Sometimes you want to display a WordPress feature, such as recent comments, tags, etc., without using a widget. For me, it’s occassionally easier to STYLE, especially if I’m not using a Theme that I built or that I’m familiar with.

A great code around is shown below, courtesy of to Kyle Eslick and found on wprecipes. I’ve used it on some sites and I find it works great. ONE NOTE: if you want less than 10 comments, simply change the code to a lesser number.

php
  global $wpdb;
  $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password,
comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author,
comment_date_gmt,comment_approved,
comment_type,comment_author_url,
SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt
FROM
$wpdb->comments LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON
 ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID)
 WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = ''
AND post_password = ''
ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 10";

  $comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
  $output = $pre_HTML;
  $output .= "n

";
  foreach ($comments as $comment) {
    $output .= "n
	
".strip_tags($comment->comment_author) .":"
 . "ID)."#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID
. "" title="on ".$comment->post_title .
"">" . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt)."

";
  }
  $output .= "n

";
  $output .= $post_HTML;
  echo $output;