How To Mimic The WPTavern Commenting System

By Jeffro on March 24, 2011

Over the past few days, I’ve had a couple of people ask me what plugins I use to accomplish my commenting system here on WPTavern.com. I’m not a fan of using a third party system so in no particular order, here are the plugins I use.

Akismet – I’ve had no problems with Akismet taking care of spam comments on this site.

Comment Quicktags Reloaded – This plugin provides the formatting buttons to the comment form.

Filosofo Comments Preview – This plugin enables a live preview of the comment before it’s published.

Subscribe To Comments – Enables users to checkmark a box to receive notifications of new comments

WP Ajax Edit Comments – This is one of my favorite plugins because it provides a very easy way for visitors to edit their own comments. It also has built in support for After The Deadline meaning commenters can spell check before submission. It’s a commercial plugin but well worth the price.

Secret Sauce:

There is one particular feature of the WPTavern comment form that makes it a little unique. For each comment, there is a Reply link. When a visitor clicks this link, something like the following shows up: @Jeffro – The @ symbol as used by Twitter means you’re replying to someone specifically. The comment number is the unique comment ID and will link to the comment being replied to so the conversation is coherent. Last but not least the comment authors name is bolded.

I have Kaspars Dambis to thank for adding this functionality to the site which was originally part of the WP Comment Remix plugin that won the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition in 2008.

Now here is where it gets tricky. This functionality is not part of a plugin but is code that has been added to my child themes functions.php file. I don’t know where you would add this code in your own theme to achieve the same functionality but if someone could use it as a starting point and create a plugin that just does this, that would be cool.

/**
 * Custom comment meta. Adds a custom comment reply link.
 *
 * @since 0.2
 */
function tavern_news_comment_meta( $meta ) {
	return str_replace( '</div>', ' [tavern-comment-reply-link before=" | "]</div>', $meta );
}
 
/**
 * Shortcode for displaying a comment reply link.  A better solution would be to find a 
 * script that works within the WordPress comment system.
 *
 * @since 0.2
 */
function tavern_news_comment_reply_shortcode( $attr ) {
	$attr = shortcode_atts( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '' ), $attr );
 
	$out = $attr['before'];
 
	$out .= "<script type=\"text/javascript\">
		/* <![CDATA[ */
		function addAuthor(\$authorName, \$commentId) {
			var \$author = '@<a href=\"#comment-' + \$commentId + '\" rel=\"reply\">' + \$authorName + '</a> -';
			document.getElementById('comment').value += \$author;
		}
		function moveToComment() {
			location.href  = '#comment'; document.getElementById('comment').focus();
		}
		/* ]]> */
		</script> 
		<script type=\"text/javascript\">
		document.write('<a href=\"#comment\" onmouseup=\"moveToComment()\" onclick=\"addAuthor(\'" . get_comment_author() . "\', \'" . get_comment_ID() . "\');return false;\" class=\"reply\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Automatically include a link to the original comment\">Reply</a>');
		</script>";
 
	$out .= $attr['after'];
 
	return $out;
}