How to add Rich Text Editing for WordPress Comments

Hi Joe-

Thanks for the great question, and thanks for using the Crio WordPress theme.

The comments form is a little different than the forums here, but there are ways you can accomplish this.

Probably the easiest way is to use the popular wpDiscuz plugin. There are a few other choices in the WordPress plugin repository, but wpDiscuz is the only one I found that’s still being actively maintained.

Hi Joe-

To answer the question of “why,” it’s because the comment form is built into WordPress, not the theme specifically. The theme can style it, but the form itself comes from under the hood.

Probably the biggest reason for doing it this way is because keeping it as a basic HTML form doesn’t require any heavy-lifting for the page itself, but adding interactive elements like a rich text editing form would add a lot of JavaScript, and makes a big impact on the speed performance of your blog posts.

As an example, when I was setting up this forum I thought the same as you- that users would find it easier to use the Visual editor rather than the HTML markup editor you see now. When I did that, the average Page Speed Insights score of a forum page here went down by around 20 points.

There are “bureaucratic” reasons for this as well. Since Crio is hosted on the WordPress.org repository, we have to abide by the Theme Directory guidelines. And modifying the functionality of the comment form (rather than just the appearance) would violate the “plugin territory” guideline.

wpDiscuz has managed to create a really fast solution for this, and since the plugin is 100% focused on improving the comment system, it does a really good job.

Jetpack does have a module to enhance the comments as well, but my impression from reading that documentation was that it didn’t add editor controls, just provided a Single-Sign-On system with some social networks. I generally don’t recommend Jetpack for any single module it contains, because it does so many different things that I think it’s “a lot of plugin” just for comments.

Hi Joe-

One of the reasons I like this plugin is that it has really good control for enabling/disabling the features you don’t need, and some specific performance-focused options.

For example, there is an option to only load the rich editor on Desktops, so that your mobile pagespeed doesn’t take a hit.

It also has a built-in combine and minify settings for its JavaScript and CSS (although you may choose not to use them if your caching plugin is already doing a good job of that).

You can disable the features for Social logins, Google reCaptcha, and others if you’re only after the rich text editor.

Of course, any time you add more JavaScript and CSS to a page, you will have some performance impact. I can’t say for sure what the impact on your site would be since I don’t have the ability to test it with WP Rocket, but I suspect that if you fine-tune the settings of wpDiscuz, you’ll achieve your goal of improving your user’s comment experience without a major impact on your site’s speed.