How to Show Recent Comments in WordPress Sidebar

Are you looking to add recent comments in your WordPress sidebar? Recently, one of our readers asked if we could cover how to display recent comments in WordPress. That’s why in this article, we will show you how to easily show recent comments in WordPress sidebar or other widget-ready areas.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

Method 1: Default Recent Comments Widget in WordPress

WordPress comes with a built-in ready to use recent comments widget which you can add to your sidebar.

Simply go to Appearance » Widgets and add Recent Comments widget to your sidebar.

You can provide a widget title and choose the number of comments you want to display. Next click on the save button to store your widget settings.

Now you can visit your website to see the recent comments widget in action.

Method 2: A Better Recent Comments Widget in WordPress

As you can see that the default recent comments widget only shows comment author name and post title. There is not much information about the comment itself which makes it look very plain.

Here is how you can add a better recent comments widget to your WordPress sidebar.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Decent Comments plugin. Upon activation, simply visit Appearance » Widgets page and add Decent Comments widget to a sidebar.

Decent Comments widget comes with a lot of different options. Among these options, you will find the option to display comment author avatar and comment excerpt.

WordPress uses Gravatar to automatically display a comment author’s avatar image. See our guide on Gravatar and why you should start using it right away.

You can define the size of comment author’s gravatar image as well as the excerpt length. This gives you control on how the recent comments appear in the widget.

Don’t forget to click on the save button to store your widget settings.

Now visit your website to see the recent comments with author images in action.

You can adjust the appearance of recent comments by editing CSS in your theme or child theme. You can also use CSS Hero plugin which allows you to change appearance of any element on your site without writing any CSS or HTML.

We hope this article helped you show recent comments in sidebar of your WordPress blog. You may also want to see our guide on how to improve WordPress comments with De:comments.

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