Approved Comments Suddenly not showing

  • I have searched these forums and tried the various solutions. If I switch to any older theme (mine is an older theme based on WordPress Classic, the original WordPress theme that graced versions 1.2.x and prior. It has been working perfectly well until a couple of days ago.)

    When I switch to twenty ten, the approved comments show up with all plugins activated. I don’t think it’s a activated plugin problem.

    I’m not really keen to be messing around creating a Twenty Ten Child theme and having to fool around endlessly with functions.php file.

    I’ve tried changing <?php comments_template(); ?> that was in my comments.php to <?php comments_template('/comments.php'); // Get wp-comments.php template ?> Alas, that appeared to do nothing at all.

    I’ve stared at the coding in the comments.php on the Twenty Ten comments.php to see how it compares to my comments.php and don’t see exactly where the pages differ. Before messing with that coding OR with the coding in functions.php, I’m wondering if I have to repair the database. (The other day, I updated an inactive plugin. It may not have finished updating. Today I removed it, hoping that that was the reason for the comments not appearing.

    How do I do that AND what, if anything, must I do before repairing it in order to make sure that I don’t lose anything?

    I hope that made some kind of sense. Thank you for any help you can offer.

    -E Morris

    etherwork.net/blog/?p=1709 <– purposely not linked in an attempt to prevent spam

    If you look at the sidebar, there is allegedly a comment from Barbara. Click on that and the comment does not appear, even though it IS in the admin area.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • My guess is that your (older) theme simply isn’t compatible with the current version of WordPress any more. Perhaps your comments.php file isn’t using wp_list_comments()?

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    You’re correct, Esmi. My comments.php file isn’t using wp_list_comments() I have been running the wordpress 3.5.1 for some time now without any glitches.

    The comments have been showing up perfectly well without wp_list_comments() since yesterday at 2013/06/03 at 09:57 EDT.

    The comment from Barbara that is refusing to show up was submitted 2013/06/03 at 22:00 EDT

    What else might have happened in those 12 hours that would have caused this?

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    This is the rather sloppy coding that I have on my comments.php to list the comments:

    <?php if ( have_comments() ) : ?>
<ol id="commentlist">
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<li id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"<?php if ($comment->comment_author == "ejm") echo ' class="ejm"'; elseif ($comment->comment_author_email == "ejm-id"."@"."domainname.com") echo ' class="ejm"'; elseif ($comment->comment_author_email == "tph-id"."@"."domainname.com") echo ' class="tph"'; elseif (($comment->comment_type == "pingback") ||($comment->comment_type == "trackback"))  echo ' class="pingback"'; else echo ''; ?>>
<small><cite><?php comment_type(_x('Comment', 'noun'), __('Trackback'), __('Pingback')); ?> <?php _e('by'); ?> <?php comment_author_link() ?>  — <?php comment_date('j F  Y') ?> @ <a href="#comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"><?php comment_time() ?></a></cite> <?php edit_comment_link(__("edit"), ' |'); ?></small>
	<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 16 ); ?>
	<?php comment_text() ?>
	</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>
<?php else : // If there are no comments yet ?>
<!--	<p><?php _e('No comments yet.'); ?></p> -->
<?php endif; ?>

    I have no idea how to fill in the array for $args to reflect the above.

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Function_Reference/wp_list_comments

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    Aha. It appears that I do need to repair my database. I backed it up and then went to /wp-admin/maint/repair.php and followed the instructions to add define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true); to my config file. I reloaded the page and received the following message:

    wp_usermeta: 1 client is using or hasn’t closed the table properly
    wp_posts: 2 clients are using or haven’t closed the table properly
    wp_comments: 4 clients are using or haven’t closed the table properly
    wp_options: 4 clients are using or haven’t closed the table properly
    wp_postmeta: 2 clients are using or haven’t closed the table properly
    wp_commentmeta: 4 clients are using or haven’t closed the table properly

    Please advise.

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    After reading the comments at devilsworkshop.org/tips/repair-and-optimize-wordpress-database/43635/ I went directly into phpmyadmin and checked each of the tables listed. It said they were okay. So I went back to /wp-admin/maint/repair.php to see the following:

    The wp_users table is okay.
    The wp_usermeta table is okay.
    The wp_posts table is okay.
    The wp_comments table is okay.
    The wp_links table is okay.
    The wp_options table is okay.
    The wp_postmeta table is okay.
    The wp_terms table is okay.
    The wp_term_taxonomy table is okay.
    The wp_term_relationships table is okay.
    The wp_commentmeta table is okay.

    Alas, the comments are still not showing up.

    Have you tried:

    – deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).

    – switching to the default theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

    – resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    It might be theme-specific. If I switch to twenty twelve, the missing comments show up. However, everything was working well (until yesterday) with my custom theme since February when I upgraded to 3.5.1

    I have a feeling that it might be an apparently inactive plugin.

    And NOW new images are refusing to show up in Twenty Twelve as well.

    I uploaded this today: etherwork.net/blog/?attachment_id=1721 It shows up in my admin area but not on the blog itself.

    I’ll try resetting the plugins folder. Fingers crossed that it will work.

    If I switch to twenty twelve, the missing comments show up.

    Then that pretty much confirms that it’s a theme problem.

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    Not entirely. The new images are not showing on Twenty Twelve.

    It’s looking like it might be a server problem. Before going through the nightmare of customizing Twenty Twelve, (ie: creating a childtheme) I’m going to wait until I hear from my webhost to find out if they can do something on their end.

    Many thanks for your time, Esmi.

    Thread Starter ejm

    (@llizard)

    I am happy to say that I have finally figured out what the problem was. For some reason, a commented out section on one of the approved comments caused the rest of the comments to disappear.

    I approved the comment because it was on-topic but hadn’t decided yet whether to allow the blatant advertisement at the end so simply commented it out:

    <!– span style=”color:#abc;” Visit h t t p : / / s o m e o n e – s – t o u r i s m w e b s i t e . c o m providing information about (a href=”https://someone-s-tourismwebsite.com/tourism.html&#8221; rel=”nofollow”>)Tourism(/a), (a href=”https://someone-s-tourismwebsite.com/&#8221; rel=”nofollow”)Business Directory(/a) –>

    I’ve done this before without anything exploding but for some reason, it didn’t work this time.

    Still, I’m really glad to have discovered that I don’t have to change my theme.

    edit: I just experimented and this commented out section DOES work:

    <!-- Visit h t t p : / / s o m e o n e - s - t o u r i s m w e b s i t e . c o m providing information about Tourism -->

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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