How to Disable Link in Comment and Disable Auto-linking in WordPress

Last updated on August 11, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Single toggle, two effects

• Prevents WordPress from converting bare URLs in comments to clickable anchors

• Strips existing anchor tags from comment text

• Reduces link-based spam effectiveness

• Affects all future comments; existing comments are filtered on display

What Is the Disable Link in Comment feature?

WordPress comments have two link behaviors:

Auto-linking: Bare URLs in comment text (e.g., “Check out example.com”) are automatically converted to clickable anchor tags when displayed
Rendered links: Existing <a> tags in the comment HTML (e.g., <a href="...">text</a>) are displayed as clickable links

Disable Link in Comment turns off both behaviors. URLs appear as plain text (e.g., “Check out example.com” stays as text, not a link), and existing link tags are stripped from the rendered output. The raw comment data is unchanged; only the display is affected.

Why You Need It

Comment links are a primary vector for comment spam and for users to drive traffic away from your site. Disabling them has several effects:

Reduced spam: Spammers cannot post clickable links; their primary motivation is gone
Lower bounce rate: Visitors who click links in comments leave your site; removing the links keeps them on-page
Cleaner appearance: Long URLs in comments can break formatting; plain text is cleaner
Better SEO: Outbound links from comments pass link equity; removing them concentrates equity on your own content

The trade-off is that legitimate commenters who want to share a URL have to type it as plain text. For most sites, this is acceptable.

How to Use Disable Link in Comment in Classic Monks

Step 1: Navigate to Settings

Click into the Classic Monks plugin settings in your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Go to the Content Subtab

Click on the Core menu, then click the Content subtab.

Step 3: Enable Disable Link in Comment

Scroll to the Comment System Overrides section and toggle on Disable Link in Comment and Disable Auto-linking.

Disable link in comments.

Step 4: Save Changes

Click Save Changes.

Step 5: Test

Open any post with comments. View the comments on the front-end. URLs in comment text should appear as plain text, not as clickable links.

WordPress comment section showing one comment with a link, and a form to leave a new comment with a submit button.

Configuration Options

Option	Description	Default
Disable Link in Comment and Disable Auto-linking	Master toggle. Two effects in one.	Off

No nested options.

What Gets Disabled

Behavior	Before	After
Bare URL in comment (“example.com”)	Auto-converted to `<a href="example.com">example.com</a>`	Rendered as plain text “example.com”
HTML link in comment (“`<a href="...">text</a>`“)	Rendered as clickable link	Rendered as plain text “text” (anchor tag stripped)
Markdown-style link in comment (“text“)	Rendered as text + URL	Rendered as text + URL (no link)
Email link in comment (mailto:)	Rendered as clickable email	Rendered as plain text email address
HTML in comment text (other tags)	Rendered as HTML	Rendered as HTML (only links are affected)
Comment author’s URL field (the website field)	Rendered as clickable author name	Rendered as plain text (or hidden if you also enabled “Remove Comment URLs”)

Developer Notes

Disable Link in Comments removes hyperlinks from comment content. No developer hooks are currently exposed.

Options used:

Option	Type	Default
`disable_link_in_comments`	Boolean	`false`

Troubleshooting

Links in comments are still showing as clickable

Cause: The toggle is off, or a caching plugin is serving a cached version of the comments with the original link HTML.
Fix: Verify the toggle is on. Clear all caching layers (page cache, object cache, CDN). View the page source to confirm the link tags are stripped from the rendered HTML.

The comment text is showing escaped HTML

Cause: If a commenter’s text includes raw HTML like <a>, the comment system is escaping the HTML for security. This is correct behavior; do not try to render unescaped HTML in comments.
Fix: None needed. Comments should never render raw HTML from untrusted sources (XSS risk). The feature strips only the link tags after WordPress’s comment sanitization.

I want to disable link auto-linking but keep existing link tags

Cause: The toggle does both at once. There is no separate control.
Fix: Use a small custom plugin that filters make_clickable_rel (the filter that handles auto-linking) to disable it, but leaves the link-tag-stripping behavior alone. Or use a child theme’s comment_text filter to selectively re-enable existing links after stripping.

Comment authors' website URLs are still showing in the comment meta

Cause: The comment author’s “Website” URL (the URL they enter in the comment form) is rendered separately from the comment text. Disable Link in Comment strips links from the comment text, but the website URL in the comment meta is a different field.
Fix: Enable the separate Remove Comment URLs feature, which removes the website field from the form AND strips the website URL from the rendered comment meta.