How to change “Leave a Comment” string in WordPress

Customizing the default “Leave a Comment” text in WordPress is important for improving how website visitors interact with your site. The original text might not feel welcoming or match your site’s style.

By changing it, you make the comment section more inviting, encouraging visitors to participate in discussions. This small change also shows that you care about the details, making your site look more professional.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through the process of changing the default “Leave a Comment” text to something more tailored, such as “Leave Your Thoughts Here…”.

How to change “Leave a Comment” String

Before you begin, make sure you have the following in place:

• Ensure that you have an active WordPress website.
• You should have access to your WordPress theme files.

You can follow the below steps to change the comment title string:

Step 1: Create a Child Theme

Before you make any customizations, it’s a best practice to create a child theme to avoid affecting your main theme.

You can use the child theme generator to generate and install the child theme.

Once you download the child theme, go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Themes, and click on the Add New button. Upload and activate the child theme ZIP file.

You can refer to this document that will help you create a child theme – https://optimization.bsf.io/wordpress-create-child-theme/.

Step2: Edit the functions.php File

From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Theme File Editor. In the Theme Editor, you should see a list of theme files on the right. Locate and select the functions.php file from the list.

Step 3: Change “Leave a Comment” String

Insert the following code snippet at the end of the `functions.php` file. This code will change the comment title string.

add_filter('comment_form_defaults', 'wpastra_custom_comment_title', 20);
function wpastra_custom_comment_title( $defaults ){
$defaults['title_reply'] = __('Leave Your Thoughts Here…', 'astra');
return $defaults;
}

Step 4: Update functions.php File

After adding the code snippet, click the “Update File” button to save your changes.

Once you update the file, the comment title should be changed from “Leave a Comment” to “Leave Your Thoughts Here….” easily.

Hope this document helped you understand how to change the “Leave a Comment” string. If you need help, we’re just a message away.