Alter "You must be logged in to post a comment" line

Hi,

I think you could directly modify your “translation” (I don’t know the real term) file with extension “.po”, which (in your WP hosting server) should be inside the following directory /www/wp-content/languages/your translation file with extension “.po” (my is “it_IT.po”): I have done the same with my theme and it worked. At least you can try

To modify the .po file (if your language is english, it should be “en_EN.po”: my language is italian and my file is “it_IT.po”) you should:

1. download the free software “Poedit” here http://poedit.net/ and install it on your pc
2. with some ftp client (or in some other way) you have to download your .po file in your pc and open it with Poedit
3. find out wher the phrase “You must be logged in to post a comment” is, and change it directly
4. save the file and upload it in the same directory from where you dowloaded it (in your WP hosting server)

Good luck 🙂 and regards
Narad

Ps I still don’t know if when you upgrade your theme this file will be overwritten… If I find out I’ll let you know. Anyway I’ll keep a backup copy on my pc

Hello Narada, it’s me again.

I DID find the “languages” folder, Themes>twentyelever>languages which contains a file named, twentyeleven.pot.

I followed your directions, downloaded it to my computer, installed Poedit-1.8-setup.exe, and opened the file with it.

However, there is nothing in this .pot file which resembles the sentence I am trying to modify, which is: “You must be logged in to post a comment”.

Please let me know in case you have other ideas about this issue.

Thanks much, Mike

Hi Narada,

I found out that the code for changing the TEXT of “must log in” is here, wp-includes/comment-template.php:2226

I changed the string to “Please LOG IN to post a comment”:

sprintf( __( 'Please <a href="%s">LOG IN</a> to post a comment.' ), wp_login_url(apply_filters( 'the_permalink', get_permalink( $post_id ) ) ) )

However, I still don’t know how to control the formatting (style) of that text. For example, I want to make it Bold and change the Font size. I guess controlling the formatting must be somewhere else. I wish to find out where that is?

As to POEDIT, it doesn’t help me with formatting the “must log in” message. First, it ignores my edits (maybe I need to purchase the PRO version of the programs); second, it won’t accept HTML Tags (to control formatting).

I enjoy “working” with you,

Mike

First, be aware that you’ve edited a core WordPress file (which is not recommended), and you’ll lose that change the next time WordPress is updated.

Text formatting is controlled by your theme; Poedit is simply for translating strings. You can edit the formatting of that text with some custom CSS, and if you post a link to a page that shows the text, we can give more specific advice.

In your child theme’s stylesheet, use this code:

.must-log-in { color: #ff00ff; }
.must-log-in a { color: #ff00ff; }

You might benefit from learning how to use a web inspecting tool like Firebug. Here’s a good beginner tutorial: http://www.themesandco.com/snippet/firebug-best-spent-6-minutes/

Since you’ve already got a child theme, you can easily alter that text with a custom function in your functions.php:

<?php

add_filter( 'comment_form_defaults', 'my_custom_phrase' );
function my_custom_phrase( $array ){
	$array['must_log_in'] = sprintf( __( '<p class="must-log-in">Please <a href="%s">LOG IN</a> to post a comment.</p>' ), wp_login_url( get_permalink() ) );
	return $array;
}