As I already announced in my previous post, I sat down and rewrote the Show Top Commentators-Plugin by Nate Sanden to make it a fully configurable Sidebar Widget.
As of now I publish this Sidebar Widget for common public use, since the code it is based upon has been published under GPL license as well 
The zip file contains a README which includes the installation instructions, but as always concerning Sidebar Widgets, it is pretty easy. Here you can see a screenshot demonstrating both the option panel of the Widget and useful presets for the different options:
Here’s a brief description of all options:
- Widget title
Your Widget should have a title which is shown in your sidebar. - Reset
The statistics are reset automatically; by default the reset happens each week, but you may choose between hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis to reset the stats. If you do not want to reset at all, just choose the “all” option. Note: Using a larger time interval may result in the effect that some trolly people start spamming your blog to receive a backlink for a long period of time from your blog. - Number of Commenters
How many commentators should be visible in the top commentators list? - Filter user names
You usually do not want to be counted as a commentator for yourself, so you usually filter Administrator or admin or your own username on your blog. - Filter user IDs
If you prefer filtering by userid rather than adding the usernames to be filtered, you may choose this option instead. - Filter user URLs
If you just want to block some certain URLs in the list, here’s your chance to do so. - Define your ‘none’ text
As long as thete’s no new comment after a reset has happened, the text configured here will be shonw in your sidebar. - Link to users’ URLs
You may get rid of the spammer prblem at all, if you disable linking to your commentators’ homepages. - Show comments amount per user
You may choose to display the amount of comments a particular user has posted since the last reset of the statistics. - Name length limit
Long usernames tend to break the layout of the sidebar, so this is your option to choose how many characters of the username should be used before abbreviating the name.
Have fun with this widget! Your comments and feedback are appreciated as always, as well as a little donation to honor my work.
Alfred meint
I tried your widget on my new blog, but there is a problem.
Some commentators names and number of posts are getting messed up (not in one line)
Any idea how to solve this ?
Carsten Albrecht meint
yeah - you simply forgot to configure the widget. read the fine manual, boy
clairec23 meint
I get this error message, any ideas?
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 10]
SELECT COUNT(comment_author) AS comment_comments, comment_author FROM wp_comments o WHERE DATE_FORMAT(comment_date, ‘%Y-%m’) = DATE_FORMAT(CURDATE(), ‘%Y-%m’) AND comment_author NOT IN(”) AND user_id NOT IN(”) AND comment_author != ” AND comment_type != ‘pingback’ AND comment_approved = ‘1′ GROUP BY comment_author ORDER BY comment_comments DESC LIMIT
Umar meint
err…. I don’t see anything after installing and activating the plugin and displaying the widget.
7162 meint
Hallihallo.
Erst einmal kann ich mich natürlich nur anschließen und mich bei dir für deine sinnvolle Erweiterung bedanken.
Mein eigentliches Anliegen ist es aber, dazu anzuregen, eine Listen-lösch-Option zwischen monatlich und jährlich einzubauen. Alle 3 Monate z.B. Hab zwar n bisschen in der PHP rumgeguckt um es selbst hinzuzufügen, aber konnte nichts finden. Wäre super wenn du das einbauen würdest, oder mir sagst wie
VG
VinZ meint
Good plugin, i use it. Thank you!
Carsten Albrecht meint
@vinZ: should not be a big issue, as long as there’s an interface to dock mbla into any other plugin (I don’t know mbla, so I cannot answer this for sure).
@stephen: this widget requires the Sidebar Widgets plugin (which has been a separate plugin for WP up to 2.2 and is now included in WordPress 2.3 out of the box).
Stephen Hopson meint
According to your README text, I am supposed to download this plug in to the following directory:
wp-content/plugins/widgets directory
But what I see is:
wp-content/plugins directory - I do not see a “widgets” directory/sub-directory. Am I still supposed to drop the “top_commentators_widget.php” file in the plugin directory and not worry about finding a widget directory??
Please advise. This looks like a GREAT plug-in but I’m confused by the “widget” directory instruction since I do not see a “widget” directory. All I see are a bunch of plug-ins with .php files in the plug-in directory.
VinZ meint
Thanks for this great plugin ! I like it ! Just an idea. Is it possible to combine this plugin with a plugin like MBLA (http://kamajole.dk/blog/plugins/mbla) to see Mybloglog avatars of top commentators ? I think it’s just a question of insert the code in the plugin code, but where ? I’m really not an expert and if you have an idea, it would be a nice feature i think
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