Display the most recent comments without the use of a plugin

If you are not fan of using too many plugins on your wordpress site, you can minimize the use by adding bits of code to your theme’s template files, for example, list the most recent comments, or display the most recent posts.

Doing this is very easy, the only thing you will need to do is choose a location and paste the code. Of course you can modify it to suit you.

How to list the most recent comments

#1 - Login to your wordpress dashboard
#2 - Click on Appearance and proceed with Editor
#3 - Find the most appropriate theme template to paste the code (I’m assuming the sidebar.php or footer.php)

The code to display the 5 most recent comments

<?php

  global $wpdb;

  $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt, comment_approved, comment_type,comment_author_url, SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,50) AS com_excerpt FROM $wpdb->comments LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID) WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND post_password = '' ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 5";

  $comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
  $recentComments = $pre_HTML;
  $recentComments .= "\n<ol>";
  foreach ($comments as $comment) {
    $recentComments .= "\n<li>".strip_tags($comment->comment_author) .":" . "<a href=\"" . get_permalink($comment->ID)."#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID . "\" title=\"on ".$comment->post_title . "\">" . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt)."</a></li>";
  }
  $recentComments .= "\n</ol>";
  $recentComments .= $post_HTML;
  echo $recentComments ;
?>

Code explanation

This code contains 2 sections. The first section uses mysql string to get the most recent comments from the database and the second section a simple php code to output the list formatting.

By default, this code will display the 5 most recent comments. To modify this, just change the number 5 located at the end of the $sql variable.

The characters are limited to 50 per one listing, to change this locate this piece inside the code SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,50) and change the value of 50 to the one that will suit you.