Author: Cynthia Ng

I ended up playing around with the CSS some more too to make the form even smaller, but I was also asked to change the form fields and decided to put in some placeholders. While the WordPress documentation for comment_form is pretty good, the example doesn’t clearly tell you how to change form fields. It’s possible I find it less than intuitive because I’m not a programmer.

In my case, I wanted to change the title from “Leave a Reply” to “Leave a Comment”. I also wanted to change the form fields to have placeholder text and make the comments box smaller.

Changing it Once

If you only want to change it in the one file, you can specify the new values just above where you call comment_form().

Let’s start with changing the easy stuff. Much like the WordPress example, just make an array with whichever values you would like to change from the default, and call the comment_form function with your array, which in this example, the form header and comment field are changed.

//for long defaults, such as the comment_field, I suggest copy/pasting the default and then modifying it
$comments_args = array(
‘title_reply’ => ‘Leave a Comment’,
‘comment_field’ => ‘<p><label for=”comment”>’ . _x( ‘Comment’, ‘noun’ ) . ‘</label><textarea id=”comment” name=”comment” placeholder=”Eggy approves!” cols=”45″ rows=”4″ aria-required=”true”></textarea></p>’
);
comment_form($comments_args);

Changing the other fields makes things a tad more complicated. For other fields, you need to specify another array, then apply your new values in the comments array.

//required variables for changing the fields value
$commenter = wp_get_current_commenter();
$req = get_option( ‘require_name_email’ );
$aria_req = ( $req ? ” aria-required=’true'” : ” );

//name the array whatever you want; I strongly suggest copy/pasting the default then modifying it
$new_fields = array(
‘author’ => ‘<p>’ . ‘<label for=”author”>’ . __( ‘Name’ ) . ‘</label> ‘ . ( $req ? ‘<span>*</span>’ : ” ) .
‘<input id=”author” name=”author” type=”text” placeholder=”Eggy the Ram” value=”‘ . esc_attr( $commenter[‘comment_author’] ) . ‘” size=”30″‘ . $aria_req . ‘ /></p>’,
’email’ => ‘<p><label for=”email”>’ . __( ‘Email’ ) . ‘</label> ‘ . ( $req ? ‘<span>*</span>’ : ” ) .
‘<input id=”email” name=”email” type=”text” placeholder=”eggytheram@ryerson.ca” value=”‘ . esc_attr(  $commenter[‘comment_author_email’] ) . ‘” size=”30″‘ . $aria_req . ‘ /></p>’,
//in this case, we’re applying filters, so it changes all the values. If ‘url’ is not specified, then it gets removed.
);

$comments_args = array(
‘fields’ => apply_filters( ‘comment_form_default_fields’, $new_fields ),
‘title_reply’ => ‘Leave a Comment’,
‘comment_field’ => ‘<p><label for=”comment”>’ . _x( ‘Comment’, ‘noun’ ) . ‘</label><textarea id=”comment” name=”comment” placeholder=”Eggy approves!” cols=”45″ rows=”4″ aria-required=”true”></textarea></p>’
);
comment_form($comments_args);

For a full list of default values in comment_form(), take a look at the Codex Function Reference.

Changing the Defaults

To change the fields for all comment forms, meaning it will change the default values and will be applied whenever you call comment_form(), you can change the defaults using a filter in the functions.php file.

//name it whatever you want
function alter_comment_form($new_defaults) {

//required variables for changing the fields value
$commenter = wp_get_current_commenter();
$req = get_option( ‘require_name_email’ );
$aria_req = ( $req ? ” aria-required=’true'” : ” );

//name the array whatever you want
$new_fields = array(
‘author’ => ‘<p>’ . ‘<label for=”author”>’ . __( ‘Name’ ) . ‘</label> ‘ . ( $req ? ‘<span>*</span>’ : ” ) .
‘<input id=”author” name=”author” type=”text” placeholder=”Eggy the Ram” value=”‘ . esc_attr( $commenter[‘comment_author’] ) . ‘” size=”30″‘ . $aria_req . ‘ /></p>’,
’email’ => ‘<p><label for=”email”>’ . __( ‘Email’ ) . ‘</label> ‘ . ( $req ? ‘<span>*</span>’ : ” ) .
‘<input id=”email” name=”email” type=”text” placeholder=”eggytheram@ryerson.ca” value=”‘ . esc_attr(  $commenter[‘comment_author_email’] ) . ‘” size=”30″‘ . $aria_req . ‘ /></p>’,
//in this case, we’re applying filters, so it changes all the values. If ‘url’ is not specified, then it gets removed.
);

$new_defaults[‘fields’] = apply_filters(‘comment_form_default_fields’, $new_fields); //changing default fields to the new values in your array
$new_defaults[‘comment_field’] = ‘<p><label for=”comment”>’ . _x( ‘Comment’, ‘noun’ ) . ‘</label><textarea id=”comment” name=”comment” placeholder=”Eggy approves!” cols=”45″ rows=”4″ aria-required=”true”></textarea></p>’;

$new_defaults[‘title_reply’] = ‘Leave a Comment‘; //changes the form header text

return $new_defaults;
}

add_filter(‘comment_form_defaults’, ‘alter_comment_form‘); //basically tells it to replace the existing defaults with your new defaults value (where applicable)

If you only want to change the fields or if you want to do it separately from the comments_form_defaults (especially if only changing one field), then you can set new values in a similar way to the new defaults, say:

function alter_comment_form_fields($new_fields) {
    if(isset($fields[‘url’]))
unset($fields[‘url’]);
return $fields;
}
add_filter(‘comment_form_default_fields’, ‘alter_comment_form_fields‘); //make sure to use comment_form_default_fields

Note: In this case, since we’re using the add_filter for the fields (instead of apply), it will only change the values specified.

Since this example only changes the url field, I could’ve actually used the specific field filter (i.e. comment_form_field_url) instead. Near the bottom of the Codex Function Reference page is a list of filter hooks related to comment_form.

The Result

As I mentioned, I edited the CSS further since my last post on editing the TwentyEleven comment form, so now it’s even smaller. It’s now 124px shorter and 84px less wide than my last version for a total of 367px shorter (and 84px less wide).

I was also recently reading about adding ‘character’ or ‘personality’ to a website and thought having fun placeholder text would be one small way to do that. (Eggy the Ram is the university’s mascot.)