Using a comment callback function in WordPress 2.7, I was trying to customize the threaded comments and ran into a problem. So I left a comment on Jeremy’s blog. He contacted me and was able to find the problem and provide a fix. His post has been updated with that small change and it’s all good.
Very cool, you can’t get that kind of response from any software company. I’ll keep playing around with the comment format, but now I can implement anything I like and take full advantage of the threaded comment feature.
I’ve been on vacation since right before Christmas and have enjoyed the time off. Monday I go back to work all refreshed and ready to go.
After our New Years Eve party, I spent the day doing somethings that had meant to do for a while: PHP coding for my WordPress blog. My PHP fu is not that great but this is how I learn and as hobby’s go, it’s almost productive. Starting with easy ones and working my way down, the list looks like this.
1. Clean up my theme directory.
I make changes to my theme all the time and left junk in the theme directory. There is junk in there from plugins that I was experimenting with, looks that I was trying to accomplsh, etc. I can’t remember it all but I know what I need to keep and my backups are good and current.
2. Setup my Flickr badge as a WordPress plugin to put a widget in the sidebar.
I was using a text widget and hard coded the CSS into my theme’s header.php so that the page would validate properly. That worked but if I changed themes, the styling went out the window. I had wanted to see how to create a widget plugin that inserted the CSS using the wp_head action. By looking at existing plugins I saw how and it’s not hard at all.
Now I can keep the widget no matter which theme I choose and it always validates. Next up to add options in the widget. I’m looking at the Flickr Widget to see how it’s done there. Having GPL’ed code available to examine makes life so much easier.
I want to get an options page just for giggles; I don’t plan on distributing the code since I’m re-using Flickr’s code from here.
3. And now the big one: Fix my comment CSS and get WordPress 2.7 threaded comment callback working properly.
WordPress 2.7 comes with the option of using threaded comments and getting the default output just needs these lines:
This produces good valid XHTML output and all that is required is to style it anyway you want. With some CSS I get this:
It’s really easy to do and between Otto and Chris Harrison’s posts, getting it looking good is simple. If you want to learn then visit those two sites and start playing with your theme.
Now if you want to explicitly control the output for threaded comments, you need to use a callback as outlined in Jeremy’s post. I’m adding a comment count and trying to keep the look close to the original theme’s styling. By inserting the theme’s original comment code I can maintain the look.
In my comments.php file I comment out the old line and add one to use the callback.
<ul class="commentlist">
<?php // wp_list_comments(array('avatar_size'=>40,'reply_text'=>'Reply to this comment')); ?>
<?php wp_list_comments('callback=custom_comment'); ?>
</ul>
In my function.php file I’m adding this code. Be warned, I am not a PHP programmer and if anyone sees something really gross please feel free to criticize. The $cmtorder is more of a placeholder and I’m not using it yet.
This gets the comments formatted close to the theme’s original comments but adds threading. I added the comment count as a “why not?” If you turn on paged comments the comment counter still work. I have not worked out changing the order yet, I’d like to see it working in reverse order if set.
The code is a bit ugly and I’ll clean it up later. It works and I’m not getting and errors in my log so I’m happy for now. The CSS is good and the generated XHTML code is valid.
My only problem is that the javascript reply to comment box is not working exactly the way I want it to.
When you click on the “Reply to this comment” link, the comment box show up outside of that comment’s <li> … </li>. This is probably due to how I’m using comment_reply_link() but right now the codex is a little bit sparse on that topic. I’ve looked at the source code and by changing the parameters, I do get different results, just not the results I want. If I don’t use the callback, the comment box appears within that comment’s <li> … </li>.
I’ll keep playing with it and will be switching them back and forth until I like the output.
I just did another ‘svn up’ and the WordPress version is now 2.7. In a little while I’ll switch this blog to 2.7 using ‘svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/branches/2.7’.
I’ve had this blog on WordPress 2.7-beta using SVN for a while. So when it went release candidate, all I had to do was another just run another “svn up”.
The comment enhancements are cool and Otto provided a good write up for modifying the files to take advantage of it. Implementing it and staying XHTML valid was not a problem.
My problem was that without styling it, the new comments looked like crap.
Lucky on the WordPress support forums I found that Chris Harrison mapped out all the CSS for the comment list. Adding the elements that he provided let me easily make changes and get the comments close to the original look.
I still need to play around with it but so far I’m satisfied with the results.
I’ve been using WordPress 2.7 beta for a week now and the new layout is very easy to get used to. So far so good.
I think a lot of people will revolt, cry, wail, and moan complain about the GUI changes and will probably demand their money back. But 2.7 is looking to be the best version yet.