I’ve noticed a lot of themes that don’t come with numbers on the blog’s comments. This might not be such a bad thing if you don’t get very many comments, but if your blog does get comments it is probably a good idea to show off how many comments you get by numbering them.
Here are the steps you can take to easily add numbers to your WordPress theme’s comments section.
- First thing you will want to do is create a backup your comments.php file.
- Locate the comments.php file.
- Locate the code that starts the comment loop. It will look something like this:
<?php if ( $comments ) : ?> - Place this code immediately above the code in Step 3:
<?php $i = 0; ?> - Now locate the code that looks like this:
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?> - Placed this code immediately below the code in Step 5:
<?php $i++; ?> - Now use this code where you want to display your comment numbers:
<span class="count">
<?php echo $i; ?>
</span> - Click Save.
- Now go to your stylesheet (style.css) and place this code anywhere on the stylesheet (probably best placed in the comments section):
.count {
float:right;
padding: 10px;
font-size:18px;
color:#000000;
}
You can adjust the stylesheet to fit your comment numbers into the placement and appearance that you want them to have.
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is the founder and primary author of WordPress Hacks. You can learn more about him at KyleEslick.com or you can follow his personal tweets here.
Nice share.thanks 
Wordpress is a powerful tool not just for blogs, but also for different news sites. Using some customization and hacks ...
That's unfortunate. Hopefully they can find a solution for it soon. :(
Till then,
Jean 
Did not know about it. Does ispionage have data for some mildly low volume keywords and th eones which are ...
I know this post is a couple years old, but I wanted to thank for you giving us this information. ...
Thanks very much, extremely useful!
Really sorry for the double post, but I cannot find or anything like it in my comments.php file,
Is there another way?
Thanks!
Neil,
I’m not sure if part of your post didn’t show up. You can’t find anything like which step?
Sorry
,
Just figured it out, dont know why most of my post was cut off!
Everything is sorted,
Thanks anyway.
How about just using an ordered list with each comment being a list item?
Thank you for this straightforward and simple explanation! I spent days with other sites making it so convoluted, your solution took about 30 seconds!
Thanks again!
Works like a charm. Thanks.
TYVVVVVVVVM!!!!!!
I have giveaways to start drawing names for tomorrow and with most in the hundreds and one nearing 900, I def did NOT want to count through on each one to find the “right” one as per the random number selector, lol!
THANK YOU AGAIN!!!
Hi, nice script! how can i make the same thing in posts?
thanks in advance
Extremely useful, but novices must have more explanation of using.
Perfect, exactly what I needed. Thank you so much for this tip!
Thank you so much! It’s what I needed!
Can you suggest how to do it in WP 2.7+ where all the meat of the comment display is done in wp_list_comments()? I have tried using a call back but the variable $i is not available there so I can’t increment nor display it.
Even using OL (as demonstrated in the default theme) is no good when the comments are paged because every new page STARTS FROM 1 making it useless. Goodness knows what happens with threaded comments, I haven’t tried yet.
My comments are currently setup to show the newest comments on top, instead of the default oldest first.
Using this tutorial, it’s labeling my latest comment as #1,2,3 etc…
So say I have 15 comments, it is showing my 15th comment as #1.
Any easy way to reverse this order?
Yeah! Thanks a lot. I’ve looked around for a solution to comment numbering for like 30 minutes! Clear and simple! Thanks again
Thanks so much for this easy to follow explanation! I would have been looking for a plugin forever!
It was so easy that even this Baby Boomer did it!
Thanks so much! Super easy to follow and worked perfectly!
doesnt work for me.
where should u put no. 7 ?
isnt there a plugin that can do that for low tech people, other then me ….
Hi,
My theme doesn’t have this code
Sorry for the first comment.
Please help.
thank you, i have a problem. somehow my comments-count does work blog-wide?? not only the comments of each post get counted from 1 to whatever, but the comments of all posts get counted! so it could be that i have a 10 posts on my blog, every post has a few comments, so the tenth post starts with comment number 35??? what i’m doing wrong?
Could you update this for the newer versions of WordPress? I’m using 2.8.4. The code in comments.php is totally different and it’s hard to figure out where to put what. Thank You!
— *** SOLUTION *** —
If you’re looking for a way to do that in WP 2.8.X, here’s how to:
Go in your comment-template.php file in the wp-includes folder, and go to the “get_comments_number” function (approx. line 520).
After “global $id;” (always in the “get_comments_number” function), add ” global $count; “.
That’s it! Now all you have to do, in your index.php file (or whatever), add
I’d recommand changing, in the “get_comments_number” function, the variable “$count ” to something else so a plugin doesn’t “interfere” with this global variable in the future. Per example, in my case, I renamed it to “$countcomments”. So it gives me this:
function get_comments_number( $post_id = 0 ) {
global $id;
global $countcomments; /* First modification */
$post_id = (int) $post_id;
if ( !$post_id )
$post_id = (int) $id;
$post = get_post($post_id);
if ( ! isset($post->comment_count) )
$countcomments = 0; /* Second modification */
else
$countcomments = $post->comment_count; /* Third modification */
return apply_filters(‘get_comments_number’, $countcomments); /* Fourth modification */
}
Now in my index.php, I just putted .
Good luck!
Thanks Justin, but look like some words are missing in your comment oO. What do we have to add in the index.php file ? Thanks
Your code for what to put in the index.php has been cut off. Can someone please edit so that we know how to show the number of the comment??? No use if the code isn’t there.
Thanks for the solution Justin
Thank you for these very easy instructions!