Add Placeholder to Your Comment Form in WordPress

Last Updated: July 2, 2020 | Reading Time: < 1 minute

By default, WordPress doesn’t support placeholder in their function form. To add this function simply add this code to your functions.php.

Here’s the code to alter the default comment form Name, Email, and Website:

/**
 * Comment Form Placeholder Author, Email, URL
 */
 function placeholder_author_email_url_form_fields($fields) {
    $replace_author = __('Your Name', 'yourdomain');
    $replace_email = __('Your Email', 'yourdomain');
    $replace_url = __('Your Website', 'yourdomain');
    
    $fields['author'] = '<p class="comment-form-author">' . '<label for="author">' . __( 'Name', 'yourdomain' ) . '</label> ' . ( $req ? '<span class="required">*</span>' : '' ) .
                    '<input id="author" name="author" type="text" placeholder="'.$replace_author.'" value="' . esc_attr( $commenter['comment_author'] ) . '" size="20"' . $aria_req . ' /></p>';
                    
    $fields['email'] = '<p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">' . __( 'Email', 'yourdomain' ) . '</label> ' .
    ( $req ? '<span class="required">*</span>' : '' ) .
    '<input id="email" name="email" type="text" placeholder="'.$replace_email.'" value="' . esc_attr(  $commenter['comment_author_email'] ) .
    '" size="30"' . $aria_req . ' /></p>';
    
    $fields['url'] = '<p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">' . __( 'Website', 'yourdomain' ) . '</label>' .
    '<input id="url" name="url" type="text" placeholder="'.$replace_url.'" value="' . esc_attr( $commenter['comment_author_url'] ) .
    '" size="30" /></p>';
    
    return $fields;
}
add_filter('comment_form_default_fields','placeholder_author_email_url_form_fields');

And now the Comment part:

/**
 * Comment Form Placeholder Comment Field
 */
 function placeholder_comment_form_field($fields) {
    $replace_comment = __('Your Comment', 'yourdomain');
     
    $fields['comment_field'] = '<p class="comment-form-comment"><label for="comment">' . _x( 'Comment', 'noun' ) .
    '</label><textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" placeholder="'.$replace_comment.'" aria-required="true"></textarea></p>';
    
    return $fields;
 }
add_filter( 'comment_form_defaults', 'placeholder_comment_form_field' );

Here’s the final result: