comment_form and comments_template and wp_list_comments in WordPress

I invested a good deal of time today customizing a comment form in a BuddyPress child theme.  My goals were to:

1. Add a new field called, “Organization”
2. Remove the “URL” field
3. Remove the “Comment” text that appears above the corresponding textarea

The biggest learning for me was figuring out how comment_form, comments_template, and wp_list_comments fit together.

I learned a lot from Otto’s article on the subject, but that article didn’t address everything I needed to accomplish.  The following is what I did to accomplish the aforementioned goals.

In functions.php, I have the following:

// Change "Website" to "Organization" on the comment form.
add_filter('comment_form_default_fields','add_organization_to_comments');
function add_organization_to_comments($fields) {
    // New fields
    $fields['organization'] = '
Organization
';
	$fields['author'] = '
' . '' . __( 'Name*' ) . ' ' . ( $req ? '*' : '' ) .
	'
';
	$fields['email'] = '
' . __( 'Email*' ) . ' ' . ( $req ? '*' : '' ) .
	'
';
    
    // Remove unwanted default fields
    unset($fields['url']);
    return $fields;
}
// save extra fields in database
add_action( 'comment_post', 'save_comment' );
function save_comment($comment_id)
{
    add_comment_meta( $comment_id, 'organization', esc_attr($_POST['organization']), true );
}

That’s it!

Tomorrow I will share how I displayed the “organization” field in the “comments” panel of the WordPress admin screen.

ttfn.