How to Show Comment Count on Related Posts?

Question

I am using this code to show related posts without a plugin. Each post shows the title and comment count. The end result is similar to the way Mashable does it:

This appears under each post on single.php. My problem is that the comment count shows the same number on each - it shows the number of comments for the current post. I've tried it a couple different ways as you can see below. How can I change it so that it will show the comment number for each post? By the way, this only started happening recently - previously it showed comment count for each. How weird is that?!

 <div class="relatedrandom"> 
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    <ul>
     <?php
        $this_post = $post;

    $total = get_comments_number();
        $category = get_the_category(); $category = $category[0]; $category = $category->cat_ID;
        $posts = get_posts('numberposts=5&offset=0&orderby=post_date&order=DESC&category='.$category);
        $count = 0;
        foreach ( $posts as $post ) {
        if ( $post->ID == $this_post->ID || $count == 4 ) {

        unset($posts[$count]);
        }else{
        $count ++;
        }

        }
        ?>
     <?php foreach ( $posts as $post ) :
     ?>
<li>       
<div class="firstimage"><?php get_first_image($post->ID);  ?></div>
<p><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="purpleLink"><?php the_title(); ?></a></p>
<span class="commentbubble"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"> <?php echo $total; ?> <img src="http://mydomain.com/greybubble.jpg" /></a></span>
 </li>

 <?php endforeach // $posts as $post ?>
 </ul> 
    <?php
        $post = $this_post;
        unset($this_post);
        ?>
       </div>      


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<ul>
<?php
     $rand_posts = get_posts('numberposts=4&orderby=rand');
     foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) :
     ?>
 <li>
    <div class="firstimage"><?php get_first_image($post->ID);  ?></div>
     <p><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="purpleLink">
       <?php the_title(); ?></a></p>
     <span class="commentbubble"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php comments_number('0','1','%'); ?> <img src="http://mydomain.com/greybubble.jpg" /></a></span>
     </li>
  <?php endforeach; wp_reset_query(); ?>

    </ul>
    </div>

Answer 1

get_comments_number works in the loop. You're using it outside. So do something like this

    $category = get_the_category(); $category = $category[0]; $category = $category->cat_ID;
    $posts = get_posts('numberposts=5&offset=0&orderby=post_date&order=DESC&category='.$category);
    foreach($posts as $post){
      setup_postdata($post);
          $total = get_comments_number();
          echo 'here we create the HTML and content for the post';
    }
    wp_reset_query();