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How to Add Quicktags in WordPress Comment Forms

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Do you want to add formatting quicktags to your WordPress comment forms?

By default, the WordPress comment box lets your visitors use basic HTML tags such as bold and italic tags in their comments, as well as include hyperlinks. However, most visitors don’t know about this feature or don’t know how to write HTML code.

In this article, we will show you how to help visitors style their comments more easily by adding quicktags to your WordPress comment forms.

How to add quicktags in WordPress comment forms

Why Add Quicktags in Your WordPress Comment Forms?

Quicktags are buttons that visitors can use to style their WordPress comments. If you’ve ever used a word processor like Google Docs, or even the old WordPress classic editor, then you’ve seen their formatting buttons which are similar to WordPress quicktags.

For example, in this image, you can see that Google Docs has buttons that you can use to create bold and italic text.

Formatting buttons in Google Docs

WordPress quicktags work the same way.

By making it easy for visitors to style their comments with the click of a button, you can encourage people to comment more.

In the following image, you can see that the bold word stands out from the rest of the comment text.

Quicktags in a WordPress comment form

Formatting can also encourage visitors to read your post’s entire comment section even when it’s long, and even when your comments are split across multiple pages.

That said, let’s take a look at how to add formatting quicktags to your WordPress comment forms.

How to Add Quicktags in Your WordPress Comment Forms

The easiest way to add quicktags in your WordPress comment forms is by using the Simple Comment Quicktags plugin.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

As soon as you activate this plugin, it will add some new settings to your WordPress website’s comment form.

Just visit any page or post to see your new quicktags live.

Quicktags in a WordPress comment form

Now whenever a visitor wants to make their text bold or italic, they simply need to click on the ‘b’ for bold or ‘i’ for italic buttons.

This will add an HTML opening tag to their comment.

The Bold quicktag in a WordPress comment form

Now everything the visitor types after that will have bold or italic formatting.

When they want to type plain text again, they just need to click on the ‘b’ or ‘i’ button again. This will add the bold or italic closing tag to their text.

How to add quicktags in a WordPress comment form

There’s also a ‘link’ button that visitors can use to add links to their comments. This allows them to share useful links with other readers.

However, some people may use this quicktag to post spam links. With this in mind, you may want to take extra steps to combat comment spam in WordPress and moderate your comments carefully.

A quicktag link in the WordPress comments form

The final quicktag is blockquotes.

Your visitors can use this quicktag to quote your post or other commenters. For more details, you can see our guide on how to customize blockquotes in WordPress.

A blockquote WordPress quicktag

We hope this article helped you learn how to add quicktags in WordPress comment forms. You may also want to check out our guide on how to allow user registration on your WordPress site or see our expert pick of the best WordPress membership plugins.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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3 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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  2. Adrian Robertson says

    I can see some quick tags being useful, others not so. I guess it depends on the type of forum you are trying to promote. I can certainly see how a link could be useful on many tech / web blogs, but general styling (bold, italics, headings, etc) not so sure about.

    Having said that, it hasn’t stopped me installing this plugin on my own site!

    I’ll be curious to see who uses the styling buttons (if anyone)

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