Says “no comments” when there are comments

Hi,

Check with default theme it should be the theme level issue.

Thanks,

Shane G.

Were your previous exported posts from the same version of WordPress as the blog you imported them into? Meaning that if you took an export from WordPress 2.6.5 and tried importing it into a WordPress 2.8.4 or something like that, it may have caused that. I would also suggest trying the default theme again even though you did say you’ve done it before. When you do that, also deactivate all of your plugins. (Rename your wp-content/plugins directory.) With the plugins deactivated, and while using the default theme, check to see if it still behaves the same.

You shouldn’t lose anything, but if you are worried, you can download a copy of the theme as it is before switching it.

Try this, in the following order:
1) Deactivate all plugins (Renaming the plugins directory, is an easy way)
2) Repair and optimize your database: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/index.php/kb/article/000496
–3a) Make a backup of your Database. You can use the Backups icon in your cPanel, then click the particular Database you want.
3) Upgrade your WordPress to the latest version, or run the upgrade again via Tools > Upgrade > Reinstall Automatically.

I suspect that will fix it. If it doesn’t work… I’m not sure what to suggest next, other than making sure you have a good backup of your database, doing a brand new install, and importing your posts into the new install. Depending on the results you get by trying the above, I may come up with some more suggestions or, perhaps someone else has another suggestion–I’d love to see it as I’m curious now.

[edit] Once thing I noticed is that, on all the WordPress blogs/sites that I have, the comments link is referenced by /#comments, but your URL point to /#respond. I’m not sure what’s causing that, but it really sounds like something which was custom written, most likely by the theme, but possibly by a plugin. Since switching to the default theme didn’t fix it, I’m wondering if a core file was edited, or something was added to the database. The above suggested re-upgrade may fix that, though.

Also try re-uploading all of the core files from your version of WordPress.

Unfortunately I cannot really help much from here, but a quick search on the files from my site shows the following files contain the keyword “#comment”

./wp-admin/edit-form-advanced.php
./wp-admin/comment.php
./wp-admin/includes/template.php
./wp-includes/comment-template.php
./wp-includes/feed-atom.php
./wp-includes/pluggable.php
./wp-includes/link-template.php

(Note this would likely be set somewhere else as a div, eg <div id=”comment”> and I see the following two files with that entry: wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php, and wp-content/themes/mytheme/comments.php)

The database also found two entries for it in the _options table.

It seems it would be better to make a good copy of your wp-content directory and also of your database, then run a completely new installation. Test it, see if the comments work properly on a test post, then import your database and test again. Then put your theme back in from your wp-content and test again and lastly put in your plugins and test again, trying to see at which point things quit working properly.

Important update: I’ve just discovered that posts dating before July 2008 DO show the comment numbers on the homepage, but any posts after that date display “no comments yet.” Any ideas? Help much appreciated! 🙂

I checked into the structure a little and realized that #respond is always used where there are no comments and #comments is used where there are comments. Since there are comments, I would think that the problem is simply that the database doesn’t know there are comments. The comment_count field in the posts table is where that data would be stored. If the database doesn’t have that entry, upgrading, changing plugins, etc., just isn’t going to fix it.

In order to make that entry appear, the database will need to evaluate the number of comments again and hopefully get it right this time. llworldtour, try creating a comment of your own on the particular post “Locked Out” you pasted above and see if it then shows any comments for that post. Afterwards you can delete your self-made comment and see if it realizes at that point that other comments exist.

Hmm, I may be able to come up with a query which could be ran to force the table to update, but I’m not sure how that would be. I may look into it a little later, but the only way I can think of right now would be to manually add comments then remove them.