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How To: Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks

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300x250 How To: Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks

Note: For WordPress 2.7 and newer WordPress installations, you’ll instead want to use this tutorial.

With all the WordPress themes available to WordPress users, it always surprises me how these incredible theme authors don’t take a few extra seconds to separate their theme’s trackbacks from the comments. It doesn’t look very professional and it can make it extremely difficult to follow a conversation in the comments.

Separating your trackbacks and comments requires a minimal amount of coding work to set up. First, you’ll want to make a backup of your comments.php file just in case something goes wrong. Next, follow these three steps:

1 ) Access your comments.php file and locate the following code:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

Immediately after the above code, you’ll want to place this code:

<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type == 'comment') { ?>

2 ) Next, you’ll want to scroll down a little bit and locate the following code:

<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

Immediately before the above code, you’ll want to place this code:

<?php } /* End of is_comment statement */ ?>

This will filter out all of the trackbacks and pingbacks from your main comments loop. Now we need to create a second comments loop to display the trackbacks and pingbacks.

3 ) Almost immediately below the code from step 2 you should find this code:

<?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

Immediately before the above code, you’ll want to place this code:

<h3>Trackbacks</h3>
<ol>
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
<li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
<?php } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

You can adjust this code to display how you want to, including using a different header if you have a specific look for your header 3.

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    • Kyle Eslick is WordPress enthusiast who took his passion for WordPress to the next level in 2007 by launching WPHacks.com as a place to share hacks, tutorials, etc. Connect with Kyle on Twitter or Google+!

    There Are 65 Responses So Far »

    • Pingback: WordPress Theme Tip: Separate Your Trackbacks From Your Comments

    • http://www.garryconn.com/ Garry Conn

      Great article man. I found it after my friend Kyle from Kyle’s Cove included a reference to it in his article. Nice work man!

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    • http://pomomusings.com Adam

      i like the article, but do you know how i can list the number of trackbacks….

      Yours above says 3 Responses…

      Could it say 3 Trackbacks too?

    • Hack WordPress

      Adam – Glad you found the post useful!

      With my current setup, the comments loop starts after it grabs the number of comments from the database, causing it to group the comments and trackbacks into a single total.

      Unfortunately, WordPress handles trackbacks/pingbacks and comments in the same way (which is why you have to approve trackbacks like you would a comment). Therefore, it would be extremely difficult to code your comments.php file to pull them separately.

    • Jenny

      Oh good I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this. Thanks!

    • Hack WordPress

      Jenny – Glad you found it useful!

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    • http://bloggerpl.com/ blogger pl . com

      Adam,
      to count comments and trackbacks separately you should try as follow: immediately after line

      put that code:

      and then simply show right number as number of comments or trackbacks.

    • http://bloggerpl.com/ blogger pl dot com

      ups, it seems that code I wrote isn’t displayed, than again:

      <?php
      $numTrackBacks = 0;
      $numComments = 0;

      foreach ($comments as $comment) {
      if (get_comment_type() != “comment”) { $numTrackBacks++; }
      else { $numComments++; }
      }
      ?>

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    • http://InternetDuctTape.com engtech

      Not quite the same thing, but I have two RSS filters for separating my comments and trackbacks in my RSS feeds in NetVibes — so I can always see the last 5 commenters.

      http://internetducttape.com/2007/09/25/blog-maintenance-tip-netvibes-start-page/

    • http://www.problogdesign.com/ Michael from Pro Blog Design

      Heck of a post. ;)

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    • http://www.bicyclefrenzy.com Bradly Fletchall

      This is great stuff. This is by far the esiest to understand WordPress Theme adjusting I have done since I switched to WordPress a few months ago. I’m going through the other articles looking for other golden nuggets of knowledge I can use on my site.

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    • Hack WordPress

      Blogger PL – Thanks for contributing the extra code!

      Engtech – That is definitely useful. Thanks for providing the link.

      Michael – Thanks! Hope you check back for future updates.

      Bradly – Glad you found it useful! I try to discuss various news, tips, tricks, hacks, and WordPress plugins/theme reviews, so if you find that stuff useful feel free to subscribe to my feed!

    • http://www.twentysteps.com Mike – Twenty Steps

      That’s a great workaround and something I’ve just implemented on my site. Thanks for putting it out there.

    • http://digital-musings.com Vikram

      Hey! It works! This mix up of trackbacks and comments was really pissing me off, but this is a great Tutorial, they each have their own territory now!

      Cheers! Great job!

    • http://blog.krefftwerk.net mk

      Duh! First of all, thanks for pointing out that this is a themes issue. :-)

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    • http://secondavenuesagas.com Ben K.

      Thanks for this one. The Comments/Trackback issue was really bugging me.

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    • http://marcvz.net/blog/ Marc

      I wanted to separate them but thought it might be too complicated. Thanks for the tip.

    • jrgd

      Thanks for all those explanations: I just did it and it’s quite nice to have trackbacks and comments separated now, I really like it! Thanks!

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    • http://www.valmg.com valmg

      Awesome post! Very helpful and looks terrific when implemented. It was easy to put on this blog, I’ll be putting it in place on my others as well. Thanks! Great work!

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    • Adam Kayce

      Beautiful! This worked exactly as I wanted it to, even taking out the trackback text, and it did it in about five minutes.

      Thanks so much (you saved my hide).

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    • http://www.nela.in/ moserw

      Thanks for sharing this. Will check it out.

      http://www.nela.in/

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    • http://www.mactricksandtips.com Mac Tips

      Is there a way to set it up so it says a line of text if there isn’t any trackbacks. In a similar way to comments. Otherwise a very good tip. Thanks

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    • http://www.valdau.lt Monika

      is it correct?
      foreach ($comments as $comment) {
      if (get_comment_type() != “comment”) { $numTrackBacks++; }
      else { $numComments++; }
      }

    • http://www.useragent.ca Kevin

      Definitely a great help! Simple and clean, thanks.

    • christine

      This is a really great post. Thank you.

      How do you separate Recent Comments from Recent Trackbacks in your sidebar?

      My Recent Comments is now a widget that came with the (Revolution) theme, but it shows the comments and trackbacks all mixed together.

      And even more annoying, it shows trackbacks from internal links between my own articles. Does the code above prevent that? or do you have to somehow exclude it from showing trackbacks where you yourself are the author, or from your own URL, or something like that?

      I’m going to look through your other posts for other good things.
      Thanks again.

    • http://kyleeslick.com Kyle Eslick

      @ Christine – If you are already using the Revolution theme, it should be really easy! You use the Recent Comments plugin provided.

      With that plugin you can sensor out internal pings and set up trackbacks to be separate. You should see a trackback tab.

      I’ll put this on my list of posts to tackle in the near future, so subscribe or check back regularly!

    • christine

      Thanks, Kyle.
      I have a Recent Comments widget, but I can’t get in to change anything about it.
      There is no Recent Comments plugin. That one you mentioned sounds excellent. I’ll go look for it, instead of the widget.
      If you know of a good one, could you post a link?
      Thanks again.

    • christine

      I think I found it. It’s called Get Recent Comments, right?
      I wonder if it was there at the start and I somehow lost in during the 2.5 upgrade.
      On the plugin in page, here

      http://blog.jodies.de/archiv/2004/11/13/recent-comments/

      it says “Widget support (but not required)”. What does that mean?

    • http://kyleeslick.com Kyle Eslick

      @ Christine – Yes, that is the correct plugin.

      I don’t use widgets, so I think they are just saying widget use isn’t required.

      I will try to get up a plugin review within the next week for this plugin. Hopefully that will give you the information you need. :D

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    • Slave to the Internet

      Hey, thanks for this little hack! Works a treat and has really cleaned up my comments!!

    • http://pacura.ru ovidiu

      hello there.
      I have done things like this mods, but I would want my trackbacks/pingbacks to look more like they look in my comment section of the admin panel, with all that text around the link to my site, not just the link from where they resulted… but when I tried to use $comment->comment_text it gave me noting back :-(

    • http://pacura.ru ovidiu

      oh and by the way there is a plugin to do this separation: http://www.binarymoon.co.uk/projects/bm-track-ping/

    • http://www.eventurebiz.com John Hoff – eVentureBiz

      Thanks for the info. I just put it on my blog and love it. I stumbled it and you can count on a trackback!

      What do you think about creating the list, however, below the Submit comment box though?

    • http://kyleeslick.com Kyle Eslick

      @ John – That is up to you. I display them just below the comments because it serves as a reminder to readers that they can write about the post on their site and get a link displayed there. I also know they can sometimes generate traffic for people, so I like having them in blue.

    • http://www.bojhan.nl Bojhan

      How do I remove the Trackback when there are no trackbacks? And dispaly when there are.

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    • Divvy

      Great hack, congratulations!!!

      Btw, is there any code that makes possible to not count the trackbacks/pingbacks in the number of comments?

      For example, in a post I have 5 comments.
      1 for a user and 4 trackbacks.
      I only want to show 1 instead of 5.

      Is possible? how? :)

      P.S. I dont know if the “blogger pl dot com” code is correct for me, but I dont know where to put him…

    • Divvy

      blogger pl dot com, where is to put that code?

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    • http://www.direitodigital.blog.br José Vitor Lopes e Silva

      I can’t do this. Always fail :(

      My comments.php http://josevitor.pastebin.org/51897

      I’m using WordPress Thread Comment plugin.

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    • http://takriv.com Lior Iluz

      Amazing! greatly appreciated!

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    • http://avtorentacar.bittersweet-place.com/ avtorentacar

      Thank you.

    • http://forthardknox.com Ron

      Can I move the code to display trackbacks before the comments? If so, where would I put it?

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    • http://www.avani-mehta.com Avani-Mehta

      Thank you. I could figure out how to not show trackbacks along with comments. Was stuck over how to show them in the end. This makes things quite speedy.

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    • http://www.seomkt.com bbrian017

      I did this modification and now comments or my sidebar won’t display using internet explorer can you possibly help me?

      I’m off back to work for the afternoon but if you add me (msn) to the e-mail I’m replying with maybe around 5 this evening you can help me get it right?

      open my url here and use Internet explorer and you will see

      works fine when using firefox!

      p.s. I have subscribed!

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    • http://www.seomkt.com bbrian017

      Sorry this works perfect!

      Thanks it was a bad post that messed up the page!

    • Edward de Leau

      Just a note that under 2.7 all of this has changed with the new wp_list_comments

    • http://www.thechetan.com/ Chetan

      Working excellent.
      Thanks a lot.

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    • http://www.shoutmeloud.com p@r@noid

      Cool Thanks for the tips..Worked for me :)

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    • David Gonzales

      Thanks!

    • http://saarlodri.com Andreas

      Thank you for this article. It’s exactly what I’ve searched for!

      Greets

      Andreas

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    • http://www.freegameshero.com/ fun free games

      This is working excellent.
      Thanks a lot.

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    • Care Egypt

      it’s adorable …
      really thank you so much
      Greeting from Egypt

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    • http://www.flapane.com/ flapane

      Works great, thanks.
      IMHO a nice thing could be deleting the pingbacks from comments count.
      So if there are 4 comments and 3 pings, the post shows: 4 comments, and not 7 comments.

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    • http://www.thebadblogger.com The Bad Blogger

      Thanks for the information, now my blog looks better…

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    • http://www.seomkt.com bbrian017

      I tried using this with my new theme from elegant theme but no luck yet with the suggested “finds”

      I’ve been waiting weeks for a reply in and attempt inside their forums for the cherrytruffle theme.

      I simply loved this hack it’s by far something that should be added in all wp themes!

    • http://www.joyoge.com/ joyoge designers’ bookmark

      nice tip thanks for the tut..

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    • http://insurances-loans.com aks

      nice tutorial thanks for sharing.

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    • http://www.uzmanparke.com/ ankara parke

      This is great stuff. This is by far the esiest to understand WordPress Theme adjusting I have done since I switched to WordPress a few months ago. I’m going through the other articles looking for other golden nuggets of knowledge I can use on my site.

    • http://www.kapadokya.net kapadokya

      Beautiful! This worked exactly as I wanted it to, even taking out the trackback text, and it did it in about five minutes.

      Thanks so much (you saved my hide).

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    • Google Experience

      This does not work for me. With a pingback all the comments are gone and no way to fill it in. I don’t have any knowledge and I can’t solve this problem… Have to look further for another solution.

    • http://www.mxky.com Infographiste

      Oh good I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for a customer and it helped me, so thanks for sharing the “tip” :)

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    • http://www.cssrex.com/ CSSReX

      Thanks for this wonderful code! My theme was showing track backs in between comments which does not look good. Now its wonderful!
      Thanks once again!

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    • http://www.vabytech.com vivek

      Works a treat and has really cleaned up my comments!!

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    • http://robcubbon.com/blog Rob Cubbon

      I found this really useful as well. Thanks.

    • Oris WilliamsF1

      I’m going through the other articles looking for other golden nuggets of knowledge I can use on my site.

    • http://words-do-matter.blogspot.com/ deepika

      can’t this be installed on blogger? :(

    • http://www.rehaupvc.com rehau

      I am using a theme that runs on Thematic so I can find the “foreach” you mentioned but not