Comment Timeout and faulty WordPress themes

This post is more than 16 years old.

Posted at 22:51 on 28 July 2008

Occasionally people report problems with Comment Timeout breaking the layout on their WordPress themes when comments are closed.

In these cases it is almost certainly the theme that is at fault rather than the plugin itself. It seems that some theme designers do not test their themes properly on posts where comments are closed.

You can verify that this is the case by manually turning off comments on an offending post:

  1. Disable Comment Timeout.
  2. Edit one of your old posts, uncheck the box under "Comments & Pings" that says "Allow Comments" and click save.
  3. View the post you just edited in your browser again.

If the problem persists, you should contact your theme's designer as it is the theme that is at fault.

If you are a theme designer and you receive a report of this fault, please check that you have balanced your <div> tags and <?php if (...) ?> statements in your theme. For example, this will be incorrect:

<div class="comments">
<?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>
<div class="comments-inner">
<?php render_comments(); ?>
</div>
<?php else: ?>
<div class="no-comments">Sorry, comments are closed.</div>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>

This kind of mistake is very easy to miss if you do not indent your code correctly, as in the above sample. For reasons that completely befuddle me, some developers and web designers don't indent their code at all -- in fact, this was the case the first time I encountered this error, which is why I mention it here. Adding indentation shows it up clearly -- lines 8 and 9 do not match lines 1 and 2 correctly and should be swapped:

<div class="comments">
  <?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>
    <div class="comments-inner">
      <?php render_comments(); ?>
    </div>
  <?php else: ?>
    <div class="no-comments">Sorry, comments are closed.</div>
  </div>
<?php endif; ?>