Enhance WordPress Recent Comments with the Decent Comments Plugin

The default WordPress recent comments widget is quite limited; it does not display commenter avatars or comment content, making it less user-friendly. We can install the Decent Comments plugin to optimize this, which can be installed directly via the WordPress backend search.

Plugin Setup

After enabling the plugin, you will see Decent Comments under Appearance > Widgets. Drag this widget into your sidebar.

Once the widget is added, you can configure Decent Comments, such as whether to display avatars or show administrator comments. The following images show the configuration currently used on my blog for reference.

The default styling of Decent Comments may not be fully compatible with your theme. Below is the CSS style I use on my blog for reference; please adjust according to your actual situation.

/* Recent Comments */
.decent-comments ul li {
    list-style-type: none;
    /* border-bottom: 1px solid red; */
}
.comment-excerpt {
    margin-left: 60px;
    border: 1px solid #C0C0C0;
    border-radius: 3px;
    background-color: #F0F0F0;
    padding: 5px;
}
.comment-avatar img {
    border-radius: 50%;
    margin-left: 0;
    padding-left: 0;
    margin-right: 10px;
}
.comment-author {
    font-weight: bold;
}
.comment-excerpt {
    font-size: 12px;
}

Implementation Effect

You can view the general effect by checking the "Recent Comments" widget on the right side of the Xiaoz blog.

Summary

After searching online, most methods involve modifying the WordPress core code or building custom widgets, but the results are often unsatisfactory and difficult to maintain. Using the Decent Comments plugin is a more practical solution.