Make your recent comments stand out with the new Advanced Comments Widget. This recent comments widget provides advanced features for customizing your recent comments lists.
Let’s face it, the default Recent Comments widget is kind of lame. There’s no user avatar, no comment blurb; nothing to draw you into the conversations happening on the site. What’s the point of showing recent comments on your site if they don’t prompt your viewers to leave their own?
That’s where the Advanced Comments Widget comes in.
Features/Options
This widget provides a range of features; allowing you to customize your recent comments list to match your site’s layout and theme.
Option: Widget Title

Option: Post Types

Option: Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Option: Number of Comments

Option: Comment Order

Option: Comment Avatars

Option: Comment Excerpts

Option: Comment Format

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tags? Not a problem. Don’t know which one to choose? Not to worry! The Advanced Comments Widget auto-detects whether or not your site supports html5 comments and set the defaults accordingly.
The Resulting List
With a little bit of styling (to keep it in-style with your site) the resulting list can look similar to this:
Installation
As of this writing, the plugin is awaiting review by the plugin team at the WordPress.org repository, but in the meantime, you can download and install off of GitHub. Just follow the instructions below.
Update : The plugin has been approved by the Review Team and is now available on the WordPress plugin repository: https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-comments-widget/
From the WordPress.org plugin repository:
- Download and install using the built in WordPress plugin installer.
- Activate in the “Plugins” area of your admin by clicking the “Activate” link.
- No further setup or configuration is necessary; just head over to your Widgets area to add to your sidebar.
From GitHub:
- Download the latest stable version.
- Extract the zip folder to your plugins directory.
- Activate in the “Plugins” area of your admin by clicking the “Activate” link.
- No further setup or configuration is necessary; just head over to your Widgets area to add to your sidebar.
Usage
Using it out of the box is really straight-forward. The Advanced Comments Widget functions like any other widget for WordPress. You can either configure one it through the Widgets screen in your WordPress Dashboard (Appearance > Widgets) or through your the Customizer (Appearance > Customizer).
Note: Unlike the default Recent Comments widget that comes pre-installed with WordPress, the Advanced Comments Widget assigns unique IDs to each list created. So feel free to create as many comment lists with as many configurations as you’d like!
A Note for Developers
This widget was built not only with end-users in mind, but also plugin developers. Almost every aspect of this widget is extensible through filters and action hooks. You can even add your own form fields to the widget form!
- Need to remove a field from the widget form? Not a problem! Every field is passed through its own filter for easy customization.
- Need to modify the output of the widget? Easy! The output is passed through numerous filters, allowing you to customize the comment list to meet your project’s requirements.
Check back soon for a full list of developer features as well as some sample functions! The developer docs are now available here: ACW Developer Docs