Title: Can’t edit comments.php
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Can’t edit comments.php

 *  790462
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/)
 * Hi, my name is Ben Kling, and I’m working on creating a blog at [blog.benkling.com](http://blog.benkling.com).
 * I have a problem, though.
 * When you view a [single post](http://blog.benkling.com/2008/07/hello-myspace/),
   the comment form is too wide, and runs into the sidebar.
 * In firefox, it just runs under the text, but in IE, it throws the whole sidebar
   down.
 * I’ve edited the columns property in my theme’s ‘comments.php,’ and it allows 
   me to save and says it was edited successfully.
 * However when I view the post, nothing changes. The source code is still the same.
   In fact, no edits that I make to the page show up. Even when I tried testing 
   it by editing the submit button text, the changes didn’t go into effect.
 * I tried installing a plugin that would, among other things, add functionality
   to the comment form, hoping that the new style would take over, but that didn’t
   work.
 * How can I change the comments.php file?
 * Thank you in advance, I really appreciate your help.
 * -Ben Kling

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  789596
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820203)
 * It seems to me that only the textarea for posting comments is too wide. You should
   just edit this in the stylesheet.
 * As for not being able to edit the comments.php file, have you checked that the
   permissions allow the httpd-runs-as user to write to it?
 *  Thread Starter 790462
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820204)
 * The stylesheet doesn’t define the textarea width, as far as I can tell.
    It’s
   simply in the html of the textarea itself.
 * In my file, it says cols=”75%”, but when I view the source of the post, it says
   cols=”100%.”
 * No changes show up at all.
 * I’m allowed to write to it, because it says it was successful, and when I open
   comments.php with my ftp client, the edits are there.
 * They just don’t show up when the page is constructed.
 * I even deleted comments.php from my server, and it still shows up on posts, just
   without the edits.
 * I don’t know where the data is coming from or how to find out.
 *  789596
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820212)
 * Hmm so I’m pretty new to wordpress so I haven’t looked at the details for theming
   yet (as you can see from [my site](http://chasebook.com), I haven’t got around
   applying my own design yet… kubrick ftw!) However, it sounds like comments.php
   has nothing to do with the page in question. You should edit index.php, or single.
   php, or whatever page it is that’s being displayed there.
 * Also, you should indeed be able to control the width of the text area using css:
 *     ```
       #comment {
        width: whatever
       }
       ```
   
 * Note that changes made in your stylesheet will effect themselves on both the 
   single page and the comment page (as, like I said, they seem to be different 
   pages altogether).
 * Cool site BTW, I’d like to hear your musics.
 *  Thread Starter 790462
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820217)
 * Well the single page is comprised of a bunch of other php pages and elements.
 * At one point, after the post, the data from comments.php is supposed to be called.
   However, it seems to be drawing the data from somewhere else altogether.
 * The CSS fix works for this particular problem, thanks!
 * But for editing the button text and other elements contained within comments.
   php, I’d still like do know where that data’s coming from when a post page is
   constructed.
 *  789596
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820218)
 * I think I read something to the effect that WP employs some sort of caching… 
   in this case, I bet clearing the cache will cause your changes to comments.php
   to be reflected.
 * Good luck!
    Chase
 *  Thread Starter 790462
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820221)
 * I tried clearing my browser’s cache several times, if that’s what you mean. No
   dice.
    Thanks, though.
 *  [nopadon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nopadon/)
 * (@nopadon)
 * [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820386)
 * Hi-
 * So I thought this post was about not being able to edit comments. I’ll ask my
   question here instead of starting a new post.
 * Since installing 2.6 I’ve lost the ability to edit comments in the comments interface.
   At the moment my only options are Unapprove, Spam & Delete.
 * I’ve looked everywhere? Is this an installation error or a problem with my theme?
 * Thanks for your time.
    nopstar
 * running wp 2.6
    modified version of cutline 3 column

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘Can’t edit comments.php’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [comment](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/comment/)
 * [comments.php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/comments-php/)
 * [edit](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/edit/)
 * [editing](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/editing/)
 * [form](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/form/)
 * [php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/php/)
 * [width](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/width/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 7 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [nopadon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nopadon/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-edit-commentsphp/#post-820386)
 * Status: not resolved

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