Once installed this plug-in will replace your theme’s comments template with its own. Giving you threading, pagination and jQuery based roll up of subordinate comments this allows you to keep things tidy. The roll up can be told to trigger at any depth you feel is best using the comments page under appearance. Also available on the plug-in’s admin page is the option to use the other included stylesheet that’s more appropriate for dark hued themes. You can also tell it to use no stylesheet at all. This is handy if you want to roll it into your themes stylesheet to cut down the number of HTTP requests a visitor makes, useful on busy sites.
This could also be useful for theme builders as you’d not have to worry about your comments.php again, Comments.php is one of the more complicated elements of any theme. And don’t worry about only being able to use the stylesheets provided or having to hack the plug-in after every update, I’ve included three filters to allow you to replace the jQuery and the stylesheet with something of your own.
The filters
- spec_comment_css This will pass the URL of the stylesheet through to your function to replace with your own file.
- spec_comment_js The will pass the URL to the jQuery file that controls the roll up and a few other elements.
- spec_comment_local_js This will pass in an array of localisation strings that are passed to the jQuery code.
To replace the CSS file you could add something like the following to your functions.php that would point to a comments.css file in the folder of your current theme.
<?php
add_filter('spec_comment_css', 'my_css_file');
function my_css_file() {
return get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/comments.css';
}
?>
Warning
Some themes will fail to work with this without you doing something to them first. Such as if the theme doesn’t call the comments.php using the comments_template(); template tag or if your theme deals with comments in an unusual way, such as placing them in a sidebar or calling them in using Ajax. A missing or unusual DOCTYPE could cause problems too, in fact there are lots of things that could cause strangeness. However with most of the themes I’ve tested this with it has worked without issue straight out of the gate and even if it doesn’t look right you need only disable the plug-in to go back to how things were so nothing lost.
The install
- Upload {commenting.php} and all sub folders to {/wp-content/plugins/spec-comments/} or {/wp-content/mu-plugins/} directory. If the directory doesn’t exist then create it.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- You should now see an extra menu called comments show up under the appearance menu in the main admin sidebar.
- Check a page on your site with comments and see that everything is as you’d hope. If it’s not then proceed to the config menu and see if what you want can be set from there.
The config
- The main option with this plug-in is the option to define at which point the comments roll up. Default is set so that all replies are hidden behind a click but with the drop down you could specify that replies to replies are hidden or replies to replies of replies and so on…
- The next group of options are some simple toggles and the first of these lets you turn off the plug-in’s CSS file. This can be handy if you want to keep all CSS in the one stylesheet thus reducing the number of HTTP requests or if you just want to style it up in your own way. If you turn off the style anything attached to the spec_comment_css filter will fail to run also.
- As an extra to the one above we have the option to turn on the dark version of the comments. This is handy if your theme is, well err.., dark.
- If you’d rather drop all the javaScript then the next option is for you. Be warned however that this will cause some styling issues in IE6 as jQuery is used to add some extra classes to items that would otherwise be inaccessible to IE6’s limited understanding of CSS. All other browsers are unaffected and IE6 will still be in a perfectly acceptable state it just won’t look the same as the other real browsers. Much the same as for the CSS, if you turn it off anything attached to the spec_comment_js or spec_comment_local_js filter will not be run.
- The final option is to hide our credit link and is one we’d rather you didn’t do anything with but we’ve given you it anyway as we’re nice like that. We do understand that sometimes clients want things like that gone we’d just like to ask in return for that is that you think about signing up with us
*Frequently Asked Questions
Why doesn’t it quite look/work right? Unfortunately it’s not possible for us to check this code against every theme out there so from time to time you may run into some incompatibilities. It’s possible that some CSS in your theme’s style.css is causing issues. You could try stripping out all commenting related CSS from it and see if that makes any difference. If it’s not that then it might be that your theme isn’t calling comments_template() to add the comments code, if that’s the case then you’re out of luck unless you know where to look in the theme code or you can get your theme developer to change their theme.
*Well questions that I think might be frequently asked.
Awesome! thanks for this. what a great plugin.
Very useful to me who’s new to create my own WordPress theme. Thanks!
Hi, I am trying to integrate your awesome plugin with Handgloves Wordpress Theme. After I install and activate your plugin, it shows up but it is not bypassing the Handgloves comments. Do you know how I can do this or where I should look? They include a comments.php file but I’m not sure what needs to be done, thanks again!
Hi Ed - sounds like the Handgloves theme doesn’t deal with comments in a standard way. Unfortunately we can only help further in the support forums.
Hello
I am already using WP thread Comments plugin in my blog , so will it affect in any manner if i use this plugin also ???
@Sunil Jain
I don’t know what effect running both the “WP thread Comments” plug-in and this plug-in would have. I suspect that our plug-in would basically supplant “WP thread Comments” leaving only our plug-in. From reading the description of the other plug-in it sounds like, bar the ajax stuff, it’s doing what is done by wordpress 2.8+ natively.
I’d suggest you test the plug-in yourself and see what happens. Test on an off line copy of your site if you can or if you must test on the live site MAKE A BACKUP first. I’m not saying our plug-in will damage things but always better to test first.
Great plugin works fine, except my Gravatars (enabled via Wordpress Gravatar option in Discussion Settings) disappeared once installed, any ways to fix this?
By the way, I just noticed that the Gravatars are showing up all stacked together at the top of post, where the title is.
The plugin should work just fine JR unless there’s an issue with your theme’s CSS that’s conflicting with it. Post a link, if you like, but I can’t promise any support to non-members I’m afraid.
Hi. I have a question. If I reply to someone that comments on my blog, does it send a notification to that person?
Thank you, but I just wound up downloading a gravatars plugin, instead of using the wordpress settings one and it’s working fine now.
But I do have another issue, where in the CSS do I change the font size of the actual FONT SIZE OF THE COMMENT TEXT?
That is the size of the comment content that has all ready been submitted and displays in comments, I figured out the actual author name size, but I cannot seem to figure out how to make the font size larger for the comment itself.
Thank you!
@jr The comment text font size is/should be inherited from the main body of your theme. If you want a different font size then you’ll need to add a new line to your CSS file.
Something along the lines of this:
.comment-body {font-size:80%}
Thank you, I actually was able to edit the CSS in the plugin as your CSS seemed to be overwriting my themes comment CSS, and put the font size in here:
#commentlist { color: #333;}
#commentlist .comment-body {background-color: #ffffff; font-size: large;}
This is the only thing that worked to change the font, I just want to make sure that it will not cause problems somewhere else down the road.
I have a strange problem, it shows the comments in my pages but not the ones in my posts.. how can i make it show the comments in the posts aswell?
@max
Unfortunately I can’t tell you why it’s doing that without a link to the site in question for me to look at. My first guess at the problem would be that the comments are there but some CSS in your theme has caused them to fall behind another object or in some other way end up hidden from view. It could be any number of things with your chosen theme causing problem, try loading up the Wordpress default theme (Kubrick) and see if the problem hangs around with that theme too. If it does then there is something deeper than CSS causing the issue.
Thanks for answering, it’s about the Streamline theme from StudioPress : http://www.studiopress.com/demo/streamline.html
thanks
ill use it in my website
I have been working with the code of this plugin, and translating stuff into Norwegian. But for some reason, I cant find how I change the ‘Reply’ link to norwegian…? Where do I change this?
@Addexio
The reply link is internal to Wordpress as part of the get_comment_reply_link function in wp-includes/comment-template so not part of this plug-in the be translated. Could be made part of it if that would make things a little easier.
@Addexio
In order to make things a little easier I’ve updated this plug-in to version 1.0.2. The new version includes the reply text in the plug-ins translation domain so all text associated with this plug-in should be translatable from the plug-in’s own domain rather than some as part of Wordpress and some as part of the plug-in.
This is JUST the type of thing that I’ve been looking for, for my own site. It’s perfect, and allows me to reply to clients directly - making me seem fluffy, friendly, accessible etc!
However, as much as I’ve tried, I can’t seem to figure out how to get a ‘Show Comments’ link from the front page. If people click on the permalink, it’s fine, but from the root (/blog) page, it’s as if there are no comments and no way of commenting.
Any ideas where I’d find this? I’ve looked at the css and the php but it’s all a bit too technical for me!
Thanks!
@Eliza - the comments should show wherever standard WP comments would work. If your theme has a custom front page it may not allow for comments. What’s the site?
Hi Dave,
I got an email from James that helped.
I had to add:
>’,'comments >>’,'comments >>’,'CSSclass’,'none’);
?>
to the index.php within the Loop. It now says “Leave a Comment” if there are none or “Comments >>” if there are already some comments, and it now looks beautiful again!
the site is http://elizaclairephotography.com/blog
Hi!
First, let me say that I LOVE this plugin and after finally figuring out how to customize it, I really love it! I have a few questions though, and if you could help me out with these, I would definitely appreciate it.
First, is there a way to display the total number of comments at the very top where it says “Comments”?
Second, is there a way to add numbers to the comments? I host a lot of giveaways and really need a way to show the comment number on each comment posted.
Third, is there a way to either not display pingbacks or to separate the pingbacks from the rest of the comments? ( See this page for a better example - http://www.mommylivingthelifeofriley.com/2010/05/toddler-tuesday-great-pretend-toy-choices-enhance-child-development/comment-page-1/#comments )
Last, is there a way to change the number of comments displayed on each page from 10 to say 50?
Thanks so much for any help you can provide. I REALLY appreciate it! Have a great day!
The plug-in is wonderful. I’ve tested some others, but this one works really great.
Though I do have some problem with localizing it - my translation won’t work.
I’ve used Poedit and created two files (spectacula-threaded-comments-he-IL.po, spectacula-threaded-comments-he-IL.mo). I’ve placed them at spectacula-threaded-comments/lang , but no translation occurs.
I’ve managed to translate other plug-ins on my site and Threaded Comments is the only one that won’t translate, so I really need your help here.
Thanks
Hi Uri - sorry you’ve had problems and thank you for reporting it here.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to look into the problem for a few weeks, as, sadly our GPL projects don’t really pay the bills and we have some large projects running.
If you join, and encourage others to join, you can help fund more rapid problem resolution and development :o)
Hi Dave,
I’ve made some stupid typo, the filenames had hyphen instead of underscore before the country code. It works just fine now. Thanks again, I’ll recommend people using this plug-in.
I LOVE this plugin.
But the recent update changed the plugin for me in a bad way. Before, when I clicked “reply” if had the comment reply box directly under the comment. Now, it jumps down to the bottom of all the comments, even when I’m writing a reply for the first comment at the top. How do I go about changing it back? I’m hoping this is an easy fix. I haven’t changed my theme since I updated the plugin last week.
Thanks!
is it possible to roll back to the last version? The upgrade screwed up my site.
Thanks!
Very nice plugin. I’ve switched to this for displaying comments on my site (over the default provided by Twenty Ten), and this is much more readable. I wrote a blog entry about it, with a link to the plugin.
Hi. I get an error “Invalid data: please go back and try again”, when im trying to comment a post. If I comment under admin login it works fine. Odd..
Wp captch free plugin conflicts with Spectacu.la Discuss ((
sorry,…
I got an error…
The reply button doesn’t appear…
please help me…
eg. http://ketel.co.cc/2010/07/tips-gratis-ol-facebook-lewat-hp.html please someone help me resolve it…
Maz - have you switched on threaded comments?
Any way to get some visual feedback while the comment is posting? My site is slow, and nothing happens while the comment is getting posted, which can lead to panic and multiple “Post” clicks.
@Bruce Wampler When someone first hits the submit button it should be disabled before the first attempt at communication with the server takes place, it should also grey out the button until the comment has finished submitting. If you’re getting multiple submits that something has gone wrong.
As to your main point I agree there could be better visual feedback for the submission so it’s on my todo list for the next version along with a few other tweaks.
Thanks for the great plugin James. I was about to give up on adding threaded comments to by theme: http://erraticblog.com/2010/07/how-to-add-threaded-comments-to-an-old-wordpress-theme/
and then I came across your plugin. I had spent about an hour working on a different plugin, trying to tweak the code, but couldn’t get it working. Installed Spectacu.la Discuss and it works perfectly.
Thanks for the reply - I’m seeing no change or greying out of the Post Your Comment button on my site. I am using your default style which looks great on my site. If you wanted to see this in action, you can see it here:
http://wpweaver.info/themes/twenty-ten-weaver/twenty-ten-weaver-discussion/
@Bruce Wample Ah, it seems the last change I made to fix an issue with some of the themes in the WP repository has caused that element of the CSS to stop showing up. I’ve added it to my fix list and will try and get something out this weekend.