Disable all comments/pings in WordPress with WP-CLI

disable-comments.sh

$ wp post list --format=ids | xargs wp post update --comment_status=closed

# Output:
# Success: Updated post 2514.
# Success: Updated post 2511.
# Success: Updated post 2504.
# Success: Updated post 2499.
# Success: Updated post 2441.
# etc...

disable-pings.sh

$ wp post list --format=ids | xargs wp post update --ping_status=closed

# Output:
# Success: Updated post 2514.
# Success: Updated post 2511.
# Success: Updated post 2504.
# Success: Updated post 2499.
# Success: Updated post 2441.
# etc...

This method is a bit faster if you have many posts and not all of them need the change:

$ wp post list --comment_status=open --format=ids | xargs wp post update --comment_status=closed
...
$ wp post list --ping_status=open --format=ids | xargs wp post update --ping_status=closed
...

If you like to toggle them for Posts only then here is the quickest way.

wp post list --post_type=post --comment_status=open --format=ids | xargs wp post update --comment_status=closed
wp post list --post_type=post --ping_status=open --format=ids | xargs wp post update --ping_status=closed

Disabling pings and comments can be simplified into one command:

wp post update $(wp post list  --format=ids) --ping_status=closed --comment_status=closed

Also, if you want to disable them by default, this should turn them off:

wp option update default_pingback_flag ""
wp option update default_ping_status ""
wp option update default_comment_status ""

I would share these with closed, yes and empty string will end up as closed in the database, but I think it's confusing. Setting them with true or 1 will NOT enable them back on, you need to use open. It's not a boolean, as I thought originally.

I just made a little post about it as I ran into this and dug deeper.