By Default, Turn Comments Off for Pages & Leave Comments On for Posts

Question

By default "Discussion: Allow comments." is checked when a new page or post is created. I know you can make "Discussion: Allow comments." unchecked by default on both pages and posts by going to "Discussion Settings" and unchecking "Allow people to post comments on new articles".

I would like the default to be:

• On posts: Discussion: Allow comments. (checked by default)
• On pages: Discussion: Allow comments. (unchecked by default)

I do not want to use a plugin and don't want to modify the main WordPress code. I was hoping I could make a function in my functions.php file to do this?

Something like:

function disable_comments_on_pages() {

}
add_filter( '', 'disable_comments_on_pages' );

Answer 1

Hook into wp_insert_post, check if it is an auto-draft for a page, and set the comment_status to closed:

add_action( 'wp_insert_post', 't5_disable_default_comments_on_pages', 10, 2 );

function t5_disable_default_comments_on_pages( $post_ID, $post )
{
    remove_filter( current_filter(), __FUNCTION__ );

    if ( 'auto-draft' !== $post->post_status or 'page' !== $post->post_type )
        return;

    $post->comment_status = 'closed';

    wp_update_post( $post );
}