The Facebook Comments Box social plugin displays existing comments and solicits new comments via JavaScript loaded on the client browser. Comments are sorted in social order by default, surfacing a comment from your friend or a comment with a lot of Likes before a comment from a stranger.
WordPress separates the display of comments from the solicitation of new comments: have_comments vs. comments_open. The have_comments
function looks for a comments count; the Facebook plugin for WordPress loads this comments count from Facebook servers based on the current state of comment submissions and admin approvals (if comments moderated). If you have comments to display then the Comments Box will be rendered by default to display those comments and, in the process, solicit new comments.
If you have no comments count you should see an empty div#comments
, matching the behavior of Twenty Thirteen, Twenty Twelve, etc.
If you would like more control over listing existing comments when comments are not open without using the Facebook Comments Box social plugin take a look at the style
value of the arguments array passed through the facebook_wp_list_comments
filter and return an empty string for the facebook_comments_wrapper
filter.
The string “Leave a Reply” does not exist in the Facebook plugin for WordPress. The Facebook Comments Box social plugin is added to the page by overriding comments_template; check your theme code for a header declared outside of its comments template.