Probably Not-So-Often-Used Way To Edit Your Comment

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If there is one thing distinguishes a blog from a static website is the mean for two-way interaction between the author of the article or the blog owner and the readers who read the article. Using the comment form allows us to express our side of opinions on the subject being discussed. We either agree or disagree at some point in time. Certainly there is no other way to evoke that kind of two-way conversation than using a blog.

Image from Mediamatic

However, it took me a while to realize that there isn’t an obvious way for me to edit comments in the WordPress 2.5 Admin Dashboard. OK! Your theme template would probably has a little ‘Edit’ link that allows you to edit your comment when you’re login as admin. But what happen when, as in most cases, there is none? The theme I am using is lacking with this kind of support.

So how do you edit your post comment?

First of all, why edit the comment you may ask? Well, I totally agree that comments, be it constructively positive or damagingly negative should be left at its raw from. People are at liberty to express their opinions about what they like or don’t like. Hence comments should not be ‘censored‘ in my opinion. Nonetheless you are right too if you think that some form of moderation is necessary to avoid what we always refer to as ‘spam‘.

For the sake of this article, I am referring to a different ball game altogether. I don’t know about you but I hate to see a typo error or mistyped words or simply a broken link. Call me a perfectionist if you want. If it doesn’t look good on it and I’m aware of it, I’ll make the effort to edit or change it without removing the originality of it.

I mean, if you write something like this, “I hate your post - <a href= http://mypost.com/why-I-love-this/ ” > ” I’ll make a little effort to make it something like this, “I hate your post - mypost.com/why-I-love-this” You get I mean, do you?

Here’s the not-so-often-used way to edit your comment

You just need to click the name of the commentator just like the way you need to manage edit your post by clicking its title. How the @#*% am I supposed to know that? Why isn’t there a more obvious way to do it? If there is a link to ‘Unapprove’ ‘Spam’ and ‘Delete’, how difficult it is to just add a little nice ‘Edit. Maybe they say, “Three’s a crowd”.

But then here’s what I did

If you want to add ‘Edit’ link to your WordPress theme, go to your comments.php and add the following one-line code somewhere in your comment section. Preferably after the name of the commenter or anywhere you think it’s appropriate.

<?php edit_comment_link('Edit','(',')'); ?>

It is only visible when you are login as admin and hidden to your visitors. Isn’t this a much better way?

I hope this little tips would help you to edit your comments if the need arises till some guys from WordPress.com thinks that “three is no longer a crowd”. I’m also interested in your thoughts and opinions on this. Thanks for reading.