Hide Post comments when displayed via WP_Query

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I’ve written a shortcode which displays ‘x’ number of posts on the homepage of my site when I write [blog posts_per_page-"3"]. Here it is:

function getBlogPosts($atts) {

  extract(shortcode_atts(array(
    "posts_per_page" => '',
  ), $atts));

  $queryArgs = array(
    "posts_per_page" => $posts_per_page
  );

  $queryPosts = new WP_Query($queryArgs);
  $output = "";

  $output .= "<ul class="articles-list clearfix">";

    if ( $queryPosts->have_posts() ) : while ( $queryPosts->have_posts() ) : $queryPosts->the_post();
      $output .= "<li class="clearfix ind-article">
        <a class="article-container" href="". get_the_permalink() ."">";
        if (has_post_thumbnail($post->ID)) {
            $output .= get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID, 'medium'); // medium img size = 300x300. => make sure photos uploaded are at least 600x600
        }
        $output .= "<div class="article-content">";
          $output .= "<h3 class="entry-title gamma uppercase">". get_the_title() ."</h3>";
          $output .= "<span class="entry-meta">". get_the_date('l jS F') ."</span>";
      $output .= "</div></a></li>";
    endwhile; endif;

  $output .= "</ul>";

  return $output;
} add_shortcode('blog', 'getBlogPosts');

However, when I do this, a comment form for the blog post is also displayed (it’s definitely the post’s comment form, not the page – also seems to only be one comment form, for the last blog post displayed I think). I want to keep comments enabled but remove the comment from when the shortcode is used. How would I do this?

1 Answer
1

The problem

You must remember to call the core function wp_reset_postdata(), after your while loop, to restore the global $post object. The comment form is relying on that object, that you override with your $queryPosts->the_post() call.

Note that the extract() isn’t recommended, check this answer by @toscho, for example.

Removing comments

To remove the comment form, when using a shortcode, you could check out my answer here.

If you want to remove the list of comments and the comment-form, after the shortcode, then you can try out one the following methods, within the shortcode’s callback:

Method #1 Remove the queried comments via filters:

if( is_singular() && post_type_supports( get_post_type(), 'comments' ) )
{
    // Remove the comment form
    add_filter( 'comments_open', '__return_false' ); 

    // Remove the list of comments
    add_filter( 'comments_array', '__return_empty_array' );
}

Method #2 Force get_comments() to return an empty array:

if( is_singular() && post_type_supports( get_post_type(), 'comments' ) )
{
    // Remove the comment form
    add_filter( 'comments_open', '__return_false' );

    // Empty comments SQL query - Run only once
    add_filter( 'comments_clauses', function( $clauses )
    {
        static $count = 0;
        if( 0 === $count++ )
            $clauses['where'] .= ' AND 1=0 ';
        return $clauses;
     });
}

Here we run the filter callback only once, to prevent this from e.g. a recent comments widget in the sidebar.

Method #3 Modify the comment template via filter. Create an empty file comments-empty.php within your theme and use:

if( is_singular() && post_type_supports( get_post_type(), 'comments' ) )
{
    // Modify the comment template
    add_filter( 'comments_template', function( $template )   
    {
        if( $tmp = locate_template( 'comments-empty.php' ) )
            $template = $tmp;
        return $template;
    } );
}

You can modify the file path to your needs.

Method #4 Hide it with CSS. Example:

if( is_singular() && post_type_supports( get_post_type(), 'comments' ) )
{
    print '<style> #comments { display: none } </style>';
}

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