Are you looking for an easy way to move comments between WordPress posts?
You might be writing a new version of a post and plan to redirect from the original post. Redirects are great for avoiding broken links and preserving your WordPress SEO, but the original comments won’t be moved to the new post.
In this article, we will show you how to easily move comments between WordPress posts.
Why Move Comments Between WordPress Posts?
By default, any comments you get on your WordPress site are attached to a specific post or page and can’t be moved.
However, sometimes you might need to keep comments but move them to another post or page. For example, you might decide to combine multiple posts together in a new post and delete the individual ones. Or, you might decide that a post would work better recreated as a page, or vice versa.
Redirecting those deleted posts is good for your website’s search engine optimization, but it won’t save the comments.
In those cases, it would be helpful to move comments from one post or page to the new one, instead of losing them or having to recreate them all manually.
How to Move Comments Between WordPress Posts
You can easily move comments between WordPress posts using the free Copy or Move Comments plugin.
Note: It’s recommended to create a backup of your site before moving the comments, since it can’t be reversed. See our expert pick of the best backup plugins for WordPress to get started.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, click on Copy/Move Comments in the WordPress sidebar.
This WordPress plugin lets you choose between moving or copying comments.
If you choose ‘Copy,’ then it will duplicate all of the original comments and then add them to the new page or post.
When you copy the comments, the original comments won’t be deleted. This means you’ll end up with duplicate comments on your WordPress blog.
If you choose ‘Move,’ then the plugin will delete the original ‘source’ comments and then add them to the new ‘target’ page or post. This helps you avoid duplicate content.
Once you’ve made your decision, open the Action dropdown. You can now select either ‘Copy’ or ‘Move.’
Your next task is choosing the Source. This is the location where you want to copy your comments from.
To get started, click on the Source dropdown.
You can now choose the post type. For example, if you wanted to copy comments from a specific WordPress post, then you would choose ‘post.’
Next, click on the Select Post dropdown. Depending on your selection, this will show all of your pages, or all of your posts.
You can now simply click to select the page or post that you want to use as your source.
The next step is opening the Select Comment Type dropdown.
You can choose whether you want to see comments that have replies, or ‘Single’ comments. These are comments that have no replies.
The plugin will show all of the comments that fit your criteria.
Now, you can simply click to select every comment that you want to move or copy. If you want to move all of the comments, then you can click on the checkbox at the top of the column to select them all at once.
Your next task is telling the plugin where it should move these comments to.
To do this, scroll down to the Target section at the bottom. After that, open the Select Post Type dropdown, and choose the destination’s post type.
Next, click on the Select Post dropdown.
Here, you can choose your target which is the post or page where you want to move these comments to.
After choosing your target, click on the Perform Action button.
The plugin will now move or copy all of the selected comments on this page.
If you check out the target page or post, you’ll see that all of your comments have been added to this page.
It’s also worth checking the source page or post. If you chose ‘Copy’, then you should still see all of your original comments. If you chose ‘Move’, then all of the original comments should have vanished from this page or post.
After moving your comments, you may want to change the order that WordPress displays these comments. By showing newer comments first, you can keep the conversation fresh and get more comments on your WordPress blog. You can learn how to do this in our step by step guide on how to display the most recent comments first in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to move comments between WordPress posts. You may also want to check out our guide on how to allow user registration on your WordPress website, or see our expert pick of the best WordPress membership plugins.
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