The comment area on a blog is a very important place on a blog, and I feel like many bloggers under-utilize it. Sometimes, to get a good conversation started on a blog, there’s more to be added than just a comments form and the threaded enhancement.
There are many nifty little hacks out there to enhance the comment area, but not all of those hacks get as comprehensive as some of the things I am about to list below.
16 Awesome Comment Enhancing Plugins
What I have compiled below are a list of 16 plugins you can add to your WordPress blog that will enhance your blog in the aspects of the comments area. Hopefully with these enhancements, you should start to see some kind of increase in comments per post.
- Comment Redirect – After someone comments, redirect them to a new page thanking them for their comment. You can include whatever you want on the page like your RSS feed, link them to related posts, etc.
- Minimum Comment Length – Will force your commentators to write more than just a couple of words. Increases better conversation, decreases useless comments!
- Comments Vote – Give your readers the ability to vote the best comments to the top positions of the comment area. Also, they can vote to push down the useless comments. Great way to truly get the most from your readers!
- ReplyMe – This will email a user any time their comment is replied to on your blog. It’s great for creating ongoing conversations, and will drive back more people for more interaction.
- Ajax Comment Preview – Allows users to click a button and preview what the comment will look like exactly as it would be posted on the blog.
- Thank Me Later – Sends an email to someone who has commented on your blog to thank them. You can edit whatever text you want to display in the email with a variety of tags.
- Tweetbacks – Displays a trackback type formatting of all the times your link was mentioned on Twitter.
- Commentluv – Shows the latest post from the commentators website after their comment.
- Comment Info Detector – Get a little more personal with your readers, this plugin shows what country they are from, the browser and OS they use.
- WP Ajax Edit Comments – Allows user to edit their comment after publishing for a set amount of time you set.
- jQuery Comment Replies – Hides replies to comments, and gives you the option to show/hide them. Useful for keeping top level comments in focus, which usually have more “meat” than replies.
- Quote Comments – Quote someone else’s comment and have it show in your comment wrapped in your blockquote style.
- IntenseDebate – A complete overhaul of your comments area, makes everything look very organized and professional.
- GD Star Rating – Highly customizable rating system to rate comments in the community.
- Fun with in-text comments – Add sets of questions, or any other pieces of information to dropdown boxes, let your readers choose from them and include in their comment.
- @ Reply – Reply to users with Twitter like functions. Click on the “reply” icon and it will automatically insert a link to the comment authors name in your comment.
In the most recent update of Commentluv, the option to style the output was removed. There is no class for it in the Style Sheet, so if you want to customize it use #comments abbr {...} It’s a long shot, and may conflict with the abbr tag if used anywhere else in your comments area.
How Does That Work For You?
16 killer comment enhancing plugins should hold you over for now right? There’s some great stuff up there!
I personally like the idea of Comment Quotes, Tweetbacks and Commentluv. I think I will be adding some of this stuff to my blog!
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Cool list Alex
Personally I tried out IntenseDebate a while ago and must say I wasn’t very impressed. Whilst I think the actual system was pretty good, I couldn’t help but feel it all looked a bit uninviting. As well as that, I think the comment rating system is good, but it also has it’s flaws in my opinion:
Too big – Basically, it looks really big, especially if it’s a short comment. Also, if you’re using CommentLuv as well then it looks pretty cluttered.
Inactivity – I feel that if your blog isn’t that busy, by introducing a rating system you’re basically highlighting the fact that hardly anyone visits, especially if you get no votes.
Also, I’m surprised you didn’t install the best plugin for ensuring more comments… the Top Commentator Widget
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I have tried IntenseDebate myself (I almost used it here), but there was way too many errors.
I have the plugin here, it’s just in that slider in the sidebar. I think I should make it more noticeable though, not many people seem to notice it!
Nice roundup..
Removing “nofollow” tag from comments can encourage more people to reply.
Also you can add Disqus to your list, which is also popular. Currently am not using anything to enhance my comments but that is area which screams for attention on my blog. So probably i will use some of these in near future.
Nice post Alex.
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Yeah, I have removed the Nofollow tag on here. I have seen Disqus, but never tried it. Do you think it’s worth it?
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Maximize Your Earnings Through the Thesis Affiliate Program =-.
I think the most important comment wp plugin bar none is “Subscribe To Comments”, the plugin which allows for opt-in of replies to comments.
I have no idea how many comments i’ve left on blogs since 2007, and how many i’ve FORGOTTEN to come back to and or check, simply because the blogger didn’t make this easier for me.
So a must add-on for any blogger who has comments enabled.
P.S. Fantastic list. (will def retweet)
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Oh, totally! I miss out on a lot of great conversations because I forget to visit the blog again to check if my comment was replied to. It’s a shame really, and I think it makes me look a little bad!
Thanks for retweeting the article! What’s your Twitter account? Would love to chat sometime.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Maximize Your Earnings Through the Thesis Affiliate Program =-.
Now this is a real plug-in list. Out of these I have only heard or/used 5 or them. Thanks for all the added functionality these plug-ins will add to my blog.
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Yeah Jake, commenting on your blog now and I see you have a lot of these plugins there! Nice man!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Maximize Your Earnings Through the Thesis Affiliate Program =-.
Very useful list of plugins. Like Jake said, I have only heard of a handful of these. I am using commentuv and keyword luv and I am also do follow. I think I may look into the comment ranking tool, that seems really cool and it will encourage people to leave great comments instead of just being the first to comment.
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Yeah, a lot of these plugins have seriously sparked my interest. I am definitely installing that quotes one, because that’s just awesome!
Great collection. Thankyou for such a wonderful list
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No problem Ali, good to see a comment from you again.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Maximize Your Earnings Through the Thesis Affiliate Program =-.
These plugins are bit new for me. Thanks a lot for the mention Alex. And what happened to your blog’s theme ?
.-= Harish | Blogging Kid´s last blog ..A Recap of Some My Best Posts On This Blog =-.
What’s wrong with the theme Harish?
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Maximize Your Earnings Through the Thesis Affiliate Program =-.
From all these plugins, I think I’m going to try Ajax Edit Comments. I’ve seen it in action on other blogs out there and gotta say that I like it! Thing is, I’m already using lots of plugins (well, not that much) and I believe that adding another one will only make my blog a bit slower
Anyways, thanks for sharing these! Awesome list!
.-= Héctor | SEO and Blogging´s last blog ..7 Wordpress Plugins That Engage! =-.
Now that’s a handful of great plugins and they are all for the comment area, pretty cool. I only knew about a couple of them. I am always looking for plugins for other areas of my blog and never put much thought into the comment area.
I really like the idea of quoting someone’s comment. It will save me a lot of copying and pasting.
That’s two of your posts I have bookmarked to work on, in just one day. You’re on a roll.
I also decided to see how the edit comment feature works. I like that as well.
hi Alex
just read your interview at moneyfellas
which brought me here….
you are too good.
.-= moneywala´s last blog ..easy backlink from free software submit site =-.
Thanks for these – I wondered how people got the twitter info so I’m off to install that plugin.
.-= Clare Swindlehurst´s last blog ..Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee! comes to the Magic Kingdom for 10 weeks only =-.
Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.
Just for me, intense debate and disqus is not so useful. It only becomes useful (for me) if the template you are using have so many bugs on the commenting forms. But other than that, I don’t believe that they are extremely necessary for a blog. I have tried both, and I found them as an extra task.
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