Title: Initial values in comments
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Initial values in comments

 *  [bigfootnrg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bigfootnrg/)
 * (@bigfootnrg)
 * [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/initial-values-in-comments/)
 * I’m trying to make is so some initial text shows up in the comment boxes if the
   visitor has not been to the sight yet.
 * I tried the code below in the comments.php file, but it didn’t work. I don’t 
   know too much about php, I could be going about it wrong.
 * Any ideas?
 * Thanks, Nathan
 *     ```
       <?php if ( $comment_author ) : ?>
       	<input type="text" name="author" id="author" class="textarea" value="<?php echo $comment_author; ?>" size="28" tabindex="1" />
       <?php else : ?>
       	<input type="text" name="author" id="author" class="textarea" value="John Doe" size="28" tabindex="1" />
       <?php endif; ?>
       ```
   

The topic ‘Initial values in comments’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [Comments](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/comments/)
 * [initial](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/initial/)
 * [values](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/values/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [bigfootnrg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bigfootnrg/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/initial-values-in-comments/)
 * Status: not resolved

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