Tom J Nowell

interconnectit

Spectacula

Ever found your theme doesn’t support threaded comments? Would you like it to 
be able to have P2 style live commenting on your site? Spectacu.la Discussion 
is a plugin that replaces the commenting code in your theme with a fully Ajaxed 
comments engine.
The plugin uses memory tables for fast caching within the database (no pesky 
permission setting for you to worry about here) and adjustible polling times to 
suit a wide range of server performance.
The plugin is also developer friendly, meaning that you can easily add styles to 
your theme so that should a user implement the plugin your meticulous design can 
be carried through. By default there are two styles that should work in most 
cases. Read below for further instructions.
Once installed this plug-in will replace your theme’s comments template with its 
own fully Ajax comment template. This allows both submission and update of 
comments without a page refres letting your visitors use it more as a chat room 
than the more traditional comment system. You can also roll up replied which can 
be told to trigger at any depth you feel is best using the settings page. Also 
available on the plug-ins admin page is the option to use another or no 
stylesheet, toggle the live updating of comments and change the refresh period 
for live update.
As of version 2 you can now easily add new stylesheets to the available list by 
either copying them into the plug-in’s style folder with a comment at the top of 
the sheet that looks like this /* comment style: Stylesheet name */ or adding a 
commenting.css to your theme or child theme. Once added they will then be listed 
in the dropdown menu that shows on the admin page.
The plugin is also, of course, Multisites compatible.
=The filters=
There are a few filters available for developers to intercept the javascript, 
paramerers passed to the javascript and the CSS file location
<ol>
<li>spec_comment_css 
Passes the URL of the stylesheet through to your function to replace 
with your own file.</li>
<li>spec_comment_js 
Passes the URL to the jQuery file that controls the roll up and a few 
other elements.</li>
<li>spec_comment_local_js 
Passes in an array of localisation strings that are passed to the 
jQuery code.</li>
</ol>
To replace the CSS file you could add something like the following to your 
functions.php that would point to a comments.css file in the folder of your 
current theme. This will then override any choice made by the user on the admin 
page.
<pre><code><?php
 add_filter('spec_comment_css', 'my_css_file');

 function my_css_file() {
 return get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/comments.css';
 }

?>
</code></pre>
<h4>Warning</h4>
Every effort has been made to make this work with as wide a variety of themes as 
possible but we can’t cover every eventuality so some themes out there will 
cause problems with this plugin without you doing something to either the 
plug-in or the theme first. The most likely cause of problems is that some of 
the CSS in the theme conflicts with the CSS in the comments. There are various 
other areas where problems could arise, such as if the theme doesn’t call the 
comments.php using the <code>comments_template();</code> template tag or if your theme 
deals with comments in an unusual way, such as placing them in a sidebar or 
calling them in using Ajax that conflicts with our own. A missing or unusual 
DOCTYPE could cause problems too, in fact there are lots of things that could 
cause strangeness. However with most of the themes I’ve tested this with it has 
worked without issue straight out of the gate and even if it doesn’t look right 
you need only disable the plug-in to go back to how things were, so nothing’s 
lost.

Spectacu.la Discussion

Spectacu.la Discussion adds threaded commenting with live AJAX comments to almost any WordPress Theme.

Miguel Useche

This plugin provides a widget and a filter to display a collapsible archive list in your sidebar or posts using the JS JS library.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ol>
<li>Support for Gutenberg blocks. Add it to any FSE theme or Gutenberg compatible theme.</li>
<li>Display a collapsed list of your archives to reduce space.</li>
<li>Uses vanilla JS to add effects and to be compatible with all browsers.</li>
<li>Select your expand/collapse symbol and date format.</li>
<li>Support for archive filters.</li>
<li>Auto expands current/select year from posts.</li>
<li>Select the categories to exclude</li>
<li>Multiple instances support.</li>
<li>Shortcode support [JsArchiveList]</li>
<li>Generates valid HTML code.</li>
<li>Supports multiple languages.</li>
<li>Compatible with most JS cache and minify plugins.</li>
<li>And more to come…</li>
</ol>
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<ul>
<li>Title: title of the widget.</li>
<li>Trigger Symbol: characters to be displayed as bullet.</li>
<li>Effect: Effect to use.</li>
<li>Month Format: month’s display format of the month.</li>
<li>Expand: when to expand the content of the list.</li>
<li>Hide years from before: older years will be hidden under a link. To save space in the page on old sites.</li>
<li>Show days inside month list: group posts by day.</li>
<li>Show number of posts: display how many post are published in the year or in the month.</li>
<li>Show only posts from selected category: show only posts from the selected category when visiting a category page.</li>
<li>Only expand/reduce by clicking the symbol: select if animations start when click the link or just the bullet.</li>
<li>Open links in a new tab: opens archive and post links in a new browser tab/window.</li>
<li>Only expand one at the same time: select if you want to have only one expanded at the same time.</li>
<li>Show posts under months: show post’s title under months.</li>
<li>Show post date next to post title: show post’s date next to post title.</li>
<li>Sort posts by: select how to sort the posts under months.</li>
<li>Include or Exclude categories: Select the categories to include or exclude.</li>
</ul>

JS Archive List

Useful

A JS widget (can be used in posts) for displaying an archive list with some effects.

Spectacu.la Discussion vs JS Archive List