How To Show Recent Comments In The WordPress Sidebar

March 5th, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || 3 Comments |

For beginners, one of the biggest challenges is to show recent comments in the WordPress sidebar. Though WordPress is an easy CMS but a few people get stuck with these basic things.

To increase the user engagement, it can be an effective step. Many people are even using the plugins to show top commentators.

It actually helps you forge your human bonds with your readers. But here, we’re only talking about the recent comments, not the top commentators.

Use The WordPress Inbuilt Recent Comment Widget.

You would be happy to know that WordPress has its default widget to show the recent comments.

Just navigate to Appearance>>Widgets and search for the “Recent Comments” box. If you have already learned about adding a widget to the WordPress sidebar then do it.

Just click and you will see the location according to the theme you’re using.

You can also drag and drop it to the sidebar or any other place. There are limited options. You can choose a different title in place of recent comments.

The number of comments to be displayed can also be selected. Just click on the save button and you will see the number of chosen number of comments in the sidebar.

Add Recent Comments With More Options.

As you can see, the default widget has only two options as discussed above.

Many users asked to show the gravatar with each comment. Wouldn’t that be great? Gravatar is used to build the brand.

You would require a plugin to use some extra features.

Just install and activate Better Recent Comments plugins and you will see a new widget in your WordPress Appearance section.

Just like before, drag and drop the box to the sidebar and you will see all the options including the gravatar.

Do all the settings and click on the save button. The result will be like this.

Many people have complained about this widget too.

Well, this is another solution for you. You can use another plugin. Just install and activate Decent Comments plugin.

Though after using this plugin, you may need to add some extra custom CSS to arrange the gravatar but still, the best thing is the bundle of options you get.

How Would You Add Recent Comments In The WordPress Sidebar?

The above mentioned are a few methods to accomplish your goal. The choice is yours whether you use the default widget or any of the plugins.

Personally, I like the default and plain widget with the author name and the headline of the article he/she has commented on.

What about you? If you need some extra options then you should definitely go for the plugins. It’s just the matter of choice.

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