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 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>
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.
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11. August 2008 at 2:20 pm
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
11. August 2008 at 4:30 pm
No problem Alexander, glad it helped.
30. October 2008 at 1:04 am
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!
1. November 2008 at 9:34 am
Muirshin,
That’s great news, I’m glad it helped.
4. November 2008 at 11:16 am
Keep a good work man!,
8. November 2008 at 6:17 pm
Aw, man. The code technically works, but it screws up my side bar. That sucks! Thanks, though.
9. November 2008 at 8:24 am
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?
7. April 2009 at 12:02 pm
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.
6. June 2009 at 11:15 am
how do you remove it from themes that already have it?
15. June 2009 at 2:23 pm
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
16. June 2009 at 5:02 pm
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.
1. July 2009 at 8:30 pm
Men you saved my life. Keep up the good work.
29. July 2009 at 9:19 pm
Thanks man, been looking for this solution. It really helped me a lot.
You rock!
Cheers!
15. September 2009 at 6:12 am
Thank you! A big mystery cleared up …
Ivan
23. October 2009 at 5:54 am
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
27. October 2009 at 1:40 pm
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
28. October 2009 at 11:00 pm
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!
16. November 2009 at 8:47 pm
O man I am really appreciate you save my 50 bucks. I was going to hire some one but I found that. thanks again
24. November 2009 at 5:28 pm
Thanks for the code!
How about comments on front page? I cannot find any help with this. I get comments on secondary pages only.
25. November 2009 at 9:22 am
Mark, you’d just have to edit the index.php or page.php templates to include comments on the home page.
9. December 2009 at 7:35 am
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.
12. January 2010 at 8:00 am
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..
19. January 2010 at 7:14 pm
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?
19. January 2010 at 7:18 pm
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!