This post was originally published on December 17, 2016
The latest update to this post was made 2 years ago.

Visitors Cannot Submit Comments On Your WordPress Site

Although you may have comments enabled on your WordPress site, you may find that visitors still can’t post comments on your posts.  They will be presented with the message “Sorry, comments are closed for this item“.  We experienced this very issue!

First, be sure your WordPress settings are correct:

• WP-Admin console -> Settings -> Discussion : Make sure ‘Allow people to post comments on new articles’ is checked.  Optionally make sure the ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment’ is checked if you wish to cut down on SPAM.
• On some themes, you can choose override settings for each article, might want to verify that also by opening the post and checking the settings below the content.  If you find all of the articles are setup wrong for comments, you will need to check the settings on your specific WordPress theme.

If you’ve checked all the above and find that the ‘Sorry, comments are closed for this item” message still appears, it may be the Jetpack plugin causing the problem…  Of course, the remainder of this article assumes you do have and use the [Jetpack Plugin] on your WordPress site!  If you don’t it is highly recommended!!

Image: Jetpack -> Settings -> Engagement -> Comments Settings
(Click Image For Larger View)

There is a setting in Jetpack to check…   WP-Admin Console -> Jetpack -> Settings.  On the settings page, hit the tab at the top of the window called ‘Engagement‘ and look for the section called ‘Comments‘.  In our case, it was as simple as disabling this feature.  Once disabled, the system started responding normally as users tried to comment.

Tags: #wordpress #jetpack #techsupport #plugins