In a lot of Blogussion articles, there is a lot of talk about how you can interact with your community through the comment system. On several occasions, the emphasis on being successful is all about developing a community.

There isn’t a better way of doing so, than get your visitors/guest involved with your content and also on a wider scale; your blog. In the post here I have stated how a blogger is affected by comments on his/her blog.

In this post I’ll be listing in 6 greats plug-ins which could help increase the comment-activity on your “tenderly dormant” blog. You’ve probably seen a list like this before on other blogs, but it’s important to know these plugins and what they can do for your community to really bring out the best.

1. CommentLuv

Adding the CommentLuv WordPress plug-in to your blog is a great way to show your readers that you value them and the comments they leave on your blog posts. With this plug-in, the most recent blog post of the commentators listed at the end of each comment that a user fills in their blog URL in the “Websites” input box.

You can read more on the benefits of using CommentLuv to promote your blog in a past article “5 quick and clever ways to publicize a blog post by commenting on other blogs”

An example of CommentLuv in action. Screenshot grabbed from ThouShallBlog.com

• Download CommentLuv from WordPress.org

2. Show Top Commentators

Most people are inherently competitive and like recognition. This plug-in is helpful increasing comments in by far the best way. As the top commentator, they will gain a link on every page of the blog hence gaining him back links and traffic as well.

The same post linked to above can help you on how to use this plugin to promote your blog. The same concepts can be applied to your users as well. (#3) 5 quick and clever ways to publicize a blog post by commenting on other blogs

• Download Show Top Commentators from PFAdvice.com

3. Subscribe to Comments

The Subscribe to Comments WordPress plug-in is a must have for any blogger looking to increase comments on his or her blog. With this plug-in, your blog readers can subscribe to receive email alerts when new comments are left on posts they’re interested in. It’s a great way to draw people back into a conversation that they’ve already expressed interest in.

There is also a cool section in your WP admin panel where you can track how many subscriptions you have, and who is subscribed specifically.

• Download Subscibe to Comments from WordPress.org

4. Do Follow

The Do Follow Plug-in for WordPress removes the NoFollow tag from all comments left on your blog, thereby rewarding commentator’s by ensuring links left within their comments count in Google searches.

• Download DoFollow from WordPress.org

5. WordPress Thread Comment

The WordPress Thread Comment plug-in enhances the functionality of commenting on WordPress blogs by enabling people to comment on any existing comment within a thread of comments and view those comments as a threaded or nested conversation. Some users report having to modify the email messages and other wording that is programmed into the plug-in to clean up grammar, etc., but the functionality is great, particularly for blogs that receive a lot of comments.

6. Comment Relish WordPress Plug-in

Comment Relish is a WordPress plug-in developed to send a pre-set e-mail message to users who comment on your website, that haven’t previously commented before. The message dispatched to the user is pre-define by the plug-ins preferences, or you can post your custom message. It’s a great way to get a little more personal with your community since you send them an email thanking them for posting a comment on your blog.

• Download Comment Relish from JustinShattuck.com

I hope you have found something new in this list. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. 5 quick and clever ways to publicize a blog post by commenting on other blogs

2. Mapping out a new blog: Choosing a great theme and some killer plugins

3. 10 WP-Plugins, that will rock your world

Running a successful blog is just as demanding as starting a business, meeting a goal or even running for the US presidency (exaggeration at it’s best!). It all depends on how much effort you put in and what you want to achieve with your blog.

Maintaining a successful blog and the above comparisons are by far different on many levels, but nevertheless they both require a type of confidence, a type of motivation and most importantly; a type of perseverance.

Anyways, moving on from the radical metaphors.. the point of that introduction was to highlight how hard it is to run a blog.

If you run a blog by yourself or with a friend – you know how easily how the workload can just pile up! When it comes to constantly writing good content, responding to your readers and obviously building on traffic – just too much for you to handle? Well, why don’t we eliminate “responding to your readers” as a chore and turn it in to a potential flow of targeted content?

Now, that would be a big positive because that would partially take care of two so-called “chores” of running a blog! So, what if there’s an ‘ultimate social plugin‘ that will do wonders to your site, ease your workload and EVEN please your readers? Well.. there is!

FV Community News allows your visitors to help you create more content for your site! A simple, yet ingenious plug-in to really incorporate your reader’s opinion and boost your site’s value, content and even SERPs.

As said by the developers themselves – “With this new Community News plugin you allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.”

Features

Currently, the Community News plugin has the following features:

• Widget Ready (Different form/results widget)
• Tags for use in posts/pages
• AJAX Form Handling
• Multi-Language Support
• Moderation panel (with email option) – Make sure you approve the right articles
• Edit Submissions
• `My Submissions` Page
• Customizable templates
• Captcha Spam protection (on/off)
• Akismet Spam protection (API key required)
• Build-in RSS 2.0 Feed
• Image Uploading
• Settings
• Uninstall Page
• Configurable Responses

The Big Bad Wolf of FV Community News

That’s all the positives, but when it comes to using this plugin there are a couple of downfalls. The whole idea of allowing your readers to contribute with useful content is great – till you get spammers that try to abuse this feature.

You might find yourself accepting/rejecting articles added via this plugin a lot more than your comments ~ so, you need to balance out between free-content and loyalty of your readers. If you having problems with spammers, I would not even hesitate to suggest the use of Akismet and BadBahvious. The combination of these two plugins will take care most of your spammers!

Quick FV Community News Information

Author : Frank Verhoeven
Wordpress Version (required): 2.5+
Tested up to Version: 2.7
Current Plug-In Version: 1.3

What does it look like?

You can see the FV Community News in action over at DivitoDesigns. The side bar on the far-right is all content added by the readers. Also here’s a quick screen-shot of the actual Admin Control Panel, which can be accessed through your WordPress Admin CP;

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

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