How To Move Comment Text Field to Bottom in WordPress 4.4

You might have noticed a slight change in the comment form field in WordPress 4.4. The Comment Text Area is placed t the top, while the Name, Email and Website Area is placed below. The decision to place the Comment Text Area above the rest was made to fix bugs in the WordPress Comment Form.

In the previous versions, you'll notice that if a user clicked on the reply button, they were taken to the Comment Area.
However, if a user was on desktop, then they can clearly see that they need to fill in the Name and Email Fields first. But on mobile, users may not even see the comment name and email fields. They may write and submit a comment only to return back with an error that they forgot to enter name and email fields.

This bug was really bad and it had to be fixed in WordPress 4.4

Below are two samples of how the new comment form looks like.

Although this change improves usability and accessibility of most wordpress website, some website owners still feel and think that their users are used to the old version and would like to switch back. Here is how to go about it.

Moving the Comment Text Field to Bottom

If you will like to switch to the previous version of the Comment Box, Simply add this codes in your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

function wpb_move_comment_field_to_bottom( $fields ) {
$comment_field = $fields['comment'];
unset( $fields['comment'] );
$fields['comment'] = $comment_field;
return $fields;
}

add_filter( 'comment_form_fields', 'wpb_move_comment_field_to_bottom' );

If done correctly, your WordPress Comment form should look like this

With this code, I hope you'll be able to move your Comment Text Area to the bottom.

If you have any challenge with this code, kindly let us know using the Comment Box