Introduction
If your WordPress comment counts got messed up, whether because of a plugin (I'm talking about you, DISQUS) or you messed with your database manually and did something wrong (yup, that's what I just did), fear not – I have a solution for you.
But first, a little background.
Comment Counts In WordPress
Here's how comment counts work in WP:
- Posts live in a table called wp_posts and each has an ID.
- Comments reside in a table called wp_comments, each referring to an ID in wp_posts.
- However, to make queries faster, the comment count is also
cached in the wp_posts table, rather than getting calculated on
every page load.
If this count ever gets out of sync with the actual number of comments for some reason, WordPress, while still displaying all comments properly, will simply show the wrong count. …