Disable Comments and New Users

Administration > Options > General and uncheck Anyone can register

Administration > Options > Discussion and uncheck Allow people to post comments on the article

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I just finished doing all that myself!

Now that you’ve turned them off, you have to edit your theme template.

Here’s an example, if you’re using Kubrick. Open up single.php and look at the code there and see how it different from mine:

<?php } elseif (!('open' == $post-> comment_status) && !('open' == $post->ping_status)) {
// Neither Comments, nor Pings are open ?>
<!-- Both comments and pings are currently closed. -->

<?php } edit_post_link('Edit this entry.','',''); ?>

</small>

</div>
</div>

<!-- <?php comments_template(); ?> -->

<?php endwhile; else: ?>

You’ll see a number of places that I’ve commented out (<!– xxx –>) and at least one place I deleted stuff entirely – I deleted the stuff right in front of “edit this post” but made sure to keep that in for my ease of use. I’m brand new at this, and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have deleted anything – I’d have commented them out too somehow, just in case I ever wanted that functionality back. 🙂

There are other files in your theme you’ll have to do the same thing for. While editing everything in the theme I had Safari open to edit the code in WP, Firefox open to view the site as a user not logged in, and my ftp program open so I could alter permissions as needed.