Plugin: Customizable Comment Listings

1. Download the file customizable-comment-listings.zip and unzip it into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
   -OR-
   Copy and paste the the code ( customizable-comment-listings.phps ) into a file called customizable-comment-listings.php, and put that file into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. Please ensure you do not introduce any spaces or other characters before the <?php or after the ?>
2. Optional: Change configuration options in the file to your liking. In-code comments should help you there.
3. Activate the plugin from your WordPress admin ‘Plugins’ page.
4. Include one or more of the templates defined below into your index.php

function c2c_get_comments ($limit = 5,
  $format = "",
  $mode = 'comments',
  $types = 'comment pingback trackback',
  $status = '1',
  $ids = '',
  $order = 'DESC',
  $offset = 0,
  $date_format = 'm/d/Y',
  $include_passworded_posts = false ) 

function c2c_get_recent_comments( $limit = 5,
  $format = "<li>%comment_author%: %comment_excerpt_URL%</li>",
  $types = 'comment pingback trackback',
  $status = '1',
  $ids = '',
  $order = 'DESC',
  $offset = 0,
  $date_format = 'm/d/Y',
  $include_passworded_posts = false )

function c2c_get_top_commenters( $limit = 5,
  $format = "<li>%comment_author_URL% (%total_comments%)</li>",
  $types = 'comment pingback trackback',
  $status = '1',
  $ids = '',
  $order = 'DESC',
  $offset = 0,
  $date_format = 'm/d/Y',
  $include_passworded_posts = false )

function c2c_get_recent_commenters( $limit = 5,
  $format = "<li>%comment_author%: %comment_excerpt_URL%</li>",
  $types = 'comment pingback trackback',
  $status = '1',
  $ids = '',
  $order = 'DESC',
  $offset = 0,
  $date_format = 'm/d/Y',
  $include_passworded_posts = false )

• $limit : The number of comments to list/return; default is 5
• $format : A string that uses percent substitution tags to define the data you want displayed for each listing and how you want it displayed;set it to ” (two single-quotes) to return an array of the requested comment objects without outputting anything.
• $mode : The manner in which comments are to be considered, either ‘comments’, ‘recentcommenters’, or ‘topcommenters’
• $types : A space-separated list of comment types to include; can be any combination of ‘comment’, ‘pingback’, and/or ‘trackback’
• $status : A space-separated list of comment status values to include; can be any combination of ‘1’ (approved comments), ‘0’ (unapproved comments), and/or ‘spam’ (spam, obviously).
• $ids : A space-separated list of post IDs with which to limit the search for the comment listings
• $order : The order with which the comment listing should be sorted, either ‘ASC’ (for ascending) or ‘DESC’ (for descending); default is ‘DESC’
• $offset : The number of comments to skip; default is 0
• $date_format : Date format string, PHP-style, if different from the blog’s default date-format string
• $include_passworded_posts : A boolean value, either ‘true’ or ‘false’, indicating if passworded posts should be considered in the comment search

The simplest examples would be the following (for brevity’s sake, in the examples I’m going to specify 3 as the number of posts I want returned):

<ul>Recent Comments
  <?php c2c_get_recent_comments(3); ?>
</ul>

Would output something like:

Recent Comments
• John: Ha! That was so funny I…
• Sarah: I’ve got a story that will…
• John: Haven’t I told you the story…

<ul>Recent Commenters
   <?php c2c_get_recent_commenters(3); ?>
</ul>

Would output something like:

Recently Commenters
• John: Ha! That was so funny I…
• Sarah: I’ve got a story that will…
• Tom Jones: Haven’t you heard of the red…

<ul>Top Commenters
   <?php c2c_get_top_commenters(3); ?>
</ul>

Would output something like:

Top Commenters
• Sarah (42)
• John (25)
• Jerry (5)

But what you may really want is to run the Recent Comments calls and customize the listing output. That’s where the percent substitution tags come into play. The $format argument to each of the functions above is a string that represents how each commentt found by the function should be output. Any percent tags (as listed and defined above) will be replaced with the appropriate data.

So, let’s say you only want to list the most recent comment, to include the comment author’s name linked to that person’s site (if they provided an URL), plus a short excerpt of the post, plus the title of the post the comment appeared in linked to the post itself. You’d do this:

<ul>
<?php c2c_get_recent_comments(1, "<li>%comment_author% said \"%comment_excerpt%\" in <br />%post_URL%</li>"); ?>
</ul>

Which would output something like:

• Somebody said “Here is a comment to your…” in
  Hello world