How to Create a Recent Comments Page in WordPress (2 Ways)

Are meaningful comments getting buried across your WordPress site?

As your content grows, some of the best conversations, especially on older posts, can get lost. This means visitors may miss out on the vibrant discussions happening in your community.

That’s where a recent comments page comes in. 🌟

It brings all the newest comments together in one spot, making your WordPress site feel more alive and inviting. It also encourages more people to join the conversation when they see others engaging.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to create a recent comments page in WordPress using two easy methods – no coding required.

Why Make a Recent Comments Page?

In short, a recent comments page offers a simple way to highlight activity, boost engagement, and grow your community.

Comments play an important role in building a community around your WordPress website. They allow readers to participate in discussions and interact with you.

With a recent comments page, new and returning visitors can see the ongoing discussions and keep up with them across your site.

Comments are also a great engagement signal and social proof for new visitors. Through the recent comments page, users can see that you have an active and passionate community. This can encourage them to stay longer on your website and perhaps even join the conversation.

Many WordPress blogs choose to display their most recent comments in a widget area, like the sidebar. However, the recent comments widget can be a bit narrow and difficult to read.

That’s why we recommend creating a recent comments page. If you want, you can even link this page at the bottom of the recent comments widget on the sidebar. This way, visitors can read the comments in more detail.

In this step-by-step guide, we will show you how to create a recent comments page using two methods: WordPress’ built-in Latest Comments block and SeedProd, the best WordPress page builder on the market.

You can use the quick links below to navigate through this tutorial:

Method 1: Create a Simple Recent Comments Page With the Latest Comments Block (No Plugin Required)

If you’re using a block theme or the full site editor, WordPress makes it easy to display your latest comments using the built-in Latest Comments block. This method is quick, lightweight, and doesn’t require any plugins – perfect if you want to keep things simple.

First, navigate to Pages » Add New Page in WordPress admin area.

On the next screen, you need to add a title to the page. You can use something like “See the latest discussion on our blog” or “Read our most recent comments.”

Then, just click the ‘+’ add block button below the title or in the top left corner and locate the Latest Comments block. You can drag and drop it wherever you want on your page.

By default, the block editor will display the comment author’s name, the comment excerpt, the comment date, the commenter’s gravatar, and a link to the post where the comment is.

Here’s what it looks like:

If you want to customize the block’s appearance, then you can click the ‘Align’ button in the block toolbar. This button lets you adjust the block’s alignment settings.

You can choose between using no alignment, wide width, full width, or aligning the block to the left, center, or right.

Additionally, you can click the ‘Settings’ button in the top right corner and switch to the ‘Block’ tab. This will open the block settings.

Here, you can choose to display or disable the Gravatar, the comment date, and the comment excerpt. You can also select how many WordPress comments you’d like to display on your page.

If you open the block’s ‘Styles’ tab, you can edit the block’s Typography, which controls the fonts being used in the block. You can also modify the Dimensions, which control the block’s padding and margin.

Feel free to play around with these settings to make the comments more readable and attractive with your WordPress theme.

Once you are done, you can click the ‘Preview’ button in the top right corner to see what the page looks like on a desktop, mobile, or tablet device.

Then, click ‘Save draft’ to save the page without publishing it. Or you can go ahead and click ‘Publish’ if you want to make the page publicly available right away.

And that’s it! You’ve successfully created a recent comments page in WordPress.

Method 2: Create a Custom Recent Comments Page With SeedProd (More Customizable)

If you are looking to create a completely custom recent comments page in WordPress, then we recommend using a page builder plugin like SeedProd.

SeedProd comes with tons of customization options that the built-in block editor doesn’t have, like animated effects. That’s why we recommend this method if you want to make your recent comments page truly unique and stand out.

Some of our partner brands use SeedProd to custom-build their websites. We’ve also tested it extensively, and you can find out everything about our experiences in our detailed SeedProd review.

First, go ahead and install the SeedProd plugin in WordPress. For more information, you can read our beginner’s guide on installing a WordPress plugin.

Next, you want to go to SeedProd » Landing Pages. After that, click the ‘+ Add New Landing Page’ button.

On the next screen, you can choose a landing page template for your recent comments page.

In this case, we will use the ‘Video Squeeze Page.’

Now, go ahead and give your new landing page a name and URL.

For example, we named our landing page ‘See Our Latest Comments’ and gave it the URL ‘/latest-comments’ to keep it simple.

Once you’ve completed this step, just click the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button.

On the next screen, you’ll see the page builder interface. Before you add the latest comments, you may want to customize how the page looks overall first.

For this, we recommend watching our WPBeginner video tutorial on getting started with SeedProd.

Here, we deleted some of the elements from the original landing page template and adjusted the copy to suit the purpose of this guide.

Now, in the left-side block panel, you might want to look for the ‘Recent Comments’ widget and drag and drop it wherever appropriate.

After that, go ahead and click on the widget itself.

This will open the widget’s customization options on the left-hand panel.

In the ‘Content’ tab, you can change the title of the widget and how many comments to show. Once you are happy with it, click ‘Apply.’

If you switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab, you’ll see more settings for the block’s typography, spacing, CSS attributes, device visibility, and animation effects.

At the top, we adjusted the heading’s font size for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. This way, the text looks good no matter where it’s viewed.

Once you’ve finished customizing the widget’s look, you can add more blocks to the page. For example, you can add dynamic content to it, use an animated background, use a custom shape divider, and so on.

When you are happy with everything, just click the dropdown menu under the ‘Save’ button and click ‘Publish’ to make the page live.

Bonus Tip: How to Manage Your Users’ Comments in WordPress

We’ve shown you how to display the latest comments from your WordPress posts on a separate page. Now, let’s discuss how to make your comments section even better.

One method is to always moderate your comments. Remember that the Latest Comments block and the Recent Comments widget will automatically display any new comment that gets approved.

Let’s say you don’t moderate these comments, and the block unintentionally shows a harmful message sent by a user. That comment can negatively impact your brand and community.

The purpose of comment moderation is to make sure that no inappropriate or spammy comments are displayed. This way, your comment section can always be a safe space for users to share their thoughts with each other.

For step-by-step guidance, see our beginner’s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress.

Another thing you can do is use a WordPress comment plugin. It can boost your comment engagement and make users explore more of your content.

For this, we recommend using Thrive Comments, the best and most user-friendly WordPress plugin to improve the comment section. It comes with features to encourage quality comments and manage discussions, like comment upvotes/downvotes and likes/dislikes.

Additionally, Thrive Comments lets you add a post-comment action. After users leave a comment text, you can show them a related post, encourage them to share the blog post, or ask them to fill out a lead-generation form.

Check our guides on how you can use Thrive Comments:

• How to Allow Users to Like or Dislike Comments in WordPress
• How to Feature or Bury Comments in WordPress
• How to Add a Simple User Ranking System for WordPress Comments
• How to Allow Your Users to Subscribe to Comments in WordPress
• How to Redirect Your Users’ Attention with Comment Redirect

FAQs: Creating a Recent Comments Page

Before we wrap up, here are some common FAQs about how the recent comments page works and how to get the most out of it:

What is the main benefit of a recent comments page?

A recent comments page acts as a central hub for conversations happening across your WordPress site. It helps build a sense of community, encourages more reader interaction, and shows visitors that your site is active and welcoming.

Can I create a recent comments page without a plugin?

Yes! WordPress includes a built-in Latest Comments block that you can easily add to any page. It’s the simplest method we covered in this tutorial.

How many comments should I show on the page?

We recommend showing between 10 and 25 comments. That’s usually enough to showcase active discussion without making the page feel overwhelming or too long to scroll through.

How do I prevent spam from appearing on my recent comments page?

Only approved comments will appear on your recent comments page. As long as you moderate regularly, you can keep spam and unwanted content off the page entirely.

Explore More WordPress Comments Guides

We hope this article has helped you learn how to create a page to display recent comments in WordPress. If you find this helpful, then you may also want to see our guides on:

• How to Display Your Top Commenters in the WordPress Sidebar
• How to Display the Most Accurate Number of Comments in WordPress
• How to Highlight Author’s Comments in WordPress
• How to Allow Users to Edit Their Comments in WordPress
• How to Create a Reddit-Like Forum Website With WordPress
• How to Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.