll need to create an account on the Thrive Themes website first.

Simply click on the ‘Start Now’ button and complete the sign-up process.

Upon registration, you’ll get your own Thrive Themes account dashboard.

Go ahead and download the Thrive Product Manager plugin.

The next step is to upload it to your WordPress site.

In your dashboard, go to Plugins » Add Plugin.

On the next screen, click the ‘Upload Plugin’ button at the top.

In the file uploader, click ‘Choose File,’ select the Thrive Product Manager zip file you just downloaded, and hit ‘Install Now.’

Don’t forget to click on ‘Activate’ when it appears. If you need help, you can refer to our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, let’s go to ‘Product Manager’ in your WordPress dashboard.

From here, you can click ‘Log into my account’ and enter your Thrive Themes credentials.

On the next screen, you’ll need to locate the Thrive Comments section. Once found, go ahead and check the ‘Install Product’ box.

Then, just click ‘Install selected products (1)’ to complete the installation.

After installation, you’ll see the ‘Ready to Use’ message.

There’s also a ‘Go to the Thrive Themes Dashboard’ button to manage the plugin. Go ahead and click on it.

You’re now ready to delete your pending comments.

Step 2: Deleting Pending Comments Using Thrive Comments

Instead of using the default WordPress comments view, Thrive Comments provides a dedicated, organized moderation dashboard to make managing comments much easier.

From your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Comments » Thrive Comments Moderations » Pending. On this screen, you can approve, edit, or delete them as needed.

To delete them all, simply click on the check box next to ‘Bulk Actions.’

After that, you can hover over the dropdown menu to look at your options. Go ahead and click on ‘Mark as Trash.’

This will move all pending comments to the ‘Trash’ tab.

Once again, click the check box next to ‘Bulk actions’ and then select ‘Delete Permanently’ from the dropdown.

Now, all you have to do is click the ‘Apply’ button, and Thrive Comments will start comment deletion.

Once done, you’ll see the ‘No comments to Display’ notification, like this:

Thrive Comments also allows you to do several other things with your WordPress comments. For example, you can:

• Allow Users to Like or Dislike Comments in WordPress
• Feature or Bury Comments in WordPress
• Redirect Your User’s Attention With Comment Redirect

Bonus Tip: Deleting Spam Comments Only in WordPress

What if you don’t want to delete pending comments but want to delete the ones that are marked as spam?

This is very easy to do in WordPress. Anti-spam tools like Akismet automatically catch bad comments and route them to the ‘Spam’ tab, making it completely safe to empty this folder periodically.

First, you can go to ‘Comments’ in your WordPress admin area and open the ‘Spam’ tab:

Next, go ahead and click the ‘Empty Spam’ button.

This will delete all spam comments permanently, not just the ones on the current page.

For more detailed instructions, you can see our step-by-step guide on how to quickly batch-delete spam comments in WordPress.

FAQs About Deleting All Pending Comments in WordPress

Here are some of the most common questions our readers ask us about deleting pending comments in WordPress.

How many comments can I delete at once manually in WordPress?

You can increase the number of comments shown per page up to 999, but we recommend 100–200 for stability.

Does deleting comments from ‘Pending’ also remove spam?

Not necessarily. The ‘Pending’ queue includes all unapproved comments. Spam is held in a separate ‘Spam’ folder.

Will deleting pending comments hurt my SEO?

No. Pending comments aren’t visible to search engines because they aren’t published. Deleting them won’t affect your site’s SEO.

Can I restore deleted comments if I change my mind?

Once pending comments are permanently deleted, they can’t be recovered from the WordPress dashboard. If you think you might need them later, consider creating a database backup first.

Further Reading for Improving Your WordPress Comments

We hope this article helped you learn how to delete all pending comments in WordPress.

Next, you may also want to see our other helpful guides on:

• How to Completely Disable Comments in WordPress (Ultimate Guide)
• How to Allow Users to Edit Their Comments in WordPress
• How to Add Custom Fields to the Comments Form in WordPress
• How to Make Blog Post Comments Searchable in WordPress
• How to Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress

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