Its easy to add popup WordPress comments to your WordPress theme, but as you might have observed that by default the WordPress comments are loaded on the same page. Several years ago, popup comments were popular. I remember how my first Blogspot blog had popup comments and it seemed a cool way of posting comments without leaving the page. After posting the comment, simply click the “Click to Close” link and the Window is out of your way.
Comments Popup Script
WordPress still has an integrated code to setup popup comments easily.
First you need to add the popup script in the HEAD section of your HTML code, typically after editing the header.php file in your theme.
<?php comments_popup_script(400, 500); ?>
Here 400 is the width of the window (400px), and 500 is the height of the window (500px). You can change these values to the popup window size you desire.
Comment Popup Link
Then you need to add code in your single.php where you want the popup link to appear. This should be common after the end of the post.
<?php
comments_popup_link( 'No comments', '1 comment', '% comments', 'btn btn-primary', 'Comments Disabled');
?>Let us see how this code can be edited – The consecutive variables signify the response when there are no comments, 1 comment or several comments.
The ‘btn btn-primary” classes use Bootstrap design to create a beautiful blue button. The last text displays if the comments are turned off. You can customize all these values for optimal display.
Popup Comments Window
Now you can change the appearance in the popup window, its contents, and styling by editing the comments-popup.php file in your WordPress theme.
If your theme does not have this file, you can create PHP files without FTP and then add code as desired in this file. This will override the default comments popup file located in your WordPress installation at /wp-includes/theme-compat/comments-popup.php. You can use this file as the template for your new file.
In the end, remember to remove the comments template from your single.php. It should be a single line of code like this
<?php comments_template('', true); ?>
Enjoy you new pop comments. Share your feedback in comments.
Update: Also see how to show WordPress comments on new page.