CherryPick Studios

Surbma

A simple shortcode to display recent comments. You can use it in text widgets or with every shortcode enabled page builder.
The shortcode: 
 [recent-comments] 
 [recent-comments number=”10″ author=”” title=””]
There are seven parameters for this shortcode:
<ol>
<li>author__not_in – Author ID to exclude from the list. Default: NULL to list all comments from all authors.</li>
<li>number – Number of comments to return. Leave blank to return all comments. Default: 5</li>
<li>order – How to sort comments: ‘ASC’ (Ascending – lowest to highest) or ‘DESC’ (Descending – highest to lowest). Default: DESC</li>
<li>author – Do you want to hide the author? Just give an empty parameter: author=””</li>
<li>title – Do you want to hide the title? Just give an empty parameter: title=””</li>
<li>excerpt – Do you want to hide the excerpt? Just give an empty parameter: excerpt=””</li>
<li>morelink – You can specify the text of the more link. Do you want to hide the more link? Just give an empty parameter: morelink=””</li>
</ol>
There is no mandatory parameter, you can use the shortcode as is.
IMPORTANT! This (or any other) shortcode is working only in a widget, if you or the theme has enabled the use of shortcodes in widgets. I’m not giving any description how you can do it, because there are a lot of posts out there. You can do a search for this: wordpress enable shortcodes in widgets

Surbma | Recent Comments Shortcode

A simple shortcode to display recent comments.

darrinb

This recent comments widget provides advanced widget features for displaying comment author avatars and an excerpt of their comment.
Features
<ul>
<li>Select which post types to show comments for. (You can choose either all types, or a specific type.)</li>
<li>Exclude pingbacks and trackbacks.</li>
<li>Set the number of comments to show.</li>
<li>Set the order for displaying the comments.</li>
<li>Show comment author avatar.</li>
<li>Set and preview avatar size.</li>
<li>Show an excerpt of the comment.</li>
<li>Determine the length of the excerpt.</li>
<li>Select the comment list format to match your site’s markup. Choose from: <code>ol</code>, <code>ul</code>, or <code>div</code>.</li>
<li>Select the comment format. Choose between <code>html5</code> or <code>xhtml</code>.</li>
<li>Create multiple comment lists with different settings.</li>
</ul>
Developer Features
This widget was built not only with end-users in mind, but also plugin developers. Almost every aspect of this widget is extensible through filters and action hooks. You can even add your own form fields to the widget form!
<ul>
<li>Need to remove a field from the widget form? Not a problem! Every field is passed through its own filter for easy customization.</li>
<li>Need to modify the output of the widget? Easy! The output is passed through numerous filters, allowing you to customize the comment list to meet your project’s requirements.</li>
<li>For a full list of action hooks and filters, please see the plugin documentation: http://darrinb.com/plugins/advanced-comments-widget</li>
</ul>

Advanced Comments Widget

A highly customizable recent comments widget with avatars and excerpts.

Surbma | Recent Comments Shortcode vs Advanced Comments Widget