5 Must Have Comment Plugins for WordPress
- 17 Comment
A blog comes alive when the readers get a sense of community and take part in discussions. Thoughtful comments become a value-added proposition for everyone involved in the discussion. Or sometimes commenting can just be fun like the Comment Friday here at BAYB.
As a blog author, you should do everything you can do to encourage your readers to comment and provide means to make that easier for them to comment and follow the discussions. Today I will talk about a few WordPress plugins that will make it easy for you to achieve this objective.
- Subscribe to Comments: I think this is arguably the most important comment plugin you can have in your blog. With a little checkbox option at the bottom of the comment box, it encourages users to receive email notifications of further comments. Your readers will love you for this simple but powerful community building feature. I know this might spark a debate, but I recommend leaving this unchecked and letting the user make the decision to subscribe.
- WP Ajax Edit Comments: We have all made typos in the comments we leave. Be kind to your readers and give them the power to edit their own comments for a time specified by you. Your readers will surely appreciate this. Plus, the edit interface is inline without a page reload and very slick showing a countdown timer.
- Live Comment Preview: As the name implies, you can preview your comment live as you type. Very useful to avoid typos and to make sure the URL you are linking will appear like you want to. The installation is very simple and works well out of the box.
- Better Comments Manager: Are you going to every comment in your blog to post a reply? Imagine the time you could save if you could view, edit and reply to all your comments from one place, the admin panel. This plugin does that as well as lets you view comments by post in the admin panel. Your readers won’t see this but you will thank yourself.
- Show Top Commentators: Reward your top commentators by linking to their blog and showing their name with the number of comments. This will encourage the top commentators as well as others to participate in the discussions.
I would love to hear about any other comment plugin that you use in your blog. Also, if you have any questions about installing these plugins, feel free to comment here. I will try to help out and I am sure so will others if they can.
I write about more technology related topics at ShanKri-la – where technology meets daily life!. My goal is to make your life on the Internet a little bit easier, a little bit manageable and a little bit more enjoyable.
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17 Comments on this post
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Elizabeth said:
Do you know if the Better Comments manager works with the Comment Email responder plugin? Because I do have to click the envelope next to each name and leave the comment, it would be really cool to see them all in one place.
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:10 pm -
Bob said:
Are these available for WordPress.com blogs or just stand-alone WordPress?
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm -
TVs Worst Adverts said:
Really useful list K-IntheHouse. The Ajax editor is a great idea.
I know it doesn’t fir into the Top 5 format but I also use:
http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/sem-recent-comments/
to allows people to keep up with the latest discussion.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 am -
Brown Baron said:
That Better Comments Manager looks interesting.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 pm -
Jason said:
Thanks for the list.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:42 am -
K-IntheHouse said:
You are very welcome. You have a nice blog as well.
July 25th, 2007 at 6:26 pm -
Bob said:
Can anyone please tell me if it’s possible to get “Subscribe to Comments” as a feature on WordPress.com blogs?
July 25th, 2007 at 7:31 pm -
Jason said:
I was under the assumption that the plugin was for WordPress…
“one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there”
July 25th, 2007 at 7:40 pm -
K-IntheHouse said:
Bob, I am really sorry I missed your earlier comment. WordPress.com blogs cannot use WordPress plugins. They are only for standalone WordPress blogs. Sorry about that..
You could also check out “WordPress VIP Hosting option which supports a limited number of plugins (that don’t change db tables).
@Jason.. thanks for the reply to Bob. WordPress comes in 2 flavors.. standalone blogs and the free WordPress.com blogs like Google’s Blogger.com blogs. 🙂
July 26th, 2007 at 12:04 pm -
Vic said:
Thank you for such a great plugin list. For the new person this list are just priceless.
Thanks
Vic
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:40 pm -
K-IntheHouse said:
Vic, you are very welcome! I like you site name.. 🙂
I still scour for lists like this in blogs for various things and always end up finding one or two that I wasn’t aware of! Plus, you are not randomly trying out some from the vast plugins repository but going by the experience of blog author and their opinion. Saves time and pain for everyone.
Cheers!
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 am -
Built From Skratch said:
Just wanted to say hello and great blog!
February 18th, 2008 at 4:49 am -
Brian said:
Very helpful thanks. I will try the better comments editor and the Ajax plugin. Well done.
Brians last blog post..Make Sure You are In Google Blogsearch
July 30th, 2008 at 7:38 pm -
zainuddin said:
Thanks for the list.
March 31st, 2010 at 9:00 pm
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