Decent Comments shows what people say.
If you want to show comments along with their author’s avatars and an excerpt of their comment, then this is the right plugin for you.
And it’s not limited to just a widget showing recent comments: The plugin provides configurable widgets, shortcodes and an API to display comments in sensible ways, including author avatars, links, comment excerpts …
Anywhere you place comments, by means of a widget, a shortcode or an API call, you can:
- Show an excerpt or the full comment. You can choose to not show the comment as well.
- Determine the number of words shown for excerpts.
- Set your kind of ellipsis.
- Set the number of comments to show.
- Show the author’s avatar and determine it’s size.
- Sort by author email, author URL, content (what’s said in the comment), date, karma or post … in ascending or descending order.
- Show comments for the current post or for a specific post.
- Show comments for posts in specific categories, for specific tags, … (more precisely: the ability to show comments from posts related to one or more terms in a chosen taxonomy).
- and more …
Feedback is welcome! If you need help, have problems, want to leave feedback or want to provide constructive criticism, please leave a comment.
Please try to solve problems before you rate this plugin or say it doesn’t work. There goes a lot of work into providing you with free quality plugins! Please appreciate that and help with your feedback. Thanks!
Documentation
The documentation is available on the Decent Comments documentation pages.
Hi
I have 2 questions:
1. I want to have a line spacing between each comment displayed in the widget. I guess for this I need to add some CSS. what should I add?
2. I want to have the date of the comment po appear at the end of each comment. How do I do this?
Hi,
#1 is easy – you can add the following CSS rule:
.widget .decent-comments div.comment {padding-bottom: 1em;
}
For #2 there’s no option to do that, sorry.
Thanks
I had a freelancer do it for me. I think if you add it to the next release
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wc8bd0f66o7rryp/decent-comments.zip
Cool! Can you please supply a patch against the current trunk?
yeah that works for the author, link etc. but does nothing to the comment/comment excerpt. comment/excerpt does not want to move from beneath avatar. But I’ve come to terms with it 🙂
I’m glad that works for you. For comment excerpt you can use:
.decent-comments .comment-excerpt {
padding-left: 26px;
}
cheers
Hi, love the plugin. The only solution I could get to do what I wanted. Everything is how I want it except the alignment of the comment author and comment next to the avatars.
Not sure what I need to do with css to get the top of all of the text (comment author, “on” statement, and comment excerpt) to align with the top of the avatar. i.e appear the same as Kento’s tweet comments near the top left of this page.
Thanks for any help.
Hi,
in your css file, you can add:
.decent-comments .avatar {
padding-top: 6px;
}
cheers
Hi! I am currently using the default comment-settings in my blog, but it does not enable people to add their website/url to their comments. I would like this to be an option, and I therefore installed your plugin. However, nothing have changed even though I have activated it as well. I am not very technical, but do I have to deactivate something as well, so that your plugin will work? Also, will the old comments on my blog disappear if I start using your plugin?
Hi,
you can use this plugin without losing the old comments. You must install it, activate and add “Decent Comments” widget where you want (Appearance->Widgets).
The user avatar and username is linked to user’s website.
cheers
How to display the date in the output?
Hi, right now, you can’t add date.
This could be interesting, we will study.
cheers
Adding dates to comments are important to understand if comments are still relevant. A short code attribute “show_date” would help me.
Thanks for the feedback on the feature request, I think it’s worth to be added, too.
Yes, Add my vote for adding “date” as a shortcode for your wonderful and useful plugin!
–Marc
Is it possible to show comments from ALL pages and SOME post categories ?
When I add a taxonomy (“category”) and terms (“general”), it works great for filtering my posts from the “general” category, but i would also want all comments from my pages to be included.
is there a way ?
The thing is that it restricts comments to those that belong to posts in those categories, but as pages don’t have categories, it won’t be possible. Maybe if you find a way for pages to be assigned to those categories? I’ve never tried it myself though.
That also reminds me that I really don’t get why you can’t just assign a page to a category in WordPress, in fact, to any taxonomy OOTB … oh no, now I’ve said it, mercy on me 😉
Hi fellas, thank you very much for plugin!
do you think you can add “random” in the sort order? that would render your plugin very useful also for testimonials.
thank you,
Al
Hi,
yes, it can be interesting, we’ll look.
thanks
Hi, and thanks for the plugin!
I would like to be able to change the “on” between the authorname and the commented post to the same language as the rest of my page (Danish). Would that be possible?
Hi,
You can change texts using wordpress traduction system. The files are in wp-content/plugins/decents-comments/languages
You can use http://www.poedit.net/ for this.
If you create it I’d appreciate if you send it to support at itthinx dot com.
cheers
Great plugin! Really useful to me.
Altho, I’m willing to do something else with it. Using it in my frontpage – inside a widget – to display the last three comments within the whole site, is there any way to filter by email (or some ID) to avoid displaying comments from the same authors in a row?
Thanks!
Hi,
right now, you can’t filter the comments.
cheers
I like this plugin, but am looking for one that does one simple thing – suppress my replies to comments in the recent comments widget. I reply to the majority of my commenters, so my replies dominate the widget and it looks stupid. Can you implement something that would do this?
Hi,
Actually the idea sounds good to me, this could certainly be added, Thanks for the suggestion.
cheers
Glad to hear it – do you have plans as to the timing for your next upgrade?
Hi, soon think not, you can stay informed through our twitter account @itthinx.
cheers
Hi Antonio,
Sorry for the late reply, but this code is indeed doing what I had in mind. For the moment, I’ve disabled it because the thumbnails in the RH column do have a border in the same way.
Anyway, many thanks for your help.
Hi,
if you want delete the others border, in your file: wp-content/plugins/featured-page-widget/templates/featured-page-widget.css line 94 delete border-bottom and border-right.
cheers.
Hi Antonio,
Thanks for this advice. I’ll add it in the script and block it for, perhaps, later decisions.
Many thanks for your help and suggestions.
Hi all,
Perhaps my previous problem wasn’t clear. Therefore, I’ll approach the problem via another way.
Website involved: http://asn-xp.flight-simulation.eu
I’m aware that this is not your widget, but perhaps you’re able to help me out. Perhaps it has also to do something with the style.css sheet.
I’ve got the following problems with the “comments” on the website. I want to move the avatar to the left, remove the grey border and I also want to move the text more to the left. I checked the style.css, found a section Comments, but most changes won’t help. I also made some changes in decent-comments-widget.css (see below), but non of this result in what I have in mind.
.decent-comments .comment {
padding-top: 4px;
font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color: #818383;
}
.decent-comments .comment-avatar {
padding-right: 4px;
}
.decent-comments .comment-author {
font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
font-size: 13px;
font-weight: bold;
}
.decent-comments .comment-link:after {
clear: both;
content: “.”;
display: block;
font-size: 0;
height: 0;
line-height: 0;
overflow: auto;
visibility:hidden;
}
.decent-comments .comment-body, {
}
.decent-comments .comment-excerpt {
display: block;
}
Any help is appreciated.
Kind regards,
Angelique van Campen
Hi,
I have checked your website and you have solved some things.
The border color, you can solved it adding to style.css:
.decent-comments .comment-avatar img {
border: none !important;
}
cheers
Oh, sorry Antonio.
Here you are …. http://asn-xp.flight-simulation.eu
In the mean time, yesterday late in the evening, I also found out that I have to make some changes in the style.css section “Comments”. But that doesn’t solve all of the issues. What I at least found is the different colours of the two names who placed comments. That’s no problem anymore, but I’m only wondering if you can add that in this decent-comments.css file too.
Hi,
Using decent comments and we think it will fulfil our needs however, I would like to make some changes in the css file, but for some reason not all inputs work.
When you look at the provided URL, I’ve changed already the author font size and style. The same implies for the comment text itself. But we would like to change furthermore:
– the position of the avatar, more to the left,
– why is the name of Stephen (Editor) not a link (OK with that) and Angelique is a hyper link (Admin)?
– can I change the color and font size of the posting hyperlink?
– I would like , if possible, at a line at the end of each comment, to separate the comments from each other?
Hopefully you’re able to help me with the coding. In the mean time I’ll try it as well. Almost forgotten; why have the two names of these persons who placed a comment (Stephen and Angelique) different colours or is this a WP issue?
Thanks in advance for your reply.
Angelique van Campen
Hi,
I can’t see the URL, can you provide this?
cheers.
Hi,
May i post a quick translation of plugin to PT-BR?
PO: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g6d2zvfoiabfagw/decent-comments-pt_BR.po
MO: https://www.dropbox.com/s/21ml3hmw8zfzsv4/decent-comments-pt_BR.mo
Thanks for this great plugin! ^^
Hi Alan,
Thank you very much for helping us improve.
Great contribution.
cheers.
oh, it works!!
I’m going to adjust the css styles and I’m think that will be perfect!
I have three pages (no posts) and people can submit comment on each one. Home is one of those pages.
I wondered if I could use a shortcode that shows the comments from all pages together at the home page.
Have you tried the shortcode as explained here?
I want that the comments displayed by the Decent Comments widget to align full.
See
http://goo.gl/Cffqa
How do I achieve that?
Hi,
“decent comments” use classes to render it. You can use css to adjust view.
The classes are:
– comment
–comment-avatar
–comment-author
–comment-link
By example, if you set (css):
.comment {
text-align: justify;
}
cheers
Thanks. The CSS did the trick
Hi,
I see no option in the widget to group the comments by blog post. Can you explain how it might be done?
Hi,
you can group the comments by blog post, in option “Order by” in widget, selecting “Post”.
Antonio, it’s not working. See the inner right sidebar at:
http://nfld.k12.mn.us/calendarconversation/
Compare to the right sidebar here where I’m using the “Get Recent Comments” plugin:
http://locallygrownnorthfield.org/
How can I replicate that with your plugin?
Hi,
you can replicate it, using Decent Comments repeatedly. A widget for each post, using post title as widget title.
In your example:
– Decent Comments widget 1: A new blog reflects a shift…
– Decent Comments widget 2: Tandem Bagels, opening …
– ….
cheers
Okay, that’s good to know, Antonio. But that wouldn’t work well for a very busy site where there are many posts with active commenting, changing all the time. Might you be looking at future development to add this functionality?
Hi,
now, not planned, but if you need a custom solution, you can use the contact form and we will budget for it.
cheers
Is it possible to group comments, so that all comments to a particular post are shown together?
Yes there is an option for that – you can try it with the widget for details.
Hi,
I’ve downloaded the widget, now how do I make it appear on a certain page?
Hi Brittany,
Go to Appearance > Widgets then drag the Decent Comments widget to a sidebar, adjust settings, save, done. Easy 🙂
Cheers
Got it! It works great. Thank you!
Sorry, where can I download that version?
Thanks
Hi, I have a problem with the plugin. I want to display the comments in each category,
http://newslines.org/wiki/category/computer-people/aaron-swartz/
but when I put “{current}” into the input box, the box stays blank (it will not accept the input and the comments do not appear.
If I put in a term such as “aaron swartz” the term displays in the input box and the post display.
Any ideas or work-arounds?
Hmmm … that looks like a bug, will need to check that.
… fixed it with version 1.1.5
Hi
Another improvement suggestion. Currently YouTube links look like plain text in the widget. The best would be to have the videos automatically embed in the widget. Second best would be that they will be click able links,
Thanks
Your plugin is very good. I have one suggestion – when I show the comments in the widget it states:
“comment author” on “post title”
The thing is that my site is not in English.The word on seems strange. It would be nice if there was an option in the widget to change the word “on” . Can you please do this?
That would call for a translation, would you be interested in contributing a translation?
What I suggest does not require translation. I suggest adding a field in the widget that says replace “on” with “text field”.
It is a matter of translation. If you have a look at the existing translations, you will find that the string ” on %s” is being translated. If you want to change that word, you can use one of the existing translation files and adjust its translation to what you prefer to show.
Will it stand plugin upgrades?
Yes if the translation files are included. I was asking if you would be willing to contribute the translation files, so that they can be included in the plugin.
Today I wasted a couple of hours trying to translate the little word “on”. I use the Decent Comments Widget on various WP-blogs and it looks ok, minus this little word.
First I had to locate the file to make the change. At one point I found out that it was located in the Decent Comment Plugin language files. If you rename a couple of .mo and .po files (eg from de_DE to nl_NL) the German “zu” appears in stead of “on”. This is step one.
To change this little word. It is NOT possible to use a text editor. (This took me A LOT OF TIME TO FIND OUT! AARGH) you need to download a 10mb program named Poedit. Edit the .po file. and it automatically saves an .mo output. Than upload again via FTP does the trick.
The rest of the translation is dashboard side so why bother… A build in “on” changer would be cool.
The way to translate and localize the plugins in WordPress is by using these .po files you found in the languages folder. See Translating WordPress. You can contribute your translation for convenience, note that if there is an update to the plugin, you will have to copy those files there manually otherwise.
I am willing to help. I am not a developer. Please explain how can I help
That would be great. Based on this translation template file (which is for the current version 1.1.5), you create a file
decent-comments-he_IL.powhere you add your translations – have a quick look at this where the use of these files is briefly explained. When you have done that you can send it over or simply post it on pastebin and I will include the translation.I have a suggestion thats quite different, and it would take your comment plugin to the next level if you could do this. There is a wp theme called MasterFul Business Theme, you can google it, if you go to the bottom right of the site you can see a sliding testimonials box. Would you consider making a sliding recent comments widget with these types of dot images they have used? It would be ingenius! Theres no widgets out there that can slide recent comments. What do you think?
I think it’s an interesting idea, pulling in comments (AJAX) is on the @todo list and the effect would be the same.
Hi, it looks like there is a little bug. If a long URL is inserted in a comment, at the beginning, this URL is not cut and exits the wigets area, overlapping the text in the widgets next to it.
If you check my site today/tomorrow it’s most likely you see the issue at the very bottom.
Please let me know
Just add this CSS rule to your theme:
.comment {overflow: hidden;
}
I have 2 categories i dont want this plugin to show. Lets’s say “cat1” and “cat47”. I like it to show all other posts from lot of categories. It’s a big job to add what it may show from. Is it not possible to easy not show post from those 2 cat and show all other?
(sorry bad english)
More important … I have one side i have comments on. I use this side as guestbook and just use builtin comment. Those comments i dont want to show in decent comment widget. Is it possible to exclude those, or implement this in further version?
Excluding categories could be added to a future release, I see that it makes sense in your case.
This might be asking too much but your plugin is the post is the closest I have seen to what is needed.
It would be great if it was possible to use your plugin to have a summary page of posts (with just the linked title) and all of the comments (collapsible would be nice) underneath them. Also, the ability for new visitors to add comments to a specific post, on that page, would be great. Kinda like a forum/summary comment page!
The problem with big blog posts is that the comments are spread all throughout the blog and there is no easy way to see them all in one place and add to the discussion.
I have been wanting to attempt something like this and thought about trying to synchronize posts and their comments in a separate forum like bbress or mingle, but that is just too much work.
Anyway, thanks for the great plugin!
Britt
Thanks for the suggestions, sounds quite useful – you could actually use the plugin’s functions to put a page like the one you explain together, but it would involve some coding.
Hi,
I’m wondering how i can get the widget to display a users facebook avatar. I’m using the simple facebook connect plugin which allows users to comment if they are logged in through facebook and it will display their comment along with their avatar.
However the same comment when views in the sidebar using you widget will only show the gravatar logo and not the facebook avatar.
Please see screengrab here of how the same comment appears with different avatars.
http://cl.ly/1M1v3e3P1F0y1W1o1528
Hope it’s an easy tweak or fix 🙂
Cheers,
Sean.
Hi Sean,
It shouldn’t be too difficult to extend DC with that option but I won’t be able to fit that into my schedule. If you want to do it and share the patch I can see to include it though.
Cheers
Hi,
I am also trying to show user’s facebook avatars in the widget.
Does anybody know how to fix this?
Can I do this by my self through custimizing the PHP files? Do you have tips for me?
Thanks in forward.
Hi. How can I show comments only from current post using short tags. It seems that none post_id short tag is available.
You’re the third one asking for that, this seems to be getting popular 😉 Only the widget supports that, but the shortcode doesn’t allow the attribute although it would be possible for the shortcode to allow it (using the same renderer). I think we could bring that option into the next release.
Thanks!
Great plugin. Two suggestions for extension:
(1) to exclude/include on the basis of user role. I like reader comments to be shown separately from author comments (multi-author site).
(2) allow for a more-> link to a page where (many) more comments are shown
Thanks for the suggestions, they make sense to me as well (also given how you’re using it on your blog). Added these on the plugin’s todo list 🙂
Hello there!
Is there a way to link the content of the comment to the comment itself? Right now you have to click on the name of the post to get to it.
Plus, can I exclude URLs provided by people? The thing is, the first link you get is the Url provided by the person who commented on the blog and then you see the link to your blog post.
Thanks!!
Hi Lisa,
The title is linked but the comment itself is not, I’m afraid there’s no option for that. You can adjust the settings for the commenter (show author/avatar): http://www.itthinx.com/plugins/decent-comments-manual/
Cheers
Thanks! That’s what i thought.
Love the plug in! Is there anyway to exclude trackbacks from showing up on the recent comment list? Or even better, just exclude internal trackbacks? I make it a habit to link other posts, but this clogs up the recent comment list.
thanks!
Thanks 🙂 To exclude trackbacks would be a good addition, adding it to the requested features …
Definitely to be able to exclude trackbacks would be a great feature. Any chance to see it soon?
Thanks for the plugin. 🙂
Still on the list but will need some spare time to do … patches for that are welcome though 😉
Anything on this yet? Would love this option also.
Check the widget settings, you’ll find checkboxes for that 🙂
Hi Kento,
Thanks for this great plugin.
Just one question. Can this plugin disable author comments?
Thanks a lot Kento 😉
Hey thanks for your kind comment 🙂
It will show comments for all, including a post’s author. There’s no option to disable showing the author’s comments.
I deactivated the code insert manager plugin, and the page still displays the short code–no comments.
Will I be able to use your plugin?
Let’s take a look at your site, there shouldn’t be any problem.
Twenty ten. Maybe it’s conflicting with my Code Insert Manager (Q2W3 Inc Manager)
But my short code from a different widget (Contact Form 7) works fine.
How do I get your short code to work?
Please try it with the code insert manager plugin disabled and see if things work after that.
I like the plugin. Works great as a widget. But, when I put [decent-comments/] in a new page, it only displays “[decent-comments/]“–no comments. How do I fix this? Thanks.
What theme and other plugins are you using? Looks like something’s interfering …
Wow Kento, thank you very much for a quick response! I would love to use your plugin once it will have this feature! All the best from Misha
Thanks Misha 🙂 I recommend to follow me on Twitter as I do post updates on the plugins there regularly. Cheers
Good news 🙂 The latest release (1.1.0) now allows to show comments for posts in specific categories. You can also choose specific tags – it actually works for taxonomies in general with both the shortcode and widget.
Hey, I would like to ask you whether your plug in could display only comments from a specific category of my choice. Currently I use different sidebars on different content pages (blog, videos, etc.) and I would need a widget, which could display only comments from the videos category for example. Thank you very much for your reply! All the best from Misha
Hi Misha,
The comments can’t be restricted to categories as of now, but that would be a nice addition. I’ll take that into account and it could be added to the next release. Thanks for your suggestion.
Cheers
thank you for this plugin
It’s nice to see one’s work appreciated. Thanks 🙂
Greetings, I have successfully installed the plug in and it properly shows in the Widgets area. But there is no information how I can incorporate it into a webpage (not a blog) – preferably in the middle of the page (after one article) below the image and not at the bottom of the page. http://mundi.com/english_latest-html/
I am on the latest Infocus
Thanks for your help! Stefan
Hi Stefan,
Yes there is information available about this. You can either use shortcodes as explained here or use the API.
Cheers
Hi and thanks for a great plugin.
I am using the plugin but the avatars do not show up in the sidebar. Only the default avatar does show up even though the personalised avatars show up in the comments section below the post.
It seems that there is a conflicting plugin but I cannot figure out which one.
Do you have any idea how I can solve this issue?
Thanks for your appreciation 🙂 Could you please forward a link to your site (you can send an email if you prefer) and I’ll take a look.
I have the same issue as this guy. Yesterday, the avatar of the Twitter user was showing up. Today, the default wavatar from WP is showing up. http://twitter-twitter.com if you want to have a look. LOVE the idea of this working. Can you help?
The avatars on the comments below your posts come via twimg.com but the avatars shown in the widget are served via gravatar.com. Looks like your theme (or a plugin?) pulls avatars based on the commenter’s Twitter id. But the avatars shown in the widget are based on gravatar so that’s why they are different.
Dear Sir I Want To Add Somments Box In My Site Plz Help Me
It’s easy, just go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the Decent Comments widget to your sidebar.
You can also use shortcodes and the API, see http://www.itthinx.com/plugins/decent-comments-manual/
Hi – great plugin! Had it working well as a widget but I found a conflict with PTM Ajax comments – getting the error
[code]
Warning: call_user_func_array() [function.call-user-func-array]: First argument is expected to be a valid callback, ‘Decent_Comment_Widget::cache_delete’ was given in /path/to/my/blog/wp-includes/plugin.php on line 405
[/code]
Don’t suppose you’ve got any ideas on this?
Hi Tim,
Thanks for reporting this, it was actually a typo (it should have read ‘Decent_Comments_Widget’), fixed it and released as 1.0.2. Please update to that version.
Cheers!
Thanks! Now it works in a post, but not in a page! But I guess this has something to do with my WP installation.
Thanks for your plugin, anyway! :o)
Good to hear you got it working!
Yes it works on pages as well, see it in action here: Decent Comments on a page
Did you do a documentation somewhere how to use the shortcode? [decent_comments] doesn’t show anything.
Thanks for mentioning it, there is a section about that being prepared that I’ll add later on.
The correct form for the shortcode is:
[decent-comments/]which will use the defaults.If you want to adjust settings, for example to hide avatars, use it like this:
[decent-comments show_avatar="false"/]Also note that you have to use a dash and not an underscore and the self-closing form that uses the forward slash [decent–comments/]
sale este error al instalar:
Fatal error: Class ‘Decent_Comments_Widget’ not found in /home/luchosar/public_html/wp2/wp-content/plugins/decent-comments/class-decent-comments-widget.php on line 23
Hi thanks for your comment, there is an update available which should fix this issue for you. Please use version 1.0.1 of the plugin.