How to remove Disqus without losing your old comments

Do this before you change anything else, even if you plan to keep comments in WordPress.

Disqus says its exports are "designed for backup purposes only" and do not follow its own import format, so you cannot load the file into another Disqus site. It also warns that exports may not be available for very large sites: if you have asked more than twice with no link, an export is probably unavailable for your site. On WordPress, the sync in Step 2 is then your only copy.

The Disqus WordPress plugin can sync comments into your WordPress database, and Disqus says comments synced this way "will be available in WordPress should Disqus be deactivated or removed from your site". The question is whether syncing was on, and since when.

Open Comments > All Comments in WordPress and compare it with Disqus for your oldest posts as well as your newest, because syncing only covers the time after someone set it up.

If WordPress now has every comment, skip this step and keep the XML as your backup. If the sync will not run, or you are on a static site, Ghost or Hugo with no database to sync into, the export is your only copy. Choose what happens to it:

Three systems document a Disqus import. Remark42, which you host yourself, imports it with import -p disqus, and its guide warns that importing removes any comments already on the site. Isso, also self-hosted, imports it with isso -c isso.cfg import -t disqus and can match threads by your old disqus_identifier instead of the URL path. Hyvor Talk, a hosted service, imports it from Settings > Import: comments arrive as guest comments their authors cannot edit, removed, spam and unapproved comments are skipped, and the file limit is 100MB.

WordPress has no importer for the Disqus export: Tools > Import covers Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type and TypePad, RSS, Tumblr and WordPress files only. Getting the XML in means a script or third-party plugin, so run it on a staging copy first and check a few threads by hand: replies under the right parent, on the right post, with the right dates.

Comments are personal data: the names and words of the people who wrote them. If you republish them, decide whether to keep full names and how you will handle someone who asks for theirs to be removed. If you are unsure, talk to your DPO or lawyer.

Disqus loads comments with JavaScript after the page arrives. Google says it renders JavaScript in a separate step, once its resources allow, and does not index content missing from the rendered HTML. So the comment text may never have helped your posts rank.

Before you remove anything, search Google for a distinctive sentence from an old comment, in quotes, and look at the post's queries in Search Console for words that only appear in its comments. If nothing turns up, removing Disqus will not cost the post search traffic. If you chose static HTML in Step 3, the comments become part of the page for the first time, so keep only the ones worth reading.

Keep post URLs exactly as they are during the move. Disqus, Isso and Hyvor Talk all tie a thread to the page URL or an identifier, so changing slugs at the same time makes imported threads harder to match.

On WordPress, deactivate and delete the Disqus plugin under Plugins. Then search your theme, widgets and any Custom HTML blocks for a <div id="disqus_thread"> and a script loading embed.js from <shortname>.disqus.com: these are the parts of the universal embed code, and themes or page builders that added Disqus without the plugin keep loading it until they are gone.

On Ghost, Disqus sits in the theme's post.hbs template: take the code out and upload the theme again. On Hugo, remove the services.disqus.shortname setting from your site configuration and the {{ partial "disqus.html" . }} call from your templates. On any other static site generator, search your layouts for disqus_thread and embed.js.

With Disqus off, WordPress shows its native comments again, including the synced ones. Decide what the end of each post is for: discussion between readers, corrections, or a quick signal of whether the post was useful. Only discussion needs a comment box. If you want none, untick Allow people to post comments on new articles in Settings > Discussion, or use Automatically close comments on articles older than [X] days, which removes the form from older posts and leaves approved comments visible.

Asklet is not a comment system and cannot import your Disqus comments. It fills the end of a post with a short question, such as "Was this post useful?" with Yes and No, and shows the answers to your team only, per post and per path. On WordPress, the free Asklet plugin adds it without editing your theme.

It sets no cookies and uses no tracking identifiers or fingerprinting, so it needs no consent banner. It stores the answers, the page path and the time, and no name, email or IP address. If you keep native WordPress comments for discussion, it can sit above them.