Fetching the Comments Count on Single Post

Many a times we need to fetch the total number of comments on a single post or display that number on the excerpt. It seems pretty easy but actually there are many ways to fetch the number of comments in WordPress. For instance –

• Template tags

  • comments_popup_link

  • comments_number

• via get_comments_number function

• via global variable: $post

  • post->comment_count

• other custom ways

Now the comments_popup_link works only inside the loop and doesn’t really work on is_single() or is_page(). In simple terms, it works only on homepage or archive pages. So let’s not talk about this function.

Methods which can be used

The comments_number function will return the number of comments and can be used as follows:

<?php comments_number(‘zero’, ‘one’, ‘more’); ?>

Another way is by using post->comment_count as shown below

<?php echo ‘comment count is: ‘ . $post->comment_count; ?>

Preferred Method To Add Comments Number

But these are all somewhat complex and relatively difficult to customize or implement. The most easiest way is to use get_comments_number function.

<?php $commentscount = get_comments_number(); echo $commentscount; ?>

You can customize this comment count. For example –

<?php

$commentscount = get_comments_number();

echo ‘(‘ . $commentscount . ‘)’ . ‘ Comments’;

?>

This will display the comments as follows –

(0) Comments

(1) Comments

(2) Comments

You can see, how easy it is to implement get_comments_number() function. Also it’s very simple to customize it with a bit of PHP code.

And hey, I’m sure some of you are wondering about the 1 Comment’S’ part. Well we can of course change that 1 ‘commentS’ to 1 comment using an If Else code.

• WordPress Tips & Tricks

• Omkar B
• April 16, 2014