The Why

As a new blogger I was really excited to start getting some comments on my WordPress blog and would happily approve every one.

Excellent what can go wrong, I have Akismet and Comment Blacklist Manager installed so I am super safe from Spam – Right?

Nope

It is a sad fact of life that WordPress websites attract a lot of spammers as most of them know how easy it is to build backlinks from them.

Most bloggers do not know how to control spam and they do not have the time to moderate each comment.

These spammers do not use their real name and always leave a backlink to a site, which in most cases may not be related to your website, or even worse redirect to a porn or gaming site, which will really put your site in jeopardy with regard to ranking in Google.

Another issue with accepting website URL’s on comments are that websites come and go, say for example you have a 1000 comments and conservatively 50% of those websites go the way of the Dodo over time, that is 500 broken links from your site.

Another NoNo for Google ranking.

The optimal way to discourage spam, and reduce broken links, is to remove the “Website” or “URL” field entirely from your WordPress website.

Will it reduce the number of comments – possibly.

Will it ensure these are valid comments and reduce the number of broken back links – definitely.

The How

The simplest way to do this without using a Plug In is as follows:-

Go to Appearance>Customize>Additional CSS

Enter this code

#commentform .comment-form-url {display:none;}

Below Image for reference

Save and Done

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a Non-Spammy Comment