=== Get Recent Comments ===
Tags: comments, widget
Requires at least: 1.5
Tested up to: 2.1
Stable tag: trunk
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.
== Description ==
This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your
sidebar. You have comprehensive control about their appearance. This ranges
from the number of comments, the length of the excerpts up to the html layout.
You can let the plugin order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply
order them by date. The plugin can (optionally) separate the
trackbacks/pingbacks from the comments. It can ignore comments to certain
categories, and it offers support for gravatars. It only gives extra work to
the database, when actually a new comment arrived. You can filter out
unwanted pingbacks, which originate from your own blog. And it is a widget.
You might want to have a look in the [changelog](http://blog.jodies.de/archiv/2004/11/13/recent-comments/2/#changelog).
*Feature List*
* Highly configurable via WordPress admin interface.
* Support for WordPress 1.5, 2.0 and 2.1
* Adjustable layout by macros.
* Handles trackbacks and comments in separate lists, or in one combined list.
* Widget support
* Caches the output
* Order comments by date, or by posting
* Support for [gravatars](http://www.gravatar.com/).
* Option to exclude comments to posts in certain categorys
* Doesn’t show pingbacks originating from own blog
* There is a special version for lyceum multiblog installations: http://blog.jodies.de/blog/get-recent-comments/lyceum/
* Supports [Hannah Gray’s](http://geekgrl.net/) [Profile Pics Plugin](http://geekgrl.net/2007/01/02/profile-pics-plugin-release/)
== Installation ==
1. Upload `get-recent-comments.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
2. Activate `Get Recent Comments` through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
3. What to do now depends on how up to date your theme is:
**Modern theme with widget support**
The plugin is a [widget](http://automattic.com/code/widgets/). If your
theme supports widgets, and you have installed the [widget
plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets/), adding the plugin to the
sidebar is easy: Go to the presentation menu and drag and drop the widget into
the sidebar ([Screenshot](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments/screenshots/)). Don't forget the Get Recent Trackbacks box. And you might want to
change the title. All done.
**Old school theme without widget support**
You need to insert the following code snippet into the sidebar template.
*wp-content/themes/<name of theme>/sidebar.php*
== Contributors/Changelog ==
Many users of the plugin gave feedback and contributed their ideas. They are
referenced in the [changelog](http://blog.jodies.de/archiv/2004/11/13/recent-comments/2/#changelog):
Version Date Changes
1.5.4 2007/02/01 Use full pingback_author as %comment_author
(instead of 'Unknown', if the pingback parser
fails to recognize the pingback_author.
Thanks again to Gant who found this in his
blog. Added %author_url_href macros, which
allows to generate inactive links, if the
commentator did not leave an url. This was
wished (in part long ago) by beej, carl,
FilSchiesty and SwB.
Added %profile_picture macro, which supports
Hannah Gray's Profile Pics Plugin. Thank you
for the idea and your help, Markus
1.5.3 2007/01/15 Refresh cache, when a comment is approved by
moderator. Problem found by Gant. Thank you!
1.5.2 2007/01/05 Added option for excluding comments from blog
authors. Suggested by This is Zimbabwe, Slim,
marilyn's shampoo and Igor M.
1.5.1 2006/12/29 Store the cache base64 encoded. There seems
to be a problem with the unserialization of
multibyte characters. Thanks to priv, who
reported the problem and suggested the
encoding.
After upgrading to this version you should
trigger a regeneration of the cache by adding
a comment somewhere.
1.5 2006/12/27 New pingback parser
Stop losing html entities and tags in the
post titles and comments by using
wptexturize. Thanks to ejm (again!) and
mobius for reporting the problem and making
suggestions.
Bugfix in widget code: Error, when trackbacks
came before comments
1.4 2006/12/24 The plugin is a widget now. Thanks to
herrmueller and Thomas de Klein for
suggesting this feature.
Cache the output in order to reduce the
database impact of the plugin. Thanks to the
following people for reporting the poor
performance and making suggestions to solve
the problem: Brandon Stone, King of Fools,
Robert Basic and especially CountZero.
Option to combine comments and trackbacks in
one list (requested by Maniac and die
produzentin)
Allow to Group comments by their posting
(requested by eyolf)
Allow limit of comments per post (suggested
by Thomas)
Use Wordpress 2.1 compatible database
variables. Thanks to spencerp, for reporting
and fixing.
Bugfix: Wrong key used in gravatar hash
(Thank you, Hamzeh N., for finding and fixing
this).
Updated the stylesheets to the look of
wordpress 2.x.
Added two macros: %comment_type and
%post_counter.
Use less option variables in db.
Updated instructions page.
Dropped support for Wordpress 1.2
1.3.1 2006/12/11 Fixes for problems with wordpress running
under windows.
1.3 2006/11/26 Fixes for problems with php5.
1.2 2005/09/15 Prevent pingbacks from own blog. Thanks to
Matt for the idea and support!
To use the feature, go to the trackbacks
configuration and enter the address of your
webserver.
1.0 2005/03/21 Also show comments to static pages. (They are
new in WP 1.5). Thanks to maza for the hint.
0.9 2005/03/20 Introduced admin gui. Handle trackbacks
different than comments. Replaced most
regular expressions with basic string
operations. Dedicated macro for posting time.
Requested by Zonekiller
0.8 2005/02/04 Readjusted sequence of arguments to the one
described in the documentation. Thanks to
Thomas
0.7 2005/02/03 Renamed plugin to get-recent-comments, to
make it possible to use the subversion system
at www.wp-plugins.org
Allow to specify your own formatting in the
function call
0.5 2005/01/02 Removed superfluous
0.4 2004/12/19 Use function arguments for displaying HTML
before and after the comment
Make number of comments and number of
characters also function arguments
0.3 2004/12/08 Link to permalink of comment
Wrap very long strings
0.2 Don’t show comments that are not approved
0.1 2004/11/03 Initial release
Thanks to all who sent bug reports and ideas for improvements.
Please send me a mail if I forgot you to mention here.
== Screenshots ==
1. Activation of widget
2. Administration Interface