Init Recent Comments – Templated, Modern, Minimal

Display recent comments using clean templates and minimal CSS. Developer-friendly, fast, and built for modern WordPress.

No widgets. No jQuery. No bloat — just clean, templated output.

Overview

Init Recent Comments is a lightweight, developer-oriented plugin that displays the latest comments anywhere on your site through a simple shortcode.

Built with flexibility and simplicity in mind — clean markup, minimal CSS, and template overrides directly from your theme.

Ideal for blogs, news sites, or any project that values both performance and clean design.

Features

• Shortcode: [init_recent_comments]
• Template-based rendering (comment-item.php, wrapper.php)
• Disable built-in CSS and use your own styling
• No widgets, no jQuery, no frontend dependencies
• Developer-ready — filters, REST endpoints, and lazy loading (planned)
• Translation-ready (.pot file included)

Usage

Use the shortcode anywhere:

[init_recent_comments number="5" maxheight="400px"]

Attributes:

• number – Total comments to display (default: 5)
• maxheight – Optional scrollable height (e.g. 300px)

Template overrides: Place custom templates inside your theme:

your-theme/
└── init-recent-comments/
    ├── wrapper.php
    └── comment-item.php

Developer Filters

This plugin provides multiple filters for customizing cache duration and performance of comment queries.

Filter	Description	Applies To	Params
init_plugin_suite_recent_comments_ttl	Control TTL (in seconds) for recent comments	Recent Comments Query	int $ttl
init_plugin_suite_recent_comments_query_args	Allow developers to modify/extend the WP_Comment query args before execution	Recent Comments Query	array $args
init_plugin_suite_recent_reviews_ttl	Control TTL (in seconds) for recent reviews	Recent Reviews Query	int $ttl
init_plugin_suite_total_comments_ttl	Control TTL (in seconds) for total approved comment counts by post type	Total Comments Query	int $ttl, array $post_types
init_plugin_suite_total_by_posts_ttl	Control TTL (in seconds) for total comments across multiple post IDs	Total by Post IDs Query	int $ttl, array $post_ids

Installation

1. Upload the plugin folder to /wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate it under Plugins → Init Recent Comments
3. Insert [init_recent_comments] in any page, post, or widget
4. (Optional) Disable built-in CSS via Settings → Init Recent Comments

License

GPLv2 or later — open source, minimal, developer-first.

Part of Init Plugin Suite

Init Content Protector is part of the Init Plugin Suite — a collection of blazing-fast, no-bloat plugins made for WordPress developers who care about quality and speed.