The comments made on a post, as well as the text box for submitting a comment, are shown when you click on the comment tab of the post, or when you land on a single complete post by clicking on a link to it (including the title of the post itself).
Beginners sometimes ask if you can set the blog so that comments will show up in the main posts page as well. You cannot: your main page is meant to showcase your own latest posts, not other people’s remarks on them. So it will only display a number of posts (number set in Settings > Reading), with a comment tab above or below or next to each post.
Exceptions: Fadtastic, tab only in latest post; Motion and Structure, no tabs on main page, comments shown when viewing single complete post; P2, no tabs, comments shown below posts.
The wording on this tab varies. The differences are insignificant once you have one or more comments in a post, but may be confusing to beginners in the case of zero comments: the all-too-common but not very fortunate “No Comments” means no comments yet, but inexperienced bloggers or visitors sometimes mistake it for no comments allowed. You can avoid that either by writing a relevant note somewhere or by selecting a theme with a more successful choice of words. [Update 2&3/8/2009: In most themes the “No Comments” tab has been changed to “Leave a Comment” or the like.]
Below is a complete list of the exact forms of the comment tab in all themes currently available (as they appear on the main posts page – on single posts they are often different). For the substitutes you get when commenting is disabled see the post Comments Off (1). Capitalization variants not indicated.
| Leave a Comment | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
All themes except the ones listed below.
| Leave a Comment | Comments (1) | Comments (2) |
Almost Spring, Banana Smoothie, Chaos Theory, Fauna, Greenery, Light, Quentin, Rounded, Rubric, Sandbox 0.6.1, Sandbox 1.1, Shocking Blue Green, Silver is the New Black, Solipsus, Toni, WordPress Classic.
| Leave a Reply | 1 Reply | 2 Replies |
(plus “Reply” or number of comments next to post title)
Duster, Twenty Eleven.
| Leave a Response | One Response | 2 Responses |
Day Dream, Fleur de Lys, Iceburgg.
| Add comment | 1 comment | 2 comments |
Blix, Flower Power, Sweet Blossoms.
| add a comment | 1 comment so far | 2 comments |
Regulus.
| Make a Comment (None so far) | Make a Comment (1 so far) | Make a Comment (2 so far) |
Fadtastic.
| leave a comment | with one comment | with 2 comments |
The Journalist v1.9.
| Write comment | 1 comment | 2 comments |
Monochrome.
| Post a comment | Comments (1) | Comments (2) |
NotesIL.
| 0 Comments | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
Bueno, Triton Lite.
| Comments (0) | Comments (1) | Comments (2) |
Sandbox 1.6.1, Sandbox 1.6.2.
| Comments | Comments (1) | Comments (2) |
Fjords 04.
| Comments | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
Esquire.
| Comments: Be the first to comment | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
Sapphire.
| No Comments | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
Brand New Day, MLB (all three of theme), Nishita.
| No Comments Yet | 1 Comment | 2 Comments |
Andreas 04.
| COMMENT | COMMENT | COMMENT |
DePo Masthead.
| Reply | 1 | 2 |
Duster.
| C0 | C1 | C2 |
Oulipo.
| 0 | 1 | 2 |
Greyzed, Grid Focus, Inuit Types, Paperpunch, Prologue, Wu Wei.
| [–] | 1 | 2 |
Forever, iTheme2, Reddle, Sunspot.
wordpress tips 
The “no comments” really bothered me at first. I’ve tried to get my husband to comment on posts about how much he enjoyed dinner, and how much I love to have comments, but he’s never been that bored.
Posted by Tess | March 29, 2009, 16:00Then I ‘ll reply to this in yours!
Posted by Panos | March 29, 2009, 17:00Albeo, Digg3, Garland, Unsleepable, Springloaded, Misty Look, Pool, and others I suppose…
now say “Leave a Comment”
Not sure when they changed.
Not sure why I’m looking at this at 4:30 a.m. either.
Posted by Tess | August 2, 2009, 11:37Oh no!…
Bad for me, cause now I’ve got to check all themes again, but it’s good that they changed the stupid “No Comments”. Thanks for pointing out!
Posted by Panos | August 2, 2009, 14:02Yes, bad for you, but good that WordPress continues to be a work in progress—lots of folk have asked for this in the forums in the past couple of years.
Posted by Tess | August 3, 2009, 01:47Yeah – and so I updated the damn thing…
Posted by Panos | August 3, 2009, 01:55At least 13 or 14 thousand people thank you as well.
and me, for one…
Posted by Tess | August 3, 2009, 02:21I think 13 or 14 thousand people don’t give a damn now that the problem has been eliminated! The post was useful if you wanted to get rid of the NC tab; now it’s insignificant.
By the way, you caught them in the act: on August 2, when I checked the themes after you alerted me, there was still one theme with the NC tab; next day that theme was also corrected. Also for the record, there were a few mistakes (I had noted them in the post): sent a ticket to Support, and they fixed them immediately.
Posted by Panos | August 7, 2009, 09:41Dear Panos,
Could be I’m missing something you have posted elsewhere? But I hadn’t thought of it before…
Someone was on the forum this evening is wanting to turn comments on posts “off” to make them invisible.
With comments turned off:
Vigilance: comments off on pages, no evidence of comments; comments off on posts prominently shows “Comments Off” in large letters above the post.
Unsleepable shows zilch on pages, no evidence of comments ever being possible. But on posts there is a tiny grey balloon at the bottom of the post with a discreet word “closed.” almost invisible…
Is there a theme with nothing about comments if they are turned off? Posts / Pages differences?
Posted by Tess | December 10, 2009, 01:16Yeah, I saw that thread. I hadn’t thought about that detail either when I surveyed the themes for this post, so no I haven’t posted about it, you haven’t missed anything, and I have no idea if there are any themes with nothing displayed when comments are off.
(If only you had asked about this a couple of days ago! I just finished going through all the themes for another detail…)
Posted by Panos | December 10, 2009, 01:36Ah. Well. so so too many variables. Might you lose interest?
Sorry! (my bad? coincidences and luck: yes ||| predicting future: no)
as always…
Posted by Tess | December 10, 2009, 03:14@Tess: No I haven’t lost interest; but you understand that going through all the themes is very tiresome (especially if you have to change things and check again, like I had to do for this “other detail”), so I’m not willing to do it again right now. I’ll keep the comments-off thing in mind and check it when I’ll think of something else to check too. (Suggestions welcome!)
Posted by Panos | December 10, 2009, 15:19Well darlin’, I certainly understand!
—looking forward to the mysterious “other detail” though.
I do have a suggestion: not all themes have navigation to next and previous posts. It’s a case of too many variables that I jumped into “Unsleepable” without noticing that flaw. It was tedious going back and adding it myself, and tiresome having to add it to new posts. It’s there on archive and category pages, but missing on individual posts! You might assume I’d notice if it’s a problem on other themes, as often as I change the test blog, but you’d be mistaken. Could be only Unsleepable.
It’s only coincidence that my theme is Unsleepable and the one thing I was really good at is now un-doable: sleeping. Oh well.
Posted by Tess | December 10, 2009, 17:06And happy 50K…
and rising fast
(I told you that fame is in your future.)
Posted by Tess | December 11, 2009, 02:45Next/previous navigation tabs? Ok, noted!
“Other detail” is sidebar width.
Thanks for the 50K – who would have imagined? (Ok ok, you!)
As for [un]sleeping, sorry, you got me really confused there.
Posted by Panos | December 11, 2009, 10:49unsleepable is just that: i don’t go to sleep until 5 a.m. or I wake up at 2 or 3 and can’t go back to dreamland… my innate talent for sleeping is gone.
could be worse: what if i’d chosen chaos? or better if it was redoable…
just one of my bad jokes: no worries.
Posted by Tess | December 12, 2009, 06:33