how to remove the “also on” feature from disqus

I’m going to caveat this post with the fact that it won’t apply to everyone and, like many of my blogging tips posts, it’s not necessarily the most exciting of posts. That said, I hope that others who’ve experienced this issue find it helpful! Blogging is a largely aesthetic thing and, if you’re like me, you want your site to reflect your vision. For my blog, that means something clean, fresh, and uncluttered. I don’t like excess and, unfortunately, different platform plugins play around with that.

Over a year ago, I made the switch from a Blogger platform to WordPress-hosted blog, and I haven’t regretted it even once. I did, however, do a small customization of my own and installed the Disqus comment system because I felt the functionality was much cleaner and more user-friendly. Last week, Disqus threw a wrench in the system, however, and added their own “Recommendations” bit to their comment system, which installs a new bit of code into the widget’s appearance on your site. I did some panicked research and figured out how to remove the “also on” feature from Disqus, and I hope it helps you, too!

How to Remove the “Also On” Feature from Disqus

First and foremost, let me tell you what I’m talking about. If you scroll down to the comment section of your blog, many blogs now display a scroll bar of popular posts from your archives. Above it, it stays “Also on XXX”. You can see it in the header image of this blog. It’s from your own blog and it’s your own content, so what’s the issue, you ask? Well, my issue with it is twofold:

1. My blog is set up to automatically display other posts – four of them, to be exact.
2. This “also on” feature is a clunky scrollbox that not only messed with my blog aesthetic, but also displayed posts that weren’t at all relevant.

To remove the “also on” feature from Disqus, you need to log in to your actual Disqus account. This new feature is set up on the back end of Disqus, so you won’t be able to alter it on WordPress alone. Once logged into Disqus, you’ll want to follow these steps (be sure to check out the screenshots above to see what I mean!):

1. From the top right corner, scroll down and click on “Settings.”
2. Once on the Settings page, click on the cog wheel at the top right corner, and click on “Admin.”
3. From the Admin page, make sure you’re managing the correct site. If you have more than one, scroll down and click your site.
4. On the Admin page, you’ll see “Edit Settings” in the top right corner. Click that.
5. On the Configuration page, you’ll see a menu on the left hand side, with one feature called “Recommendations.” You’ll see in my screenshots that it’s highlighted as a new feature. Click on that.
6. Once on the recommendations page, you’ll see a series of options, one of which says “Turn Recommendations Off” on the very bottom in red. Select that.

That’s literally all you have to do to remove that feature from your site. I recommend refreshing the Recommendations page on Disqus to ensure that it’s still turned off. Then, clear your site cache and cookies, and refresh your WordPress-hosted blog. Voila! The “also on” feature should be gone! Also, just a little final note; from what I can see, this is only displaying thus far on WordPress hosted sites, not Blogger/Blogspot. That said, if it changes, that should help eliminate the excess feature!

If you have a WordPress blog, tell me, was this helpful?