NO LONGER: Broken Comments Form

UPDATE (28 May 2015): It’s fixed! My comment form is now working properly. For those who’re looking for a way to update DevPress’s Cascade theme, I’ve posted the fix to the WordPress support forums, but I’ll duplicate it here:

Whoop, I found the solution for my theme. Here it is:

I am using a version of the formerly free Cascade theme by DevPress (it’s since become a paid theme, apparently, but I got it when it was a freebie). The fix above, involving edits to the functions.php file, doesn’t work for me since Cascade doesn’t have any comment-related stuff in the functions.php. You actually have to edit the Comments.php file, which is part of the theme.

As the theme hasn’t yet been updated, and the theme author hasn’t responded to my email, I went ahead and figured it out for myself, and I thought I’d share the solution for those who are hunting for a fix for their own blog.

Note: I don’t know about other themes. I can’t help you with other themes. This post is really just intended as some information for people who are frustratedly searching for a solution; maybe it’ll be another piece of the puzzle for some of you. I hope so!

Steps:

1. Back up everything. If you don’t, and your blog goes boom, it’s your own fault.

2. I advise you make a child theme (there’s a plugin out there that creates one for you, very one easily), copy the Comments.php file to the child theme, switch your Theme to the child theme, and then edit that theme’s Comments.php file. That way, you’ll have the original theme intact, in case something goes terribly wrong.

Note: In Cascade, there are two very similarly named files: Comments.php, and comment.php. You need to edit Comments.php.

3. If you’ve done steps 1 and 2, and are ready to proceed, look in the Comments.php file and find this block of code:

<?php comment_form( array( 'title_reply' => __( 'Post Comment', 'cascade'  ) ) ); // Loads the comment form.
?>

4. Replace that block, and only that block, with this:

<?php comment_form( array( 'title_reply' => __( 'Post Comment', 'cascade'  ),
'submit_button'        => '<input name="%1$s" type="submit" id="%2$s" class="%3$s" value="%4$s" />',
'submit_field'         => '<p class="form-submit">%1$s %2$s</p>' ) ); // Loads the comment form.
?>

That’s it.

Perhaps those whose functions.php file lacks comment-related code might find a similar fix works for their own blogs. I hope so!

So, hooray: London Bridge–or whatever bridge this is–is no longer falling down. And hell, while I was at it I even managed to get the Mobile version of the site working… at least on my phone. :)

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Photo by Eva the Weaver. (Source)

Original Post: So, WordPress went and changed how comment forms work in the new software. Thereby breaking comment forms around the world. Thanks WordPress!

I spent three hours today fighting a stupid malware infection on my work computer–Windows, naturally–so I’ve no energy to fix it now. Maybe tomorrow. If the comment form isn’t working for you, that’s why! Ah, WordPress…

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