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When modifying a WordPress theme’s comments section, developers may want to include a particular comment’s number in the flow of the other comments of a given post/page. For example, if you look at the meta section of any comment on this site, you’ll see that I’ve incorporated such a feature. Do I have a reason? No. I just had some free time, and wanted to waste a PHP call.

For those users who do have a reason to implement such a feature, here’s how:

1. Open comment-template.php (located directly under /wp-includes) and search for the start_el function. On a vanilla install of 2.7.1, the function begins around line 1200.
2. Add the following code to the beginning of the function:

global $comment_num;
if(isset($comment_num)) {
$comment_num++;
} else { $comment_num = 1; }

3. The beginning of your start_el function should now look something like the following:

function start_el(&$output, $comment, $depth, $args) {

global $comment_num;
if(isset($comment_num)) {
$comment_num++;
} else { $comment_num = 1; }
$depth++;
$GLOBALS['comment_depth'] = $depth;

4. Next, find the comments.php file for your theme (located in /wp-content/themes/your-theme/)
5. Add a call to the global $comment_num variable by adding the following code to the file:

global $comment_num;

6. Finally, select where in the code you would like for your comment number to appear and add this code:

echo $comment_num;

This method was developed by PannPann and kindly distributed through the WordPress.org support forums. Read through the read to find out how to modify the start_el function to support comment numbering for paged comments.

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As a third year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, my posts are intended to educate others and share my experiences from this incredible journey without violating patient privacy at all costs. These blurbs are not to serve as a replacement for recommendations provided by licensed physicians under any circumstance.