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Theming comments by the node's author

Tuesday, 17 Jun 2008 — Caroline Schnapp

You want the comment style to be different for comments added by the author of a node — who's commenting on his own node. For example, you may want to highlight the node's author's comments, so that any visitor skimming through the comments will easily differentiate them from other comments.

Solution

  1. Edit comment.tpl.php to add a new class (let's say 'comment-by-author-of-post') that...

  2. you can style in your theme's style.css.

Your file comment.tpl.php may look like this before the edit (I am only providing a snippet of the template here):

<div class="comment<?php print ($comment->new) ? ' comment-new' : ''; print ' '. $status ?> clear-block">

If it does, then you will change the above snippet to that:

<div class="comment<?php print ($comment->new) ? ' comment-new' : ''; print ($comment->uid == $node->uid) ? ' comment-by-author-of-post' : ''; print ' '. $status ?> clear-block">

You could now add these two rules to your style.css file, for example:

/**
 * Comment styling rules
 */
.comment-by-author-of-post {
  border: 1px solid #ccc;
  background-color: #eee; 
}
/* reset to default values when previewing */
.preview .comment-by-author-of-post {
  border: none;
  background-color: transparent;
}

This will work in Drupal 5 as well. No, it won't. The $node object is not passed to the comment.tpl.php template. Read the comments below for the Drupal 5 recipe. This solution works only for PHPTemplate-powered themes. If your theme does not provide a template file for comments, copy the one from modules/comment/ to your theme folder, and edit it. And yes, the $node object is available in comment.tpl.php. It is the node the comment is attached to. Possible variations: special-style all comments authored by those who have the 'admin' role; special-style anonymously-submitted comments; etc.

[]

We used a Ternary Comparison Operator in our solution.

($a == 11) ? 'eleven' : 'not eleven'

The above code snippet returns a value. If $a equals 11, the return value is 'eleven'; otherwise, the return value is 'not eleven'. You can print the return value of a ternary comparison operator like so:

print ($a == 11) ? 'eleven' : 'not eleven';

Notice that I added both 'print' and a semicolon in the above snippet.

From php.net: “The expression (expr1) ? (expr2) : (expr3) evaluates to expr2 if expr1 evaluates to TRUE, and expr3 if expr1 evaluates to FALSE.” The ternary comparison operator is used a lot in Drupal templates. In our solution we printed ' comment-by-author-of-post' — in the class attribute of the comment div — if and only if the comment author was the same guy/girl as the author of the node the comment was attached to. And we printed nothing otherwise, ie: ''. (These '' are two SINGLE quotes.) We added this:

<?php print ($comment->uid == $node->uid) ? ' comment-by-author-of-post' : ''; ?>

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Comments

Tue, 2008-07-15 13:00 — Deathlock (not verified)

Drupal 5?

I am sorry, but this one seems not working with Drupal 5? The snippets from the template for Drupal 5 is supposed to be this one:

status == COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED) print ' comment-unpublished'; ?> ">

And I've changed it to:

status == COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED) print ' comment-unpublished'; print ($comment->new) ? ' comment-new' : ''; print ($comment->uid == $node->uid) ? ' comment-by-author-of-post' : ''; print ' '. $status ?> ">

But it's still not working. Any help?

Thanks for the attention. :)

Tue, 2008-07-15 13:52 — Caroline Schnapp

In Drupal 5, no $node object in comment.tpl.php

What you do have is the nid of the node the comment is attached to.

So what you need to do is pass the node's author uid, along to comment.tpl.php.

Something like this needs to be done in the file template.php of your theme:

function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars = array()) {
  switch ($hook) {
    case 'comment':
      // The following will require no database query,
      // because the node is in the cache
      $node = node_load($vars['comment']->nid);
      $vars['node_uid'] = $node->uid;
      break;
  }
  return $vars;
}

Then you can use $node_uid in comment.tpl.php — that'll be the uid of the node author.

<div class="comment<?php if ($comment->status == COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED) print ' comment-unpublished';  print ($comment->new) ? ' comment-new' : ''; print ($comment->uid == $node_uid) ? ' comment-by-author-of-post' : ''; print ' '. $status; ?>">

Just one author?

Just one blogger on your web site? Do not bother with checking who is the author of the node. Do not bother with passing an additional variable to your comment template.

In the case where you have only one blogger... you could do as I do here (and yes, my web site still runs on Drupal 5...). Using a hard-coded value for the author of the node, eg: 1 (the Administrator of the site):

<div class="comment<?php print ($comment->uid == 1) ? ' comment-by-author-of-post' : ''; print ($comment->new) ? ' comment-new' : ''; print ($comment->status == COMMENT_NOT_PUBLISHED) ? ' comment-unpublished' : ''; print ' '. $zebra; ?>">
Wed, 2008-07-16 09:36 — Deathlock (not verified)

Thanks

Sorry for my noobness, but thanks! It works wonderfully on my site. Thanks, once again.

Wed, 2008-07-16 11:41 — Caroline Schnapp

It was my mistake

It was my mistake.

I corrected my 'tutorial', and I am now saying:

this will work in Drupal 5 as well. No, it won't. The $node object is not passed to the comment.tpl.php template. Read the comments below for the Drupal 5 recipe.

Thanks to you!

Fri, 2008-08-01 09:52 — ffxi gil (not verified)

Thanks for the confirmation

Thanks for the confirmation - had to come back to tell you it didn't work... but of course now it does!

Sun, 2009-02-22 13:04 — nakashi (not verified)

woaw, thanks for the code

woaw, thanks for the code.

Sun, 2010-01-03 13:45 — Fly by night (not verified)

Thanks for all your hard work...

Hi, you have been a great help.. the code was very helpful

Fri, 2008-10-10 13:08 — PETER MONROE (not verified)

Ah. Thanks for the good

Ah. Thanks for the good info. I saw this happening on some websites, but didn't know how to implement it. Thanks Caroline!

Sun, 2008-10-26 09:05 — HGH (not verified)

Drupal 5

Thanks for the comments on Drupal 5. I was having trouble. Now I know why.

Tue, 2008-11-11 15:46 — Fly by night (not verified)

Good Info

Good Info, thanks

Sun, 2008-12-07 00:36 — wow goud (not verified)

Works under osC too!

You might be interested to know this solution works under osC CMS systems in the same way. Heck, even the file references made sense. Really cool stuff!

Wed, 2009-02-25 16:42 — Fly By Night (not verified)

Nice write up

Nice write up

Tue, 2009-04-07 04:21 — Gavin Doolan (not verified)

Which Drupal version does this work for?

Hi guys,
Just reading the comments, what version of Drupal does the above example work for? I read issues with Drupal 5 so does this mean its a Drupal 6 solution? Or is it Druapl 4?

I'm looking for the Drupal 6 solution.

Cheers,
Gavin.

PS: What WSYIWIG are you using with Drupal?

Wed, 2009-04-08 00:32 — Caroline Schnapp

Hi Gavin

what version of Drupal does the above example work for?

Drupal 6.

What WSYIWIG are you using with Drupal?

None. I use BUEditor. It's not WSYIWIG per say, although it's an editor and has a really nice ajaxified preview button. I loooove it: http://drupal.org/project/bueditor.

Tue, 2009-06-23 15:48 — Ashton (not verified)

Ah, finally. I was wondering

Ah, finally. I was wondering why I was having trouble.

Off to implement this code...

Tue, 2009-07-14 11:38 — muffin9129 (not verified)

awesome

This is such a great idea, but I have not seen many sites using it. I wonder why. It would really help me, so I am glad to see you have created this theme. Thanks so much for the instructions.

Wed, 2009-07-22 15:01 — Pat.R (not verified)

this works

This works rally well, and I think it is crucial to the comments on a blog to be able to distinguish this. thanks

Thu, 2009-08-06 20:24 — Seiko Ananta Watches (not verified)

I would agree that this is

I would agree that this is an awesome fix to a problem I've been having for almost a month! Thank you for the insight.. Going to change it right now.

Sat, 2009-09-05 17:43 — Aleem Asghar (not verified)

Thank you so much for the

Thank you so much for the information

Mon, 2009-09-14 23:00 — larry (not verified)

Thanks

Thanks! Good info!

Mon, 2009-11-16 14:32 — anunturi gratuite (not verified)

good tutorial

admin,
I think I will update my site following your tutorial.
Hope it is easy like you explained it because I'm a beginner.
Page bookmarked.

Mon, 2010-06-28 23:58 — yui (not verified)

it works

thanx for your information
it works
nice article

Thu, 2010-07-08 06:20 — Hilongos (not verified)

great tutorial

Will this work for all cms? like wordpress? or just drupal alone?

Sat, 2010-07-10 13:49 — Caroline Schnapp

Drupal alone

...

Thu, 2010-07-08 06:24 — Aricle Writer (not verified)

Great information

As a noob and has no knowledge in php programming, this infomation can greatly teach me on how to do hard things easy.

Tue, 2010-07-20 10:36 — Brian Blade (not verified)

Theme coding for authors/admins

Edited the comment.tpl.php and added the two rules to the css file and it worked like a charm. Thanks Caroline, for providing the code, I was spending a lot of time searching Google and couldn't find anything on how to change the admin highlighting style to distinguish them from regular users until I found this post.

- Brian

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