Decent Comments Manual

Sep 8, 2011

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If you came to this page looking for the latest documentation of the Decent Comments plugin, you will find it here: Documentation

The information below is outdated!

Decent Comments Widget Configuration

To use a Decent Comments comment widget on your site, go to Appearance > Widgets and drag a Decent Comments to the desired sidebar. If you don’t want to customize the widget’s settings, you’re done.

You can use as many Decent Comments widgets you want, each with different settings.

For each widget, these options are available:

Title : If desired, give your widget a title that will appear above the comments.
Number of comments : Determines how many comments will be shown.
Order by … : Choose the criterion used to sort comments.
Sort order : Based on the criterion, comments can be shown in ascending or descending order.
Post ID : If empty, shows comments from anywhere on your site, based on the criterion chosen. You can enter part of the title of a post or a post’s ID to only show comments related to a specific post. You can enter [current] or {current} to show comments for the post that is currently displayed.
Show comment excerpt : If checked, shows excerpts of the comments. If unchecked, shows the full text of comments.
Number of words in excerpt : Determines up to how many words are shown as an excerpt for each comment.
Ellipsis : This is shown after a comment’s excerpt, if there are more words in the comment than shown in the excerpt.
Show author : If checked, displays the author of each comment.
Show avatar : If checked, displays the comment author’s avatar.
Avatar size : Determines the size of the avatars shown in pixels.
Show link to post : If checked, shows a link to the post that the comment is related to.
Show the comment : If checked, displays the comment excerpt or full comment.
Taxonomy : Indicate category if you would like to show comments on posts in certain categories. Give the desired categories’ slugs in Terms. For tags use post_tag and give the tags’ slugs in Terms.
Terms : If a taxonomy is given, indicate the slugs of the terms in that taxonomy separated by comma to show comments for all posts related to these terms. To show comments on posts related to the same terms as the current post, indicate: {current}. If a taxonomy is given and terms is empty, no comments will be shown.

Decent Comments Shortcodes

Decent Comments provides the

George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes please, have a look at the recommended solution and follow-up here with your comments. Cheers…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, This is excellent. Thank you very much for this. It works just as you described. We will work…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, The only change needed is to use the aforementioned hook and in order to simplify things for you,…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George. Thank you. That seems fair. Happy to give it a shot and provide feedback. I’m a not sure…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes, since the groups exist network-wide, you can use them for setting restrictions of post-types and…

shortcode that can be used to embed comments anywhere.

The shortcode can now also be written as

George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes please, have a look at the recommended solution and follow-up here with your comments. Cheers…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, This is excellent. Thank you very much for this. It works just as you described. We will work…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, The only change needed is to use the aforementioned hook and in order to simplify things for you,…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George. Thank you. That seems fair. Happy to give it a shot and provide feedback. I’m a not sure…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes, since the groups exist network-wide, you can use them for setting restrictions of post-types and…

(with an underscore instead of a dash).

If no attributes are given, the default settings are used.

Using default settings

Place the following shortcode anywhere to show comments based on the default settings:

George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes please, have a look at the recommended solution and follow-up here with your comments. Cheers…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, This is excellent. Thank you very much for this. It works just as you described. We will work…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, The only change needed is to use the aforementioned hook and in order to simplify things for you,…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George. Thank you. That seems fair. Happy to give it a shot and provide feedback. I’m a not sure…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes, since the groups exist network-wide, you can use them for setting restrictions of post-types and…

An example using customized settings

Place the following shortcode anywhere to show 25 comments featuring 64 pixel avatars:

George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes please, have a look at the recommended solution and follow-up here with your comments. Cheers…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, This is excellent. Thank you very much for this. It works just as you described. We will work…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, The only change needed is to use the aforementioned hook and in order to simplify things for you,…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George. Thank you. That seems fair. Happy to give it a shot and provide feedback. I’m a not sure…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes, since the groups exist network-wide, you can use them for setting restrictions of post-types and…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, Thank you for the quick research and reply. This looks promising. I am glad to see that the…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi again Alex, Following up regarding your question to mention that there is a workaround you can use with the…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi Alex, What you noticed about Groups on MS is correct, groups restrictions are managed site-wide and not network-wide. Please…
George
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Thanks again for your feedback and kind words, greatly appreciated! Cheers
Suresh Ramaswamy
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
This was precisely the issue. After making the database changes to reflect the files’ new location, all is well. Your…
George
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Hi Suresh, After reviewing the Groups File Access setup, it appeared that the issue with files not being accessible related…
Kento
on Restrict Categories breaks Divi 5 loop
Hi, I wanted to clarify based on this: “I have a module that loops through a single category and it…
George
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Dear Suresh, We are following up regarding temporary access credentials which can be sent to george at itthinx dot com….
George
on Restrict Categories breaks Divi 5 loop
Hi Terry, Welcome to our support forum for Groups and Groups Restrict Categories. I tried to replicate what you describe…
Suresh Ramaswamy
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
I have tried flushing the cache numerous times. Has not made a difference. The ability to make Cache exceptions is…
Kento
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Perfect, thanks!
Kento
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Hi Suresh, Many thanks for the additional info, we will follow up regarding the credentials directly to your email. Regarding…
Suresh Ramaswamy
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Forgot to add… We are using the latest version of the Groups plugin.
Suresh Ramaswamy
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Thanks for your response. To answer your questions… 1. We are not using any caching plugins. Godaddy hosting has some…
Kento
on Urgent: Intermittent 404 errors
Hi Suresh, Welcome to our support channel and thanks for using our tools! The issue that you describe could be…
Kento
on Affiliates
Hi Simon, Thanks for your questions! The free version does not require any particular method of payment, you can manage…
Simon Chen
on Affiliates
Hello, what features does the free version include? Does the free version require integration with PayPal or other payment methods…
George
on Can this be used for wpeasycart?
Hi Michael, Welcome to our support forum for Affiliates plugin and its addons. At the moment Affiliates plugin doesn’t provide…
George
on Sucuri plugin flags Groups as having a vulnerability
Hi John, Thanks for sharing that information with us, we appreciate your feedback. Since the report you have doesn’t include…
George
on Url shortener
Hi Ryan, Thanks for sharing your idea with us. What you mention about offering a URL shortener option in Affiliates…

Shortcode attributes

The

George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes please, have a look at the recommended solution and follow-up here with your comments. Cheers…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George, This is excellent. Thank you very much for this. It works just as you described. We will work…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, The only change needed is to use the aforementioned hook and in order to simplify things for you,…
Alex Ryan
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hi George. Thank you. That seems fair. Happy to give it a shot and provide feedback. I’m a not sure…
George
on Groups on WordPress Multisite
Hey Alex, You’re welcome. Yes, since the groups exist network-wide, you can use them for setting restrictions of post-types and…

shortcode supports the following attributes:

ellipsis
Default : …

exclude_post_author
Default : false
Set to true if comments on posts from the post’s author should not be included.

excerpt
Default : true

max_excerpt_words
Default : 20

strip_tags
Default : true

avatar_size
Default : 24

number
Default : 5

order
Default : “DESC”
Possible values: “ASC”, “DESC”

orderby
Default : “comment_date_gmt”
Possible values:
“comment_author_email” : Author Email
“comment_author_url” : Author URL
“comment_content” : Content
“comment_date_gmt” : Date
“comment_karma” : Karma
“comment_post_ID” : Post

post_id
Possible values:

“{current}” : show comments for the current post
Usage: Kento on Decent Comments Manual Perfect, glad I could help! Thanks for using the plugin! :) Paul on Decent Comments Manual HI, Thanks very much for the kind response and the help. I was 99.9% sure it wasn't an issue with... Kento on Decent Comments Manual Hi Paul, Thanks for the link. This is an issue with your theme's styling. The :before of the containing div... Paul on Decent Comments Manual Hi, thanks for the reply. It’s happening on all pages at the moment but here is an example page. https://thevaccinereaction.org/vaccination-category/... Kento on Decent Comments Manual Hi Paul, Thanks for the kind feedback on the plugin! What you mention could be related to a conflict or...
a post ID : show comments for a specific post
For example:

show_author
Default : true

show_avatar
Default : true

show_link
Default : true

show_comment
Default : true

taxonomy
Use category for categories or post_tag for tags.
Default : empty

terms
A comma-separated list of term slugs.
Default : empty

Comments

161 responses to “Decent Comments Manual”

Javi

November 11, 2022

Hello, I’m using the shortcode for decent comments, for example to show the recent comments related to post 714, like this.

[decent_comments post_id="714" number="50" show_date="true"]

And everything works perfect.

But what about if I want to show the comments included in more than one post? For example is logic to think that this could works:

[decent_comments post_id="714, 821" number="50" show_date="true"]

But it doesn’t work.

Of course, in the same shortcode block I can add both, like this

[decent_comments post_id="714" number="50" show_date="true"]
[decent_comments post_id="821" number="50" show_date="true"]

But I want both mixed, orded by date.

Some idea to help me?

I mean is other way to shoy more than one post comments different to use this post_id=”714, 821″ ?

Thanks !

Reply
1. Kento
  
  November 15, 2022
  
  Hi Javi,
  
  Thanks for the suggestion, this should be easy to add and I’m taking note to consider it for the next release. You won’t be able to indicate multiple post IDs unless we modify the plugin to understand those … if this is urgent and you’d like to propose the change via a pull request, you can fork our repository https://github.com/itthinx/decent-comments and issue the PR with the proposed changes.
  
  Implementation hint would be to use the post__in parameter for the comment query instead of post_id when there are multiple IDs given.
  
  Cheers
  
  Reply
2. Paul
  
  June 6, 2023
  
  Hi,
  great plugin. For some reason though my comment titles are not linking to the article. Cannot click them, even if I add the show_link=”true” into the shortcode. Can’t see any other reason why its not working – any ideas?
  
  Reply
  1. Kento
    
    June 8, 2023
    
    Hi Paul,
    
    Thanks for the kind feedback on the plugin! What you mention could be related to a conflict or an issue with your theme. Could you please show us the page where you have tested it and this is happening?
    
    Cheers!
    
    Reply
    1. Paul
      
      June 8, 2023
      
      Hi, thanks for the reply. It’s happening on all pages at the moment but here is an example page.
      https://thevaccinereaction.org/vaccination-category/
      The theme is Hello ,by Elementor
      
      Reply
      1. Kento
        
        June 13, 2023
        
        Hi Paul,
        
        Thanks for the link. This is an issue with your theme’s styling. The :before of the containing div is covering up the area within which the comment links are. This rule could fix it, worked when I tried it in FF but I’m not sure if it’s the optimal solution:
        
        div.elementor-tab-content.elementor-active:before { z-index: -1; position: relative; }
        
        Anyhow, this is not an issue with Decent Comments itself, but I hope this helps.
        
        Cheers!
        
        Reply
        
        Paul
        
        June 13, 2023
        
        HI,
        Thanks very much for the kind response and the help. I was 99.9% sure it wasn’t an issue with the plugin and the workaround is great – thank you for your help. Very much appreciated!
        
        Reply
        
        Kento
        
        June 13, 2023
        
        Perfect, glad I could help! Thanks for using the plugin! 🙂
        
        Reply
david

April 6, 2018

Hi, is there any way to easily format the output provided by the widget? Things like making the author’s name bold, providing extra spacing, etc.

Reply
1. Kento
  
  April 6, 2018
  
  Hi David,
  
  Yes, most of it you can target with the appropriate CSS rules – simply have a look at the HTML elements and it will be very easy to apply suitable ones.
  
  Cheers
  
  Reply
Kris

April 5, 2018

Hi there – Love your plugin! Is it possible to add a title inside the shortcode? I’m placing the shortcode at the end of my posts but the title that I use in the widgets (Recent comments) does not show up, so it looks a bit random. I tried [decent-comments title="Recent comments"/] but it didn’t take.
Thanks so much!

Reply
1. Kento
  
  April 6, 2018
  
  Hi Kris,
  
  Many thanks for your kind feedback on the plugin! There’s not really an option to add a title when you are using the shortcodes, but in this case it would be quite easy to simply add a heading above the shortcode instead, something like this:
  
  Our latest comments ... [decent_comments]
  
  Cheers
  
  Reply
  1. Kris
    
    April 6, 2018
    
    Thanks!
    
    Reply
  2. Yona
    
    March 23, 2021
    
    Hi! I love the plugin.. But is there a way to show the real avatar of users? It keeps showing plain wordpress avatar even though these users upload their own avatar picture. Thank you
    
    Reply
    1. George
      
      April 7, 2021
      
      Hi, thanks for your feedback.
      
      In general the avatar used in comments or Decent Comments widgets and shortcodes, is the one set using Gravatar service. If the avatar in-use doesn’t display properly when visiting ie a post, then there is probably an issue with the avatar itself and how it is rendered on your theme templates.
      Just in case please also make sure to update Decent Comments plugin to the latest version available which has been released 5 days ago and that the option to show avatar is enabled in the Decent Comments widget.
      
      Kind regards,
      George
      
      Reply
Mirko

February 20, 2018

Hi Antonio,

How can I modified the order of the elements.

E.g. transform Author, date, nome articolo to

Nome articolo
Author, date

in tho different rows?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Reply
1. antonio
  
  February 21, 2018
  
  Hi Mirko,
  Maybe you can use the ‘decent_comments_comments_output‘ filter. You could use the original render as reference, in file: decent-comments/decent-comments-renderer.php
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
Brett

November 23, 2017

Another commenter inquired about replacing the avatar with the posts thumbnail instead and you e-mailed a customization, could you please send that to me as well, it would be much appreciated! Thank you!

Reply
1. Kento
  
  November 24, 2017
  
  Hi Brett,
  
  This doesn’t ring a bell right now, do you remember where you have seen the comment? Link?
  
  Cheers
  
  Reply
  1. Brett
    
    November 24, 2017
    
    https://www.itthinx.com/plugins/decent-comments/decent-comments-manual/comment-page-1/#comment-9932
    
    Reply
    1. antonio
      
      November 27, 2017
      
      Hi Brett,
      Using this code in your functions.php theme file should display the post image instead of the author avatar.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.
      
      Reply
      1. Brett
        
        December 6, 2017
        
        That worked, thank you very much.
        
        Reply
        
        antonio
        
        December 6, 2017
        
        Perfect, please rate our plugin and support on wordpress.org.
        cheers
        
        Reply
Bahram

May 30, 2017

tanks, it finally works! 😀
i really appreciate your help

Reply
1. antonio
  
  June 1, 2017
  
  Perfect.
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
Bahram

May 16, 2017

Hi
i use cache plugin but delete all caches, i mean here in admin panel: (link of screenshot below)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_jnn2DpYxAcWndIdFBOU3hnQlU
do i have to change anything here?
best wishes

Reply
1. antonio
  
  May 17, 2017
  
  Hi,
  You should not have to change it.
  If you can, please disable the cache plugin and test the random widget. I suppose that the cache plugin is caching the widget and this is the reason because the comments are ordered.
  If the problem persists, you can share your function.php file using pastebin.com, maybe here is the problem.
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
  1. Bahram
    
    May 22, 2017
    
    Hi again Antonio
    i disable cache plugin and delete all caches but its still not working
    i want it for site main page and don’t want to display repetitious comments, its my function.php:
    https://pastebin.com/CMfB0gRy
    can you add this option on new update pls?
    thanks for your help and time
    best wishes
    
    Reply
    1. antonio
      
      May 23, 2017
      
      Hi Bahram,
      Really I don’t know why the comments are not shuffled, maybe this filter is not executed, you could try to add a temporal character ‘_’ before the avatar to test if this code is executed, ex. changing:
      $output .= '';
      to
      $output .= '_';
      In any case, we will study it for future updates.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.
      
      Reply
      1. Bahram
        
        May 24, 2017
        
        Hi
        i add ‘_’ in function and its appear in comments before avatar then the code and function.php is executed…
        u can check it in site main page footer
        🙁
        
        Reply
        
        antonio
        
        May 25, 2017
        
        Thanks Bahram,
        Then I would say it is cache problem, either by a plugin, or by the server.
        If you can disable everything related to cache and try it.
        Kind regards,
        Antonio B.
        
        Reply
        
        bahram
        
        May 30, 2017
        
        Hi again dear Antonio
        i disable everything related to cache and nothing changes but i discover something…
        they are five constant comments that display, but every time that i refresh page the order of this five changes, for example if first time a comment is on top for second time its at the end and if again refresh page its come on middle for example. i don’t know do u get what i mean? sry my English is not good
        
        Reply
        
        antonio
        
        May 30, 2017
        
        Sure,
        shuffle mix the elements. Maybe if you set a higher limit and then truncated the array you could do.
        Ex. If you want to display 5 comments, you can set as limit 20 comments, and in our function set:
        function random_decent_comments_comments_output ( $output, $comments, $options ) {
        shuffle( $comments ); $comments = array_slice($comments, 0, 5); .... .... }
        Kind Regards,
        Antonio B.
        
        Reply
Bahram

May 16, 2017

Hi Antonio
it is very kind of you, i add it in function.php but nothing happens, i want to display some customers random comments in site homepage.
address is http://www.javaherlux.com and i use decent comment in footer widgets.
another thing is after adding this code to function.php, in decent comment widget “order by” switch should be on which option?

Reply
1. antonio
  
  May 16, 2017
  
  Hi,
  No option is added, Decent Comments widget comments are always suffled.
  If you are using any cache plugin, maybe this is the problem.
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
Bahram

September 24, 2016

hi
tanks for great plugin. i want to know how to display random comments by “decent comments” widget in sidebar?

Reply
1. antonio
  
  September 26, 2016
  
  Hi Bahram,
  this ‘order by’ option is not available.
  You could use the ‘the_comments’ hook to create your own pseudo-random solution.
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
  1. Bahram
    
    May 15, 2017
    
    Hi antonio
    Thank you for your response, if we do this from the ‘the_comments’ hook it will effect on all site comments? or only decent comment plugins?
    can you help me on this pls i am noob in wp and really need this.
    
    Reply
    1. antonio
      
      May 16, 2017
      
      Hi Bahram,
      This filter affects all comments. But I have created a better solution. You need to add this code in your functions.php child theme file.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.
      
      Reply
Steve Fleming

September 5, 2016

Thanks for the plugin. I’m using it on my site and have set the strip_tags to false, but it still seems to be stripping out the formatting.

Did I do something wrong?

http://retiringtothephilippines.com/recent-comments/

[decent-comments strip_tags="false" avatar_size="50" number="30" taxonomy="category" excerpt="false" /]

Reply
1. Kento
  
  September 6, 2016
  
  Hi Steve,
  
  Many thanks for pointing out the issue with the strip_tags attribute. This has been fixed in version 1.3.10 which has been released just now. If you update it, you should find it working now.
  
  Cheers
  
  Reply
  1. Steve
    
    September 6, 2016
    
    I tried the new update but I still don’t see any paragraph breaks etc. on that page.
    
    Does it work OK for you?
    
    Steve
    
    Reply
    1. antonio
      
      September 7, 2016
      
      Hi Steve,
      Wordpress comments system doesn’t add paragraph automatically to the comments, so the <p> and <br/> tags don’t exist in the comment content.
      This is because these are nor displayed, but not dependent on the plugin, because these tags are not.
      If you edit the comment in the dashboard adding these tags you can see that they are not filtered.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.
      
      Reply
budditbud

June 20, 2016

i have a problem with accentuate caracters (éàè….) when i use excerpt they are not traduct (not UTF8 i suppose)

you can add in french traduction

excerpt : extrait
Post Type : Type Article
Number of characters in excerpts : Nombre de caractères dans les extraits
Show date : Afficher la date
Link authors : Lien Auteurs
Exclude comments from post authors : Exclure les commentaires des articles des auteurs
Ascending : Croissant
Descending : Décroissant

best regards
‘Pascal

Reply
1. antonio
  
  July 4, 2016
  
  Hi budditbud,
  we’ll add them to the next update.
  Thank you very much,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply
Ramin

March 5, 2016

Is it feasible to omit specific writers from display? I recognize I can omit the short articles author yet I wanted to omit various other users too.

Reply
1. antonio
  
  March 7, 2016
  
  Hi Ramin,
  you can use the ‘comments_clauses’ filter to create your own filter, ex.
  add_filter( 'comments_clauses', 'eggemplo_comments_clauses', 10, 2 ); function eggemplo_comments_clauses( $pieces, $dcomments ) { global $wpdb; if ( get_class( $dcomments ) == "Decent_Comment" ) { $users = "1,2,3,4"; $pieces['where'] .= $wpdb->prepare( ' AND user_id NOT IN ("%s")', $users ); } return $pieces; }
  Kind Regards,
  Antonio B.
  
  Reply