WP Discourse on Theme Lacking Site Editor

[cogdog (Alan Levine)]

I’ve been happy using the WP Discourse plugin for our podcast WordPress site to connect to our Discourse Community. I stopped seeing the Discourse discussions sometime ago after the latest plugin update.

I might be wrong but it looks like now the way to add it to a template is via Full site Editor (?). I might look to change but am very happy with my Anders Noren Garfunkle theme. It’s single post template has a layout that puts comments in a tabbed display at the bottom of the post, outside the range of widgets.

I did consider just manually adding a Discourse block to all posts, but for now have made an adjustment that inserts the Discourse discussions using the HTML code. In my child theme, I comment out the standard WordPress comments template (we only allow comments via Discord), and check the post meta data for a discourse ID.

<?php //comments_template( '', true ); ?>

<?php
	$discourse_topic_id = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'discourse_topic_id', 1 ); ?>
	
	<?php if ($discourse_topic_id) : ?>
	
		<div id="discourse-comments"></div>

			<script type="text/javascript">
			  DiscourseEmbed = { discourseUrl: 'https://connect.oeglobal.org/',
								 topicId: '<?php echo $discourse_topic_id?>' };
			
			  (function() {
				var d = document.createElement('script'); d.type = 'text/javascript'; d.async = true;
				d.src = DiscourseEmbed.discourseUrl + 'javascripts/embed.js';
				(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(d);
			  })();
			</script>
	
<?php endif; ?>

It’s not as fancy a layout but works for now – see bottom of newest episode for example.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Hey @cogdog glad to hear how you’re using the plugin. You mentioned using blocks. Have you tried the WP Discourse Comment block?

WP Discourse Comments Block

From version 2.4.7, the WP Discourse Plugin includes a Discourse Comments block for the Block Editor. The Discourse Comments block is primary way to add Discourse Comments to a block-enabled theme such as Twenty Twenty Three. Here’s a short video on how to use the Discourse Comments block Next Step If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out: Using Discourse for Wordpress Comments Notes The Discourse Comments block does not currently support the “Load Comments With Ajax” setting. To learn…

[cogdog (Alan Levine)]

Yes, I use the WP Discourse Comment Block on another site where we have a FSE theme so it is in the template.

My issue is that my blog’s Garfunkel theme does not support it, and the comments space is built into the template. I am not full on with a block theme development- can I insert a block via PHP in the template? I am looking at things like Testing and Feedback for using block based template parts in classic themes – Make WordPress Themes but am not quite sure how to integrate an existing block.

The only other way I could see is adding the WP Discourse Comment Block at the bottom of every post, but I have 88 posts in the site already.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Ok, just rewinding a bit, let’s look at your issue again.

@cogdog

I stopped seeing the Discourse discussions sometime ago after the latest plugin update

Do you mean you mean that:

1. You just updated the WP Discourse plugin (and no anything else, i.e. not Wordpress, your theme or other plugins).
2. Comment sync stopped working

Is that what happened?