Comments list's link should point to an actual article

[trejder]

Scope: Page that you see after clicking "Approve it" in an email informing you that you have a new comment to be approved. The view of (all | to be approved) comments for given post.

Actual behaviour: Main (large-font) link with article title points into edit mode of titled article and opens up Block editor (Gutenberg).

Expected behaviour: Main link with should point to an actual article in the web page or blog. And a small-font additional link below main title should point to an editor.

Proposed look / behaviour:

Judgement: In my opinion, in most cases after you approve or respond to some comment, you want to see an actual article in your blog, not to go to edit mode of it. Most comments are just comments. The number of comments pointing to some mistate in text (that would require you to go to edit mode) is very low IMHO.

As a blog network owner of 18 blogs it drives me crazy that I don't have a quick link to main article in comment approval view. That I have a pointless and never used huge link pointing to editor instead. And that I have to jiggle with small date-like links under "Submitted on" column to get to actual page.

[audrasjb]

Hi @trejder, thank you for opening this ticket.

It totally makes sense to me. Let's see what we can do before 5.7 beta 1.

[audrasjb]

Testing 52353.diff

[vladytimy]

I tested 52353.diff too and it works! PS: In localized version it introduces a new string.

[audrasjb]

Thanks for testing @vladytimy!

[trejder]

Thank you @audrasjb and @vladytimy for an ultra fast response to this ticket!

I browsed some other tickets and some of them have like 5 years waiting, so I wasn't expecting to get this done before 2025! :> Thanks again!

[ayeshrajans]

Totally voting in favor of this change, and the patch from @audrasjb does it well!
Just a thought - if we were to rename the "Edit this post" to just "Edit", I think we can reuse existing "Edit" labels.

[trejder]

Reusing "Edit" label sounds like a great idea. However, I have some doubts, if this "tiny" single-word link wouldn't "get lost" visually under huge (big font) and usually long (post title) line above?

[vladytimy]

Replying to ayeshrajans:

if we were to rename the "Edit this post" to just "Edit", I think we can reuse existing "Edit" labels.

I thought about this as well, but because:

• on this page we have both posts & comments links
• maybe some users use the link in the title to edit the post, so they instantly need to see that something has changed
• we have to avoid any kind of confusion

my vote goes to "Edit this post"

I don't think introducing a new string at this stage is a problem.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Thanks for the patch! I have a few concerns with the current iteration:

• It doesn't seem to follow any of the existing design patterns in core. Generally, post titles in the in the admin link to the Edit Post screen. For links to the post on the front end, there is typically a "View Post" link.
• It does not account for custom post types. Instead of using one of existing post type labels, it adds a new string, which cannot be customized.

I would suggest following the pattern from the "In response to" column on the Comments screen:

• The post title there links to the Edit Post screen.
• Next to the title, there is a "View Post" link with a view_item post type label.

See 52353.2.diff​ and 52353.2.png​.

[vladytimy]

Testing 52353.2.diff with Custom Post Type comment

[hellofromTonya]

5.7 Beta 1 is happening shortly. Ran out of time to get this ticket into the release. Punting to 5.8.

If any maintainer or committer feels this can be resolved in time, or wishes to assume ownership during a specific cycle, feel free to update the milestone accordingly.

Also marking needs-patch to address Sergey's feedback.

[SergeyBiryukov]

I have already proposed a patch :) Would like some design feedback though.

[trejder]

The design look great. Thank you. My only concern is, if "View [post type]" shouldn't be force-placed in second line, i.e. directly under "Comments on" (as proposed in initial report of this feature)?

Because in certain scenarios (certain screen resolution, certain post's title length) it might break in the middle of this two-word phase (3+ word, if post type has a long name) and produce not quite very good looking feeling of having "View" in first line (directly after title) and "[post type]" in second line.

[vladytimy]

52353.2.diff on mobile with custom post type

[vladytimy]

Adds a line break

[vladytimy]

Testing 52353.3.diff with Custom Post Type on mobile

[vladytimy]

52353.3.diff on desktop

[vladytimy]

I agree with Sergey's approach, considering custom post types and existing design pattern.
However, I only now realized that there is already a view_item link in wp-admin-bar-view (see 52353.3_on_desktop.JPG ) and I don't know how we feel about duplicate links.

On the other hand, the link in the admin bar is missing on mobile view (see 52353.3.on_mobile.JPG ) and we might consider showing this on mobile only.

[chaion07]

Upon discussing this ticket in our weekly design triage, the team wasn't able to figure out the type of feedback requested. Hence I am removing the label

[paaljoachim]

I am not sure what design can say about the above suggestions.
Comments on "Post title" (clicking Post title leads to the edit screen) and then having a View post beside it or on the line below sounds like a good idea. If the post title is long the View post link would move to the line below seems like a natural thing to do.

[Hareesh Pillai]

In the attached patch, I believe

<br /><a href="%s">%s</a>

should be

<br /><a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>

[lukecarbis]

Same as third patch, but with numbered placeholders.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to Hareesh Pillai:

In the attached patch, I believe

<br /><a href="%s">%s</a>

should be

<br /><a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>

Thanks! Just noting that using numbered placeholders in practice only matters for translatable strings (so that translators could change the order where it makes sense to do so), otherwise there is roughly the same amount of both <a href="%1$s">%2$s</a> and <a href="%s">%s</a> instances in core. That said, there is a line using numbered placeholders right above, so that would indeed be more consistent.

Replying to trejder:

The design look great. Thank you. My only concern is, if "View [post type]" shouldn't be force-placed in second line, i.e. directly under "Comments on" (as proposed in initial report of this feature)?

Because in certain scenarios (certain screen resolution, certain post's title length) it might break in the middle of this two-word phase (3+ word, if post type has a long name) and produce not quite very good looking feeling of having "View" in first line (directly after title) and "[post type]" in second line.

Thanks! I went back and forth about including a line break as suggested in 52353.3.diff​, but I think it looks better with the "View Post" link next to the title. To address the concern of keeping the link on one line, we can use the existing .comments-view-item-link CSS class, which adds display: inline-block.

[SergeyBiryukov]

In 50999:

Comments: Include a "View Post" link on the Comments screen for a single post.

This makes it easier to view the post on the front end of the site when moderating comments, without having to open the editor first.

Props trejder, audrasjb, vladytimy, lukecarbis, ayeshrajans, chaion07, paaljoachim, hareesh-pillai, SergeyBiryukov.
Fixes #52353.