My Top Commentators Widget: Quick & Dirty
Updated 06/Jan/2010: Download Top Commentators Widget v.1.3 (refer to the README for customization). And, yes, it works with WordPress 2.9.1.
Holy Molly, I never thought I’d make one so soon, but it’s true! I’ve created my very first WordPress Widget!
Yeah, well, not exactly. I adapted this Top Commentators Widget from the actual Show Top Commentators (hereto known as STC) plugin by PFA. Here’s actually what happened:
- Went to Giuk.Net as usual, saw MrBadak talking about his newly installed plugins, and I hopped by.
- Excitedly surfed into Personal Financial Advice to download the STC plugin.
- Followed the instructions to the dot, only to find out later that it won’t work if you have Sidebar Widgets activated.
- Googled for a widgetized version of STC, only to find that the download links don’t work.
- Desperately needed to install it, so I did the next best thing a desperate grrrl would do — build one.
- Accidentally sacrificed a few other widgets due to carelessness, but nevermind as I always back-up.
- Destabilized my site with countless access error messages and loads of SQL warnings.
- Trying so hard to stay true to the original codes, only to surrender at the last minute and decided to strip down most of the original codes off, therefore FINALLY COMPLETING MY MISSION!
But wait….
Crapazoola. After more googling, I found out that the STC plugin does run on widgets, if you installed the executable PHP for Text widgets first.
My ego is effectively squashed by this new-found knowledge. It took me an embarrassing 8 hours just to get this heck of a plugin to work as a Widget, which goes to show how badly I need to polish up on my PHP.
You may happily use this full-fledged Widget by downloading here:
Download Top Commentators Widget v.1.3
Installation instructions
(WordPress 2.5 and above)
- Unzip to get the topcommentators_widget.php file.
- Upload the file into the wp-content/plugins folder.
- In your WP admin console, go to Plugins and activate Top Commentators Widget.
- In your WP admin console, go to Design | Widgets and click Add beside the Top Commentators widget.
- Click Edit on the Top Commentators then scroll down and click Change.
- Drag the Top Commentators to wherever you want it to be, and click the Save Changes button if you want to stick to the default values.
- That’s it!
(WordPress 2.3.3 and lower)
- Unzip to get the topcommentators_widget.php file.
- Upload the file into the wp-content/plugins folder.
- In your WP admin console, go to Plugins and activate Top Commentators Widget.
- In your WP admin console, go to Presentation | Widgets (for WordPress 2.2 and later) or Presentation | Sidebar Widgets (for older WordPress versions), and drag the Top Commentators widget to wherever you want it to be, and click the Save Changes button.
- Nah, that’s it! Remember to read the FAQ to see what options you can play around in the Top Commentators Widget.
Customization
Please refer to the README file or the WordPress Plugins Directory page for TCW for the latest changelog, available options, snapshots, buglist, etc.
Bug Reports
The comments on this page has been disabled. Please go to WordPress.org and post your issues in the Support Forum. Remember to tag your posts as top-commentators-widget (remember the widget part!).
My Wish-List as of 05/Oct/2009
- Allow TCW to be used in more than one sidebar within a blog.Totally forgot about this in v.1.2. Will do so for the next version.
- Allow users to select the default Gravatar to be used.
Donate?
Sure, if you want to, though it’s not necessary. Just PayPal any amount to me at “webgrrrl”.”net” (remember to remove the quotes).
[...] Top Commentators Widget – Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin. By Lorna Timbah [...]
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I am sure this question has already been answered but its such a long comment line, you might want to put this answer in your description but is this plug in dofollow?
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Looks great! Congrats on creating the widget I’ll have to check that one out. Thanks.
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Nice work with the widget….Plugins are driving me nuts…..trying to get theme’s, sidebars and all to work or function together. Coming along.
Lorna:
I found this plug-in through a couple of links from other sites as well as the official WP list of compatible plug-ins for WP 2.3
I downloaded it this morning and it works fabulously! I am using the latest WP version 2.3.1 and I couldn’t be more pleased!!!
Thank you for doing such a fabulous job. I am so excited to have this becuase it’s a way of thanking my readers for taking the time to comment on my blog. Awesome job.
And congrats for making the WP compatible plug-in list. I usually check this to make sure all is well before I take the chance to download.
One more thing – your README.txt file was excellent. Very simple, easy to read and non-threatening to a “non-techie” (like me ACK!).
Thanks again.
Please be sure to somehow notify through WP’s new feature when you update your plug in to the next version. I don’t know how that works but if you can somehow automate the notification thing, that’d be GREAT.
One more thing. Are you using Brian’s Threaded Comments plug in for matching replies to comments?
Another thing actually: what plug in are you using to give commentators time to edit their comments? I love how that looks on your site.
Ok, that’s all, I promise! Maybe not. Maybe I’ll have more later. LOL
Stephen
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Thanks a lot ! It works very well…
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that s niece suggestion
getting more comments means more user interaction
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I have downloaded this plugin hoping it will solve the problem that the original plugin had: it counts commentators by username, not by e-mail. So if you have two people with the same name, their comments will be summed.
Can you solve this?
Sorry for taking so long to reply. This is the same reply I sent to Maria just now, so I’m just going to cut n paste. You could try changing the query statement inside the widget’s code in line 122 from SELECT COUNT(comment_author) to SELECT COUNT(comment_author_email), but let me tell you that even when this is done, if someone uses one e-mail with two different names, the COUNT may still take them as two different users.
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Congratulations. I hope to one day create my own Widget so this is so encouraging
I would like to be unsubscribed of this thread.
I can’t do it in the admin-panel.
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Once you have the Top Commentators Widget on the sidebar, click the “control icon” to change the following in Top Commentators:
Lorna, I could not find the control icon. I checked through all the options. It was no where. And the widget appears on the sidebar without any title and the names are not hyperlinked. Please help.
Nicole, was this an answer to my question? It seems that the system has “swallowed” the code. Can you post it somewhere like http://pastebin.com/ ?
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Hi Lorna,
Thank you very much indeed for this widget – it’s an absolute gem, and I’ve really enjoyed having it on my site.
As the new year has rolled in, I’ve discovered that I’m set to ‘Reset list every: Year’. I’ve tried setting it to ‘List All’, but when I click ‘Save Changes’ the change isn’t being saved.
The file is 666 on permissions, and I can change other options successfully. Any ideas what might be going wrong? Could I perhaps just refigure the line $listPeriod = $options['listPeriod']; to list all? [If that's possible].
Thanks for any help you can give me with this, thanks again for a great piece of work, and wishing you a very happy new year…:-)
I am having the same issue as this. Any ideas what may be going on?
I faced this problem before myself but it was a long time ago that I couldn’t remember what I did. I’m pretty sure though that it could still be the file permission.
You may want to edit manually if you dare. In the mean time, you’ll need to wait a while till I can figure this out, and I’ll get back to you and Jacob if I do get the solution.
Thanks for your response, Lorna. I’m quite happy to edit manually, but I don’t have a clue what I’d need to change – would it be the $listPeriod = $options[’listPeriod’] line? If there’s an easy answer to that, I’d be very glad to hear it – if it’s complicated enough to take up too much of your time, I’ll cheerfully wait until you have an alternative solution…:-)
Aran, Jacob, Erika:
Since the Save Options doesn’t work for you, the quick and dirty way to manually change this to display All Commentors is to edit the database itself.
You’ll have to log into MySQL,
select your WP database,
click on the _options table,
and browse for “widget_topcomm” under the option_name field.
The edit you’d want to make is s:10:”listPeriod”;s:1:”m”;
under the option_value field. Change s:1:”m” to s:1:”a”, so it’ll look as such
s:10:”listPeriod”;s:1:”a”;
That should do the trick.
Hi Lorna–
I tried this and it seems to only work temporarily. I’m not sure what is causing it to revert. Maybe when a new comment is added? Any other suggestion on how to get all of my old comments back?
Thanks,
Erika
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I was wondering how the plugin counts for the largest number. Does it count by name only or does it count by email? I currently have PFadvice’s plugin installed and I’ve noticed that it counts by name only. For those with popular names, I feel that it wouldn’t be fair to others, you know? I wouldn’t mind switching and I’ve sent an email to PFadvice, but have gotten no reply.
You could try changing the query statement inside the widget’s code in line 122 from SELECT COUNT(comment_author) to SELECT COUNT(comment_author_email), but let me tell you that even when this is done, if someone uses one e-mail with two different names, the COUNT will still take them as two different users.
I’ll put this in the wishlist for the next upgrade if you like.
I did this, but nothing has changed. Or does it only apply to new comments?
Hi Lorna-
I’m having the same issue as the folks a few comments back. My comments reset annually but I would actually like all of my comments to appear. So I”d like it to revert back to its original state. I changed the code back to read ‘all” in hopes that everything would reappear but no success. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Erika
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well, i have to checkout ..hopefully this plugins will work for me
thanks
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