Mark asked: How to batch deleting spam comments on a WordPress blog?

Mark just asked me how can he delete more than 6000 spam comments he received on his blog during his holidays.

First of it all, backup your WordPress database. Then, login to your phpmyadmin, select your WordPress blog database and click on SQL:
Batch deleting spam comments on a WordPress blog

Then, insert the following sql command:

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '0';

All non-approved comments we be deleted. But instead of having such trouble next time, you should definitely install Akismet!

29 Responses

Mark

Oct 10 2008 12:59

Thanks a lot Jean, it worked like a charm!

jbj

Oct 10 2008 14:44

Glad it helped!

Tiffany

Dec 12 2008 05:46

Oh thank god, I had one of my websites hacked via a plugin, forgot to reinstall Akismet, and was trying to figure out how to delete 32k spam comments. You’re a lifesaver!

emo hairstyles

Jan 03 2009 13:39

great, there’s bunch of comment in my blog

Rarst

Jan 05 2009 18:29

WordPress 2.7 now has cool native “Delete all spam” button.

clickfire

Feb 05 2009 04:55

Worked perfect!

NO can do

Jun 16 2009 07:44

I’m using a different template, so I think that is why this cannot be done.. i came up with the following:

Deleted rows: 0 (Query took 0.0003 sec)

Hmmm.. why?
I using a review type of theme.

Any other methods?

Me again

Jun 16 2009 08:26

Got it solved.. My bad.. Choose the wrong database with nil comments.. sql is not that bad after all, NOT SO SCARY as i thought. Easy peasy..

http://www.drostdesigns.com/how-to-mass-delete-comments-from-wordpress-using-phpmyadmin/#comment-333095

MORE COMPLETE INFO….

Carl Vandors

Sep 30 2009 16:37

Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so, Excellent post!

BloggerDude

Oct 09 2009 02:22

I don’t know If I said it already but …Hey good stuff…keep up the good work! I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,)

A definite great read….

Colin

Jan 23 2010 08:50

Fantastic! Thanks!

Tony

Mar 03 2010 21:12

Thanks for pointing that out, Rarst! I never noticed it! I never liked working with MySQL.

Elena

Mar 06 2010 04:09

Very helpful, thank you!

Hasan K.

Apr 10 2010 04:35

useful information. If that command doesn’t work, try the following:

DELETE from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ‘spam’

Ugur Akinci

Apr 11 2010 15:44

It worked! Thanks much. I deleted 39,500 spam comments with a single SQL command instead of deleting 10 comments at a time from inside the WP site admin module! That’s fantastic. I tweeted this as well. Have a great day!