Separating WordPress comments from pings and trackbacks

Alternative separation method

As with most things there are several alternatives, and a popular technique is to filter the pings. This requires less PHP code, but I also find it less flexible, and it needs extra work to show comment and ping counts.

First we modify the comments section so it looks like this:

<?php if ($comments) : ?>
	<h3 id="comments">
		<?php comments_number('No Responses','One Response','% Responses');?>
		to &#8220;<?php the_title(); ?>&#8221;
	</h3>

	<ol class="commentlist">

	<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
		<?php if (comment_type == 'comment') : ?>
		<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">
			<cite><?php comment_author_link() ?></cite> Says:
			<?php if ($comment->comment_approved == '0') : ?>
			<em>Your comment is awaiting moderation.</em>
			<?php endif; ?>
			<br />

			<small class="commentmetadata">
				<a href="#comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>" title="">
					<?php comment_date('F jS, Y') ?> at <?php comment_time() ?>
				</a>
				<?php edit_comment_link('edit','&nbsp;&nbsp;',''); ?>
			</small>

			<?php comment_text() ?>

		</li>
		<?php endif; ?>
	<?php
		/* Changes every other comment to a different class */
		$oddcomment = ( empty( $oddcomment ) ) ? 'class="alt" ' : '';
	?>

	<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

	</ol>

 <?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

	<?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>
		<!-- If comments are open, but there are no comments. -->

	 <?php else : // comments are closed ?>
		<!-- If comments are closed. -->
		<p class="nocomments">Comments are closed.</p>

	<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

What’s happening here is that we are stepping through all our comments as normal, but before we display a comment we check the type (line 10 and 28). If the type is ‘comment’ we display it, otherwise we assume it is a ping or trackback and move on.

The pings themselves are then displayed with:

<?php if ($comments) : ?>
	<h3 id="pings">Pings</h3>

	<ol class="commentlist">

	<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
		<?php if (comment_type != 'comment') : ?>
		<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">
			<cite><?php comment_author_link() ?></cite> Says:

			<br />

			<small class="commentmetadata">
				<a href="#comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>" title="">
					<?php comment_date('F jS, Y') ?> at <?php comment_time() ?>
				</a>
				<?php edit_comment_link('edit','&nbsp;&nbsp;',''); ?>
			</small>

			<?php comment_text() ?>

		</li>
		<?php endif; ?>
	<?php
		/* Changes every other comment to a different class */
		$oddcomment = ( empty( $oddcomment ) ) ? 'class="alt" ' : '';
	?>

	<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

	</ol>
	<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

This is the reverse of the previous code and as we step through the comments we are only displaying comments whose type is not ‘comment’ (line 7 and 23) – all the pings and trackbacks.

Resources

14 comments

  1. Hi,
    I love the concept of this plugin because it cleans things up really nicely. However, is there an easy way to aggregate the pings in one place so you can keep the conversation easy and flowing, yet as a blogger be able to see easily (without visiting every post) who has pinged your site?

    Thanks!

  2. You would need a plugin to provide that functionality. It wouldn’t be difficult to implement, and just requires querying the database to fetch all pings.

  4. JHS, it is because you put the code to display the pings after the comment form. In comments.php just moved the pings code above the part that starts ‘leave a comment’.

  5. Hey there, this is a great page. How do you change the code so it says "1 ping" rather than "1 pings" if that’s the case? Also, ever since following your directions, the no self-ping plugin doesn’t work.

  6. Jessica, you can use something like:

    <?php echo sprintf (__ngettext ('%d post', '%d posts', $pings), $pings); ?>

    This will output '1 ping' or '2 pings'

  7. i’ve activated the separate-comments-pings plugin and have replaced my comments.php file with comments.php file (taken from default folder/zip, i download from this site). but i got error:

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDIF in /home/aufkgorg/public_html/wp-content/themes/vista/comments.php on line 144

    so, please give solution !

  8. Kevin, I had simmilar problem, find last and delete one

    John, I changed line from your previous comment, but it gives “1 posts”. Can you, please, check it?

  9. Pingback: WordPress Plug-Ins : Separating Comments and Ping
  10. Pingback: 15 Must Do Tweaks For A (New) WordPress Blog | Techie Buzz
  11. Pingback: WordPress Plug-Ins : Separating Comments and Ping » Tech At Hand

  12. Hello there,

    First off thanks for a great plugin!

    Still I have a question. How did you get your pings and trackbacks so nice? I have used the piece of code you provided:


    foreach ($pings AS $comment)
    $display[] = sprintf ('%s',$comment->comment_author_url,$comment->comment_content); echo implode (', ', $display);?>

    But im still getting something that looks like this: […] Lets make our move… […]
    […] Lets make our move… […]

    How did you get yours so nicely like above: techathand.net, techie-buzz.com
    Just the main website name and it links to the specific article.

    Thanks in advance 🙂

  13. Now I’d love to know the code on how to separate pings from comments using WordPress version 2.7… 🙂 (i.e., when the threaded and paged comments functions are activated)

Comments are closed.