Allow Users To Edit Comments In WordPress

How To Allow Users To Edit Comments In WordPress?

If you’re not using a third-party commenting system like Disqus or Livefyre, you will often receive multiple comments from the same author correcting spelling or grammar mistakes. In situations like this, I usually change the original comment itself and delete the subsequent one. As the site administrator, you obviously have the ability to directly change stuff including your own comments. For some strange reason, most people realize they’ve made a mistake only after pressing the “Submit” button! It would be ideal if users could edit their own comments and thus save you the hassle of having to make the change manually. It’s also more elegant.

But you immediately run into problems due to the worry that someone can change what they said in the middle of an extended discussion thereby removing the base of the argument itself. To solve this, we would like to implement a timer after which the comment will be unavailable for editing. There are three or four WordPress plug-ins that can get the job done, but after trying them all out one by one, I finally settled on Simple Comment Editing.

Allow Users To Edit Comments In WordPress

We have jotted down the following steps so that you can also reap the benefits of this plugins, just like many websites are doing.

Install the Simple Comment Editing Plugin to your desktop. Once it is done, you can allow non-registered users also to change or delete their comments within a short span of time.

Once the plugin is activated, it grants the non-registered users the access to edit their own comments. Below is the screenshot.

The best feature of this plugin is that although the default time is only 5 minutes to update your comments, you can very easily change the time frame to 10 minutes or more by changing the programming code of the plugin. Below is the process to carry it out.

add_filter( 'sce_comment_time', 'edit_sce_comment_time' );
function edit_sce_comment_time( $time_in_minutes ) {
    return 10;
}

Just change the number in the last row to anything you want to and it will allow you that much of time to change or edit your mistakes. However, please do remember not to exceed the recommended time frame of 30 minutes because beyond that there is a risk of the application getting crashed.

Therefore, all in all, it is a great asset to have and it will lend your WordPress website the right kind of flexibility, so that you are able to offer the option of editing a comment to your users. What’s more, it even lets you change the default time within which the edit can be made to the content posted by the users.

This plugin is compatible with all the popular operating systems and it is very easy to install. Simply go through the above steps as mentioned and make the users feel free to write and express their thoughts because now you have a weapon with which you can endow your user comments’ section the feature of being modifiable.

Final Words

The Simple Comment Editing plug-in is actually a modification of the more fully featured Ajax Edit Comments plugin. So why don’t I recommend that one instead? To start with, while it has more features, I find the interface less attractive. Specifically, it opens up a new window or a pop-up for editing comments instead of quickly allowing the user to make the changes immediately. It’s just a question of aesthetics – I prefer a simpler interface with fewer elements. Second, you might not want to add additional bloat to your site if you are not interested in many of the other options such as quick moderation, the ability to move individual comments etc.

For a quick and easy way to allow users to edit comments, the Simple Comment Editing plug-in is in my opinion the best option.

If you still left your mind with any or a bunch of questions, do ask in comments. Share and subscribe to our blog for latest updates.