Solving 200+ comments display problem

comment pager none

Blogger only shows the first 200 of your comments in the (first) post page. The next 200 comments are supposed to be displayed on the second page, another 200 on the third page and so on.

When your comments count for a post exceeds 200, Blogger will automatically add a pager, so you can navigate between comment pages. But in some cases (due to third party template maybe?) no pager is added.

That’s what happened to me when one of my posts did exceed 200 comments. From the comment count (see picture above) I knew I have 202 comments, yet I could not access/view the 201st and beyond comments because the pager was nonexistent.

After some Firebugging on blogs that do have the comments pager on and a follow up search into good ol’ Minima template code, I finally found the comment pager code. Here it is:

<b:if cond='data:post.commentPagingRequired'> 
  <span class='paging-control-container'> 
    <a expr:class='data:post.oldLinkClass' expr:href='data:post.oldestLinkUrl'><data:post.oldestLinkText/></a> 
    <a expr:class='data:post.oldLinkClass' expr:href='data:post.olderLinkUrl'><data:post.olderLinkText/></a> 
    <data:post.commentRangeText/> 
    <a expr:class='data:post.newLinkClass' expr:href='data:post.newerLinkUrl'><data:post.newerLinkText/></a> 
    <a expr:class='data:post.newLinkClass' expr:href='data:post.newestLinkUrl'><data:post.newestLinkText/></a> 
  </span> 
</b:if> 

Now we want to display the pager at the beginning of the comment section, right before the comment block (where all comments are listed out). You may also want to display it one more time near the end of comments section, right before comment footer.

 

1. Display at the beginning of comment section

comment pager beginning 1

  1. Login to your Blogger account.
  2. Go to Dashboard > Design > Edit HTML.
  3. Back up your template.
  4. Tick the  Expand Widget Templates check box on top right of the HTML window.
  5. Look for following lines in your HTML code and paste the comment pager code right before it.
PASTE COMMENT PAGER CODE HERE
<dl expr:class='data:post.avatarIndentClass' id='comments-block'> 
  <b:loop values='data:post.comments' var='comment'> 

The exact code may differ slightly and your template may have more than one places where comments-block are used. To avoid mistakes, make sure this two keywords are there:  <dl> tag and the whole code in line 3.

 

2. Display at the end of comment section

comment pager end

Look for following code lines and just insert the comment pager code as indicated. Again the code below may vary from template to template. You may find more than one places where comment-footer are used. To avoid mistake, make sure you can find comment-footer and data:postCommentMsg (line 11) in the code.

PASTE THE COMMENT PAGER CODE HERE
      <p class='comment-footer'>
        <b:if cond='data:post.embedCommentForm'>
          <b:if cond='data:post.allowNewComments'>
            <b:include data='post' name='comment-form'/>
          <b:else/>
            <data:post.noNewCommentsText/>
          </b:if>
        <b:else/>
          <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
            <a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a>
          </b:if>
        </b:if>
      </p>

 

3. Styling the pagers

To style the section, you simply add a styling rule in CSS, like this: 
.paging-control-container { 
/* add styling declarations here */ 
}

And place it before ]]></b:skin> line in your template code.

Enjoy!

31 comments to "Solving 200+ comments display problem"

Random WAHM Thoughts March 15, 2010 at 11:08 PM    

it won't appear on my template. help! pretty pleaaasee??

i already added your code, but still nothing. look:

http://randomwahmthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/01/teaser-number-3.html

Greenlava March 16, 2010 at 12:07 AM    

@K
I see you have many comment-footers.
Try moving the code up a little, to here:
[div class='comment-lower'][/div]
[/b:loop]
[/dl]
PUT YOUR CODE HERE

Random WAHM Thoughts March 16, 2010 at 12:24 AM    

YOU are the man! it worked perfectly. again, thank you soooo much! luv ya! ;)

Random WAHM Thoughts March 16, 2010 at 12:35 AM    

errr.. back so soon :P

unfortunately, when I go to page 2 of the comments, the numbering resets to 1 :(

see:

http://randomwahmthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/01/teaser-number-3.html?commentPage=2

Greenlava March 16, 2010 at 8:40 PM    

@K
Now that is another problem altogether.
Read Numbering comments in Blogger

Ken Wooi March 19, 2010 at 4:50 PM    

thanks for the tips! but i never get over 200 comments before.. =P

Ken (EnvironmentalChemistry.com) April 24, 2010 at 6:10 AM    

Thank you for this solution, it works great and has solved an old annoying problem for me.

Alison May 15, 2010 at 4:54 AM    

Oh dear god. I thought I entered the code in the right place. But apparently not. So... can you help me please?
http://beingme-alison.blogspot.com/

Alison May 15, 2010 at 5:00 AM    

Ooh never mind I got it done!

Karen Coutu June 8, 2010 at 5:35 AM    

I have been looking for this fix for a long time. I even blogged about it here . . .

http://www.3garnets2sapphires.com/2010/06/you-can-now-see-beyond-first-200.html

Thanks so much for everything! Your site is a great resource. I will definitely visit again. :)

Greenlava June 8, 2010 at 2:49 PM    

@Karen of 3G2S
Glad it fixed your problem.
Thank you for the link up post, I really appreciate it :)

flmom July 7, 2010 at 3:54 AM    

I just added this to my template today, but it's not working. I do realize Blogger is having major comment/display issues today, so I hope that is the problem. When they have that all resolved, if this still isn't working on my blog, I'd appreciate some feedback. I've never had a post with over 200 comments until now, so I've never had to worry about it.

Greenlava July 7, 2010 at 10:53 AM    

@flmom
Could you post the URL of the 200+ comment post here?

flmom July 7, 2010 at 11:43 PM    

It's working - must have been Blogger's issues. Thank you so much for this tutorial!

Team Etikka August 16, 2010 at 3:48 PM    

Brilliant thanks!!!

New Blogger Design Tricks September 14, 2010 at 2:40 PM    

working fine for me thanks a lot..

john October 30, 2010 at 10:22 PM    

i cant say anything accept THE BEST

Ashly February 18, 2011 at 3:45 AM    

Help! I have added this code (I tried it for both above and below the comments) and it won't show up. I have a giveaway ending with over 200 comments and I need to see them. Please help ASAP!
http://dirtytruthreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/ergo-baby-carrier-review-giveaway.html

Greenlava February 19, 2011 at 12:39 PM    

@Ashly
It does show up, under your post title!
To move it to the top of comment block, use Ctrl+f to find this line:
dl id='comments-block'
Paste the comment pager code right before it.

toto March 30, 2011 at 6:38 PM    

It would be nice to have pages with a smaller number of comments (say 50) and the display should start from the last page that contains the newest comment.

Do you have any idea?

Greenlava March 30, 2011 at 7:28 PM    

@toto
That is beyond our (Blogger users') control.
But I think there are third party comment systems (such as Disqus and Intense Debate) that allow you to do that.

Asfan Ash June 15, 2011 at 1:41 PM    

any chance that the comments can be limited to 20 comments or so? having 200 comments in a single page slows my page and it messes with the template

Greenlava June 15, 2011 at 6:16 PM    

@ARC™
Nope. I guess we're stuck with that.
Tak dapek den nak nolong nye :)

Anonymous,  January 8, 2012 at 10:09 PM    

Thank you so much it is 100% working for me, and easy to follow too. Thank you I've been looking for this forever

love-text January 17, 2012 at 1:10 AM    

hi i was the one who posted last Jan8, this was working beautifully until I made some tweaks on my widget and template (added jquery and changed font sizes).. I did undo the changes, but the paging still wouldn't appear. i hope you can help, thank you!
http://love-text.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-amnesia-girl-lines.html#comment-form

love-text January 17, 2012 at 2:09 AM    

Just found the reason. It doesn't appear because of blogger's new threaded comments feature. i disabled per post comment feed in settings and followed this: http://yabtb.blogspot.com/2012/01/blogger-has-now-threaded-commenting.html

Unknown April 20, 2012 at 12:08 AM    

how do I put the title of the post after the number of comments? example: 26 comments to "Solving 200+ comments display problem"

thanks

Giuliana

Greenlava April 21, 2012 at 7:46 PM    

@La cucina imperfetta di Giuliana
Look for this code:
<h4>
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
1 <data:commentLabel/>:
<b:else/>
<data:post.numComments/> <data:commentLabelPlural/>:
</b:if>
</h4>

and replace it with this:
<h4>
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
1 <data:commentLabel/> to &quot;<data:post.title/>&quot;
<b:else/>
<data:post.numComments/> <data:commentLabelPlural/> to &quot;<data:post.title/>&quot;
</b:if>
</h4>

Unknown April 23, 2012 at 5:16 AM    

thank you very much!!!!

Giuliana

Anonymous,  December 30, 2012 at 4:44 PM    

hey can i decrease the limit of 200 to 50?? Please tell me...

Greenlava January 2, 2013 at 1:19 AM    

@Anonymous
You can't, Blogger doesn't have that option.

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