Dev WP

Separating comments, trackbacks and pingbacks

Posted 22/7/08 - Filed under Tips & Tricks

You’ve all seen it: comments that aren’t actually comments but simply trackbacks or pingbacks from other blogs linking to your blog posts. One of the most commen examples is this: a post gets featured on del.icio.us and tens of blogs link to your post. No problem, you think, this only makes your blog bigger. The downside is that any interesting conversation going on in your comments is abruptly stopped. Suddenly your comments are clutted with trackbacks and people don’t bother to read everything to ensure they missed something.

The easy way

I’d prefer to have a smaller group of returning visitors that add to the value of a site instead of a sudden rush of visitors for just one article. So, how could you prevent that trackbacks clutter your comments? The first thing that comes to mind would be to simply not list them. You could easily remove trackbacks and pingbacks from your comments.

Instead of using your usual code inside the foreach comment loop,

<ol>
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
	<li>
		// your usual comment template tags
	</li>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

update it to look like this:

<ol>
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) :
	if(get_comment_type() == 'comment') { ?>
		<li>
			// your usual comment template tags
		</li>
	<?php }
	endforeach; ?>
</ol>

That’s all there is too it.

However, allthough this may look nice, it’s not very friendly to the blogs who took time to mention you. They’re giving you some links which will improve your site’s ranking and you prevent that they get a link back in return.

The friendlier and harder way

A much friendlier way is to list them separately. By separating comments and pingbacks/trackbacks, you return the favour to those sites and your visitors are able to maintain a easily readable discussion in your comments.

But… how would you go about doing this? Place them in separate lists? This question has been asked to me a lot. Appearantly, a lot believe that they are bound to use one ordered list because of the foreach loop that the WordPress comment system uses. Obviously, if you’re using only one list, it’s impossible to separate your comments and pingbacks/trackbacks since they are sorted by date, not by type.

What most people forget, is that they can use the comment foreach statement multiple times. Basically, to separate your comments and pingbacks/trackbacks, you simply use two foreach statements instead of one.

To demonstrate, you’d go from your basic comments foreach statement,

<ol>
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
	<li>
		// your usual comment template tags
	</li>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

to something like this

<ol>
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
	<li>
		// your usual comment template tags
	</li>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

<ol>
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
	<li>
		// your usual comment template tags
	</li>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

Obviously, this would simply show everything twice, not something we’re looking for. For the next step, simply look back to our earlier method. Use the same method in the first step and simply put everything else that is not a comment in the second foreach loop.

<ol id="comments">
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
		<?php if(get_comment_type() == 'comment') { ?>
		<li>
			// your usual comment template tags
		</li>
		<?php } ?>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

<ol id="trackpingback">
	<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>
		<?php if(get_comment_type() != 'comment') { ?>
		<li>
			// your usual trackback/pingback template tags
		</li>
		<?php } ?>
	<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

Thinking even further

Simple as that. Nothing else to it! You just separated your comments and trackbacks/pingbacks. Want to make it even more nifty? You could use a simple Javascript statement to let users toggle the trackbacks and pingbacks. Take this convenient little piece of javascript code and include it into your file:

function toggle(obj) {
	var el = document.getElementById(obj);
	if ( el.style.display != 'block' ) {
		el.style.display = 'block';
	} else {
		el.style.display = 'none';
	}
}

By adding a link like <a href="javascript:toggle('trackpingback');">Toggle trackbacks/pingbacks</a> into your code, you could give your uses the possibility to toggle the trackbacks and pingbacks.

The possibilities, as usual, are endless. Play around with the code offered in this article until it fits your needs.

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