Updated August 2010
Ok this might seem trivial to the smarter WordPress folks out there, but I’m dumb… dumb like a sack of rocks and didn’t just figure this out until now.
If you’ve been using WordPress for years and always wondered why the ‘Add a Comments’ section only show up on the front page of the blog and nowhere else BUT the admin interface and the rest of WordPress seem to happily support comments on every page then you are in luck.
As it turns out most (if not all?) themes I’ve used for WordPress do not include the comment-enabling snippet of code on the default Page template that is used to render sub-pages of the main site (for example, on this site, like the Contact, About, Reviews, etc. sections).
The trick is to edit the Page template (file is typically page.php) of whatever theme you are using and add the following snippet of code right below the existing post-div (ends with comment: <!–/post–>)
So find that section and right after it, add this new comments div:
<div id="comments" class="box2"><?php comments_template(); ?></div>
Update #1: The important thing here is the “<?php comments_template(); ?>” code snippet; you can actually add that anywhere you want the comment box to popup in your page inside the main content loop, it doesn’t necessarily need to be inside a comment div or after the post. That is just typically where it is placed.
You are now set, every single page on your site will include the Comments section template, and since WordPress already supports pages having comments, there is nothing more to do… it will just suddenly work.
You can see this in action (as an example) over on the kallasoft SmugMug Java API Examples page.
Hope that helps some of you WordPress’ers out there.
Thanks, I just didn´t know how to do it. Now I do. (Big relieve, because other advices could´t help me further). Once again, thanks for sharing. Regards, Alexander
thanks
No problem Alexander, glad it helped.
Ah, after trying a few other potential solutions, this was the one that did the trick. I really needed comments to work on my pages; thanks a bundle!
Muirshin,
That’s great news, I’m glad it helped.
Keep a good work man!,
Aw, man. The code technically works, but it screws up my side bar. That sucks! Thanks, though.
Helen,
I went to your website, the layout looks pretty standard (I wouldn’t expect the comment block to screw up the sidebar). Are you sure you added the code in the right place?
Thanks man, worked great. Found this post in a Google search. Tried a different one and it didn’t work, your explanation took 45 seconds to implement and I was up and running. Really appreciate it.
how do you remove it from themes that already have it?
Hello,
I have enabled it in every page.
Now how is it possible to disable it from 1 page only?
Or maybe the opposite – to enable it on one page only?
Thanks
Sergio,
You can check the WP API codex and find the variable that is set when comments are enabled on a page, and then wrap that code-block with a conditional in the template editor, so depending on if you set the comments enabled in the admin interface or not, that code block that renders comments is either shown or not shown.
Most themes support that anyway, so on that page try and disable comments (it’s under the post content box) and see if it disappears.
Men you saved my life. Keep up the good work.
Thanks man, been looking for this solution. It really helped me a lot.
You rock!
Cheers!
Thank you! A big mystery cleared up …
Ivan
Hey, Riyad
Thanks VERY much for this. Really.
I, too, am as dumb as a box of hammers with this kind of stuff. (Although, just quietly, between you’n'me… I really AM as dumb as a box of hammers with all this stuff and you, my friend, are NOT!)
=)
I just reinstalled a site and wanted to transfer all posts to Pages. This sorted it out very quickly and easily in my Theme.
Thanks again,
TheNightOwl
Sorry for asking a Dumber question .
But Where exactly do I insert this ?
Is it in the comment.php or index.php of the default theme
Gavin, not a dumb question at all — it’s in the Page template, usually page.php or something like that — you just pop the snippet in there and then standard pages (rendered using the ‘page.php’ file) will show the comments box!
good post
O man I am really appreciate you save my 50 bucks. I was going to hire some one but I found that. thanks again
Thanks for the code!
How about comments on front page? I cannot find any help with this. I get comments on secondary pages only.
Mark, you’d just have to edit the index.php or page.php templates to include comments on the home page.
I just shifted from wordpress.com to .org and did the trick. The comment box shows but how to show the comments on each page that were already there??!! Thanks a lot for help.
I just added the code to index.php (but couldn’t find the right location), because I don’t have a page.php but it didn’t help..
It worked, but I’m getting the following (right below the comment box):
XHTML: You can use these tags:
How do I get rid of that XHTML?
Lisy,
Dollars to donuts that your theme is the one styling your “comments” code block to look like that. So wherever you tell wordpress “insert the comment box here” that comes in with it.
If you login to the admin panel, go to Appearance > Edit, then select the “comments.php” template, I bet that text will be in there. If you remove it, you will no longer see it.
If you aren’t familiar with HTML you will likely see junk like “<” and “>” instead of a clear-cut a-href link… that’s just because they are using the character-codes for ‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ (respectively) so instead of rendering an actual link, it shows you the text FOR a link.
Hope that helps!
Thanks alot for sharing this, it’s helped alot to have a commentbox on pages….
Cheers.
thankx for the article the comments did also helped me
OMG thank you!
Thanks! That worked for me!
Wonderfull Thanks!
just wanted to say thanks for this – jumped into an existing site to redesign it and couldn’t figure it out. saved me a lot of time!
No prob Anon, glad it helped!
I am wonering something related with this, i have created some other pages in my wordpress like, about us, help, …but i donñt want conments to appear in those pages. What could i do to solve that problem.
Thanks.
Yunieski,
Good question — when you edit the main page template and added the comments to it, that means every single page that uses that actual PHP template will have comments — this includes all custom pages you create like About, Contact, etc.
What you want to do is copy the page template to another template file, like page-nocomments.php and then on your About and Contact pages, in the dropdown on the right hand side where you select the “template” to use for the page, you select “page-nocomment” for that template — so that page will be rendered using that page template that doesn’t include the comment block.
NOTE: WordPress uses a certain comment-format at the top of the page template files to determine the name that displays in the dropdown in the page-editing interface… so at the top of the template page you’ll see a name in a simple comment at the top, you’ll want to change it for the page-nocomment.php file so it doesn’t also show up in the template drop down as another “page” template and then you can’t tell them apart.
Can you tell me on wich php file have to put the code ?
wp-content/themes/worn-wall/*. php?
on template.php i can’t find )
thank you
http://www.banatuldemunte.ro
adrian, you put that code in any template that you want to start showing comments. So if you wanted to edit your page.php template for example that is used to display simple pages, then you would add it in there. If you wanted to edit the template that displays single posts, then that is single.php
You’ll notice when you are making a post, over in the right hand side of WordPress in the “Template” dropdown you can actually select the PHP template file you want to render the page, that is how you can tell which template you’ll want to edit.
Wow! Did this help! Had NO idea how to enable comments in Pages. Great debt. Also, to Riyad Kalla for the “put anywhere” tip.
Mike,
Glad it helped!
Riyad, would you do me a favor? Will take you about 3 min.
Yours was a nice simple solution to a simple problem. Thanks Riyad ! ‘Wish it were all that cut and dry.
Wolf,
Thanks for the kind words, glad it helped!
You rock dude. You saved me. I love u
Thanks Sattu, I love you too!
Hi,
Great blog you have here. Well my query is not related to this post, but I was wondering if there is an easy way to achieve the blog posts similar to yours. For instance, how to go around displaying the summary of a post and later “Click here to read the full story” and “comments”
Thanks
Thank you Vipul. Actually that is all thanks to the guys over at WooThemes, if you are looking for a nice WordPress theme for your site, they are the leaders in the space — you can also look at Thesis Theme over at DIYThemes. Between those two groups, they have like 80% of the commercial wordpress market of awesome themes from what I can tell.
I love WooThemes, have been a customer for years. This particular theme on the site is the “Canvas” theme, it’s not that graphically intense, but it’s super customizable.
That’s amazing!! I loved the way you have set your homepage
Well thank you Vipul, we are glad you like it. If you do end up purchasing Canvas, that is the “Magazine” layout on the front page, with the slider activated (the stories rotating at the top) then 4 “full width” stories, and then all the rest of them are crunched down to the 2 column layout to make for easier browsing.
Hope that helps!
Hello Riyad,
Thanks for the post about ‘comment on a page’.
I have a question: I displays all comments on every page, but I would like it to show only the comments that belong to the page (filter the comments people wrote on a particular page). Is this possible?
Lianne,
By default comments in WordPress have a parent “post” (posts or pages) that they belong to… I haven’t seen a theme before that just spits out a flat list of ALL comments, all the ones I’ve ever seen only show the list of comments for the page you are currently viewing.
Which theme are you using? Is it possible you are mistaking this behavior? Post a link to your site so I can take a peek please.
Riyad,
Thank you for the reply. My url is: http://www.worldtrip2011.com/wordpress/
My comments show only on the page where they’re posted, so that problem is solved. I did a test on: http://www.worldtrip2011.com/wordpress/our-stories/scheveningen/
The only problem is that a comment on a page (instead of a post) doesn’t show under the ‘recent comments’?
Maybe you can help me with this one.
Lianne,
I think that *might* be a red herring… you are running WP-SuperCache, which will refresh the cached page the comment was made to, but if you are viewing the “Recent Comments” list on another page from the one you commented on (e.g. the home page) you might see that stale list for a while.
Try and disable WP-SuperCache, make a test comment on a Page, and see if it shows up.
I’m not sure what the snippet of code in “Recent Comments” is doing, but my guess is it’s just polling the comment table for the last X number of comments, so that should be working.
It worked but there is one small problem, I’ve made a test posting a comment and it didn’t appear on the page. I’ve already approve the comment but it still doesn’t work.. =/
Taly,
Strange. Got a link to the page handy where I can take a look?
Also, which template PHP file did you edit and what snippet of code did you add and where?
If you could http://pastebin.org 10 or 15 lines around the part where you inserted the snippet that might give me enough context to take a look.
REMINDER: Also forgot, if you are running SuperCache, W3 Total Cache or anything like that, try and disable it or dump the cache and recheck the comment still isn’t there. It might just be a cache setting not refreshing on comment.
The link to the page is here http://guillaumeparra.com/free-training/
And the link to the code which is inside page.php: http://pastebin.org/958165
Thank you Riyad, sorry for the trouble!
Taly,
I think something is wrong with the form actually creating the comment — if you go to the “Comments” section in the admin interface, do you see my comment from “asd”?
I just commented, and then the page refreshed and I checked the “Comments” widget in the top sidebar to see if it lists my comment as the last comment made and it doesn’t.
Also checked and don’t see any WP-SuperCache or W3 Total Cache markers in your resultant pages, so it doesn’t seem to be a cache issue.
So I just need you to check if that comment actually got created in the admin interface and if the /free-training post was corrected set as it’s parent?
Your comment is there and its in /free-training.
I’ve tried to check the first box of the sidebar on the tab Comments and all the comments are there!!! and the funny thing is that f you go on http://guillaumeparra.com/hello-world/#comment-1 the comments appear but I guess is because it is a post not a page.
Do you have an idea of what might be the problem?
Taly,
I got an idea — switch back to the “WordPress Default” theme and see if the comments are suddenly showing up correctly on the correct stories and pages.
That will help us narrow down if the problem is our code snippet or the theme.
You were right, I’ve tried several themes and some of them the comments are there and some of them they aren’t…
I’ll contact the theme author or change the theme! Thank you so much for the help, anyway the snipet was very helpful!
cheers =)
Taly,
Excellent. Glad I could help.
OK I have enabled comments and created a comments / no-comments template
However comments made on one page show up on other comment enabled pages even though they were not originally posted on that page.
http://www.sarahhaynes.me.uk/Blog/reviews/ page where comments originally posted
http://www.sarahhaynes.me.uk/Blog/q-a/ page showing same comments
I am pretty unfamiliar with the technical aspects of WP so any pointers as to where to look / fix would be helpful
TIA
Paul, what does the code in your template look like for pulling comments?
If you login to the WP admin interface and go to “Comments” section, are those comments correctly associated with *different* pages, or are they associated with both those pages?
In the right hand column, under “In Response To” is what I”m asking about, I wonder if the relationship is messed up.
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yeah great info.. like it
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Hello Mr Riyad Kalla.. found you article via Google.. Thank you. really helped me a lot..
Hello
i add the code. but nothing change .the box comment doesn’t show . i hope you can help more about
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I’m a bit nervous about doing this since I totally wrecked a page after messing with a php file. Nevertheless, this is an important tool and I need it. Unfortunately, when I looked in page.php, I did not find anything that ended with )
Don’t get mad at me for posting this whole thing, but here is my page.php. I hope it shows up properly. Where in here would I add your code?
<div class="post" id="post-”>
<a href="” title=”">
<?php link_pages('Pages: ‘, ”, ‘number’); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('Edit', '’, ”); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-”>
Doesn’t look like all of the code published. Do you accept paypal? What would you charge to do it for me?
Marc, you can use pastebin to try and share code and I’ll take a peek.
Thank you. Actually, I just went for it and pasted your code onto the page.php and it seems to be working! I haven’t tested, yet, to see where the comments will go but so far, so good. Thanks again
Marc, very cool I’m glad it’s working so far.
Thanks! That worked for me!
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Excellent! I was afraid I’d be Google searching for hours. Seems to have done the trick!
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Thats the plugin I was talking about.Where I would take minor exception is the using a h1 tag on a logo as that seems to be a waste of a perfectly good h1 tag. Instead, an effective and more relevant h1 should give a the viewer and search engines a brief description of what’s on the page from a content perspective. I’m not sure many company names do that and I would bet that your search results would be better served as well. Nice article though.
Just what I was looking for a comment section of my blog theme that had no comment section.
Nice code Thank You.
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