If you’ve had a blog for a while, you probably have a love/hate relationship with comments. As you surely have come to note, people (and bots) often post to blogs as a way to add a link back to their website, or the one/s they are promoting. Of course we don’t want the spammer to comment on our posts (links to a websites with a poor reputation can lower your site’s ranking) but we do want genuine comments since it can encourage new and repeat traffic to your pages (which is great for SEO) and, much like a forum, comments will often encourage others to share, and otherwise become engaged which is why one has a blog in the first place. In fact, many feel that a blog with ample comments is the primary indicator that it has content of quality, so yes, comments are important.
The long-and-short is that it can be tiresome to read through and assess the many comments each day, and then decide whether to approve/disapprove them; for this reason many people will require a person to become a member to comment (which won’t stop spam, but it certainly lessens it a lot), but since most people don’t like having to register to a site to say something this often results in few, if any, comments. What is needed of course is a few reliable members actively participating, and an easy way to allow for comments to be added.
The first option is to add a plugin as a comment filter. Of these, Askimet is the most popular. To use this you need to go to the Askimet site, and register. From there you will get an API code that you add into the plugin settings area. There are other plugins that provide a similar feature, but since Askimet is default with the Joomla build, most people use it.
What some people do is rename the wp-comments-post.php to something like wp-comments-custom.php, and rename wp-trackback.php to something like wp-trackback-custom.php. This “renaming” is a common strategy employed since bots will typically look for what it is programmed to look for, not a custom name. Yet that being said, there are some bots which apparently will search for a new name (crazy!). You can learn about how to rename these at http://www.theblog.ca/wordpress-rename-comments.
Ok, so now onto the what I really wanted to talk about today, how to make it easy for people to comment while still having a reasonably spam-free blog. The most popular (and downloaded) of the comment plugins follow; each of these three are designed as a replacement to the WP built-in comment system.
Disqus Comment System: Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community. The Disqus for WordPress plugin integrates using the Disqus API and by syncing with WordPress comments.
Livefyre Realtime Comments: Livefyre is a real-time comment solution that centralizes conversations from around the social web back to your content, while encouraging live engagement between users on your site. Features include Social Sync; pulling Facebook & Twitter comments into your content in real-time, etc.
IntenseDebate Comments: IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!
This next group of plugins are meant to augment, or otherwise enhance the existing WP comment system. Of course with any plugin you need to ensure that it is compatible with your version of WordPress, and in many cases some CSS styling will be needed to get a desired visual look. My suggestion, always back up your database and files before you install and enable any plugin that you are not absolutely sure is compatible.
Since Facebook is very popular (and Twitter to a lesser degree), it is a good idea to integrate the Facebook profile log-in as a comment option. The Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin is noted to do just that. The plugin supports custom styles, notifications, combined comment counts, and recent comments. I have tried this plugin, and would like to tell you how well it worked, but for me (and many others) it didn’t. One option is to create your own FB Developer App that will do what this plugin is reported to do, and yep, there’s a tutorial on how this is done. You can view it at https://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/add-facebook-comments-to-your-wordpress-theme/ Ok, so another Facebook related commenting plugin is WordPress is Facebook Comments which replaces WP commenting with the Facebook Comments widget. And I found one more which appears to work well called Facebook Comments with Notifications. And for those of you who Tweet, there is the Twitter Mentions as Comments plugin. This plugin scans Twitter for people talking about your blog posts and inserts their Tweets alongside existing comments.
Best Comment Utilities:
A concern of some is the ability to edit comments after they have been published. The WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin lets visitors edit their comments for a limited time. Greg’s Comment Length Limiter plugin provides a configurable limit on the length of comments left in the comment box (preventing those long-winded commenters), with a dynamically updated character count displayed for the user.
Best Comment Promotion:
As I noted above, you want to encourage those who benefit your blog by way of comments, and one way is to use the Top Commentators Widget. This widget can be added to the sidebar to showcase them. Another common option is to showcase the current commenting on the blog. The Better WordPress Recent Comments plugin displays recent comment lists at assigned locations. Another plugin which I find intriguing is MSMC – Redirect After Comment. Once someone adds a comment, they are automatically redirected to a predefined page (a great way to provide a special thanks, or a promotion, etc). The Wizzart – Recent Comment plugin is a customizable widget which shows recent visitor comments in the sidebar. Output is completely customizable with features including custom tags and styling. The Subscribe To Comments Reloaded plugin is designed to increase the amount of return visits a post is receiving by enabling commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of future entries.
SEO Optimized:
Content optimization is important, and one way to enhance the SEO benefit of comments is to use
SEO Super Comments. This plugin will turn a typical blog comment into a new, standalone page.
