Do you want to highlight the author’s comments in WordPress posts on your website?
Highlighting the author’s comments in your WordPress blog can help you build engagement. Users are more likely to leave a comment when they see the author is actively participating in the discussion.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily highlight the author’s comments in WordPress to boost engagement.
Why Highlight Author’s Comments in WordPress?
Comments are a great way to build user engagement on your website. If you want to get more comments on your articles, then you can encourage that by actively participating in the discussions.
For a new WordPress blog, you can easily reply comments during comment moderation. If you run a multi-author blog, then you can encourage authors to take part in the discussion as well.
However, most WordPress themes don’t distinguish between comments and list them using the same style.
A casual reader may scroll through the comments, not realizing the additional content contributed by the author in the discussion.
Highlighting author’s comments helps you remedy that and makes the author’s comments stand out and be more noticeable.
The ultimate goal here is to encourage new users to join in the comments and ultimately subscribe to your newsletter or become a customer.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily highlight author comments in WordPress.
Highlighting Comment Author in WordPress
The easiest way to highlight comments by post author is by adding custom CSS to your WordPress theme. This allows you to easily add the code needed and see a live preview of how it would look on your website without saving it.
First, you need to visit Appearance » Customize in WordPress admin area. This will launch the WordPress theme customizer interface. You’ll notice a bunch of options in a column on your left and a live preview of your website.
From here, you need to click on the Additional CSS tab. This will open a text area where you’ll be adding the Custom CSS.
However, you would want to see how the custom CSS will look when applied. To do that, you need to navigate to a blog post that contains comments by a post author.
Scroll down to the comments section and then add the following custom CSS in the Custom CSS box on the left.
.bypostauthor { background-color: #e7f8fb; }
You’ll immediately notice the author comment change matching the Custom CSS you entered.
So how does this all work?
You see WordPress adds some default CSS classes to different areas of your website. These CSS classes are there regardless of which WordPress theme you are using.
In this sample code, we have used the .bypostauthor
CSS class which is added to all comments added by a post author.
Let’s add some more CSS styles to make it even more prominent. Here is a sample code that adds a small ‘Author’ label to the comments by the post author and a border around the author’s avatar image.
.bypostauthor:before { content:"Author"; float:right; background-color:#FF1100; padding:5px; font-size:small; font-weight:bold; color:#FFFFFF; } .bypostauthor .avatar { border:1px dotted #FF1100; }
This is how it looked on our test website.
Highlighting Comments by User Role in WordPress
Now, many WordPress blogs have team members responsible for answering comments. Popular websites may have post author, administrator, and moderators all answering comments to boost user engagement.
How do you highlight a comment added by a staff member that is not the actual author of the post?
There is an easy hack to achieve that. However, it requires you to add custom code to your WordPress website. If you haven’t done this before, then see our article on how to easily add custom code in WordPress.
First, you need to add the following code to the code snippets plugin or your theme’s functions.php file.
if ( ! class_exists( 'WPB_Comment_Author_Role_Label' ) ) : class WPB_Comment_Author_Role_Label { public function __construct() { add_filter( 'get_comment_author', array( $this, 'wpb_get_comment_author_role' ), 10, 3 ); add_filter( 'get_comment_author_link', array( $this, 'wpb_comment_author_role' ) ); } // Get comment author role function wpb_get_comment_author_role($author, $comment_id, $comment) { $authoremail = get_comment_author_email( $comment); // Check if user is registered if (email_exists($authoremail)) { $commet_user_role = get_user_by( 'email', $authoremail ); $comment_user_role = $commet_user_role->roles[0]; // HTML output to add next to comment author name $this->comment_user_role = ' <span class="comment-author-label comment-author-label-'.$comment_user_role.'">' . ucfirst($comment_user_role) . '</span>'; } else { $this->comment_user_role = ''; } return $author; } // Display comment author function wpb_comment_author_role($author) { return $author .= $this->comment_user_role; } } new WPB_Comment_Author_Role_Label; endif;
This code simply adds the user role label next to the comment author’s name. This is how it would look without any custom styling.
Let’s make it a little prettier by adding some custom CSS. Go to Appearance » Customize page and switch to the Additional CSS tab.
After that, you can use the following CSS to style the user role label in the comments.
.comment-author-label { padding: 5px; font-size: 14px; border-radius: 3px; } .comment-author-label-editor { background-color:#efefef; } .comment-author-label-author { background-color:#faeeee; } .comment-author-label-contributor { background-color:#f0faee; } .comment-author-label-subscriber { background-color:#eef5fa; } .comment-author-label-administrator { background-color:#fde9ff; }
This is how it looked on our test site. Feel free to modify the code to match your theme’s colors and style.
For more details, you may want to read our article on how to add user role labels to WordPress comments.
We hope this article helped you learn how to highlight author comments in WordPress. Want to see how users interact with your website? See our tutorial on how to track user engagement in WordPress, and how to add web push notification on your WordPress site to grow your traffic.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Rafael says
Not work for me
I use custom theme with comments.php from twenty Twenty Thirteen.
Where can I add more CSS classes ?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Rafael,
Please see our guide on how to add custom CSS in WordPress.
Admin
Irfan Ali says
Thank you very much.
Haina says
Hi! Whenever somenone leaves a comment on my website, the author name appears in gray. How can I change that do black? Also, a “permalink” word is always bellow the date and time of the comment . How can I get rid of that? Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Haina,
Please take a look at our guide on how to style WordPress comments.
Admin
Haina says
Thanks for the quick reply. However, my understanding of CSS is less than “fair”. If you could give me direct instructions on how to get the comment author name in black, it would be great. If not, I understand also. Thanks.
Martin says
How is it possible to exclude any replies to the authors comment from the styling?
Peter Huan says
I tried to it but i could not. I was added to my theme opition by myself.
May be i was changed “div”…
Thank you for topic.
Fahad says
There is a problem with changing the background if the auther is the creator of the comment and someone else replied, since the nested reply will also have the same highlighted background!
deven says
Nice post … but is there any plugin for doing the same ( there are some but 2-3 yers old ) looking for a new one with more customize options.
char says
Is there a way to give each author (the main ones) different color comments?
Editorial Staff says
Yes, it is possible to assign different color comments for registered users. The class would look like .comment-author-username. Replace username with the author’s username.
Admin
Ahmad Raza says
I followed the way you described but i have not found <li id=”comment-“> template in my comments.php
Any solution?
Editorial Staff says
Just updated the article, so it is more current.
Admin
Gretchen Louise says
I’d love to see this tutorial updated to apply to Genesis and multi-author blogs!
Keith Davis says
Useful tip.
When I read post comments, I tend to read the author’s comments on the assumption that what he says carries more authority.
I’m OK with the CSS but never sure about the php.
You may have enticed me to start messing with the php!
joyoge bookmark says
nice tutorial, thank you
janghuan says
In my wordpress version,I just need to add a exist class that the wordpress generates.It’s “comment-author-admin”.Maybe the class “bypostauthor” that wordpress generates also does work.
Blake Imeson says
This method would fail for multi-author blogs right?
Editorial Staff says
You can probably add a comma and add more user IDs, but it will show all editor’s comment in highlighted version, so yes it will be a fail if you look at it that way.
Admin