15 Plugins to Make your WordPress Comment System Better
How would you like if your blog posts doesn’t gets any readers voice? That is no one comments on it? Wouldn’t you be disappointed? The problem could be that your Comment System is not very interactive or beneficial for readers.
There are actually many ways with which you can improve your wordpress comment system and thus can increase the chances of getting more and better comments on your blog. In this post, I will be sharing 15 very popular wordpress plugins which can surely make your wordpress comment system look more interactive and beneficial.
1. WordPress Threaded Comment:
WP Threaded Comment is a very popular plugin which enables your blog readers to comment on the existing comments thus making the comments appear in a threaded(nested) way. From your Admin panel you can choose various things like whether or not to send the notification email on new reply comments, how everything should look, maximum nested comment level etc.
2. DoFollow:
DoFollow is a simple one click plugin which removes the “no-follow” attribute from your comments and thus making it Do-follow. This helps in providing Link Juice to your commentators as Search Engine will count the links in the comments made by your readers. Try this, It will surely boost your comments as this is the new trend around blogosphere.
3. Top Commentators Widget:
The Top Commentators Widget plugin helps you add a widget in your blog which shows the top commentators name. There are many options to choose in this plugin like to exclude some name, links and e-mails, Option to make the name’s hyper-linked or not, should the plugin add “no-follow” attribute in the list etc.
4. Comment Luv:
Comment Luv is a very interesting plugin as it grabs the feed of the commentator URL and shows a selection of latest article which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit button. This has proven very important and useful in generating more comments on a blog and interactive for the readers.
5. Keyword Luv:
Keyword Luv let’s your readers enter their favorite keyword for which they are optimizing their blog. The keyword appears just after the name and the the keyword is hyper-linked with URL provided by the commentator. This helps the commentators blogs rank better for their keyword with the improved anchor text for their comment.
6. Subscribe To Comments:
Subscribe to Comments is also a very popular plugin which helps your readers get notified via email whenever a new comment is made on the article on which they commented and are subscribed. This plugin provides a simple check box below the comment box and if the commentators ticks it then he gets subscribed to the list.This encourages readers to come back and take part in the conversation.
Well if you have already installed WP Threaded Comment then you might not feel installing as the feature is available in it but let me clear one thing that Subscribe to Comments plugin also provides the list of e-mail address and post on which the readers are subscribed to the comments which is not available in WP Threaded Comment.
7. Comment Relish:
Comment Relish could help prove a very important plugin as it sends a thank-you email to yours blog first time commentators. The message can be changed according to you. This encourages them to come back again and comment regularly i.e they might become your regular reader.
8. WP Ajax Edit Comments:
Humans can make mistakes and WP Ajax Edit Comments helps solve and edit this mistake. Whenever after commenting, your readers feels that he should not have said what he commented or he should have added something more to the comment or he realized typo mistake or some error then this plugin helps them to edit their own comments for a period specified by the Admin. This plugin can help reduce typo mistakes on reader comments and at same time encourage more comments from them.
9. Highlight Author Comments:
Sometimes your readers feels to read only the author comments. Mostly this happens when you write some kind of tutorial or something like that. That time it should be easy for the readers to find your comments and that’s the aim of the Highlight Author Comments plugin.
As it is clear by name, this plugin highlights the post author comments in distinctive style with no need to edit your template files, etc. All you do is provide a snippet or two of CSS styling to be applied to author posts.
10. Comment Quick Tags:
Comment Quick Tags is very useful plugin as it adds a handy toolbar near the comment box. This toolbar consist easy to use tags like bold, italics, quote and other such simple tags. This provides the choice to your commentators to present their comments in a very beautiful and proper manner.
11. Custom Smilies:
Custom Smilies enables the commentators to make use of smilies easily from the toolbar situated near to comment box. After installing the plugin you can choose or add smilies on your own which you want to appear in the toolbar. This will provide a very usefull interactive feature to your readers.
12. Tiny MCE Comments:
Tiny MCE Comments is a really very powerful plugin as it changes the ordinary comment box into a fully featured rich text editor or What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editor. That means your commentators gets the functions like available to the author. It will surely make the comment box more interactive to use with the availability of such features.
13. WP Gravatars:
WP Gravatar is very simple to use plugin which adds the required field to your comment section to show up the Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico images with your comments. There is now no need to find any code and do replacing and blah blah. Just Activate this plugin and it’s done.
There is one new similar kind of plugin on which we talked few days back i.e Twittar from SmashingMagazine which adds the Twitter avatars in the comment section by matching the email address to the user’s Twitter email address and if the user doesn’t have twitter then it shows up Gravatar.
Your Commentators will surely love to see their Avatars on your blog.
14. OpenID Comments:
OpenID Comments plugin let’s your readers comment with their openID Identity thus they can make comments by logging with their Google Account, FaceBook Account, Blogger Account, Yahoo Account, WordPress Account or any other OpenID’s.
15. Twitip ID:
Twitip ID is also getting popular amongst bloggers. This plugin adds an extra input field in comment box where people can add their Twitter username. Then this plugin outputs the twitter profile URL after submitting the comment. This helps your readers to share their twitter profileon the blog and gets chance to increase their followers.
These 15 plugins are very usefull to make your wordpress comment sytem much interactive and useful for your readers. Therefore, try it and feel the change it brings to your commen system.
If you are using any other plugin which have helped you improve the interactivity or benefiits of commenting on your blog then don’t forget to share it with me here by commenting below.
Article written by Typhoon
Yo! I am Typhoon a.k.a Sushant, a 17 yrs. old blogger from India and the owner of SmartBloggerz. Here I try to share useful Blogging related articles which would help a blogger to succeed. You can connect to me on Twitter.Typhoon has written 332 superb article(s) on this blog
December 7, 2009
5:00 am
Hey – my comment is a little off topic but I have a question…what is the name of your theme? I really like it! Thanks in advance!
Mark @ Niche Blueprint 2 Review´s last blog ..Privacy
December 7, 2009
11:30 am
It’s ULTIMATE BLOGGING THEME. Here is the link:
http://www.smartbloggerz.com/go/ultimatebloggingtheme
December 13, 2009
1:25 pm
I liked it too, Bro. This might be a best theme for money making by blogging.
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..How To Use Facebook Effectively
December 13, 2009
6:51 pm
LOL, i think there is no relation about money making performance and the blog themes.
akira07´s last blog ..Make or Break – Website Review
December 17, 2009
8:33 am
There is. More ad spots and perfect positioning of them are important and this theme gives them all.
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..7 Questions You Should Answer Before Blogging
December 28, 2009
7:11 am
I think Senthil’s right. Ad placement can be critical for ad performance. And if content is overshadowed by a whole lot of blinky, distracting ads, visitors get annoyed and tune it ALL out. Moreover, a theme can attract or repel visitors. I can only think of a handful of blogs I like but feel as though I’m suffering through when I read them, but they’re notable. And the more READABLE your blog is, the better. I used to love using white (bold) text on a black background. My publisher hated it with a purple passion, but it took me a while to stop rebelling and admit that she – and others who’d complained of eyestrain – were right. That they kept coming back said I was writing good content, but I was always on the verge of losing them – and probably DID lose a lot of casual visitors – due to usability issues.
December 12, 2009
9:03 pm
I use the threaded comment plugin, custom smilies and gravatars for my wordpress blog.
Jenn´s last blog ..TRIPLE MEDICAL CELEBRATION: A BlogThing Game /CLOSED/
December 13, 2009
1:24 pm
Threaded comments plugin? Threaded comments comes with most of the themes, right?
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..How To Use Facebook Effectively
December 13, 2009
1:35 pm
Ya mostly on the premium side and few free themes made by good designers, but sometimes not.
December 13, 2009
1:59 pm
Oh I see, all the ones I have used supported the threaded comments system.
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..How To Use Facebook Effectively
December 13, 2009
4:33 pm
after reading this post i have installed subscribe to comments and custom smile in my blog. I will install other plugins soon.
Deepika´s last blog ..I Drive You To The Next Generation: Regards, XML
December 13, 2009
6:50 pm
Is threaded comment is the one which used on this blog? Smartbloggerz “10 deep level comment” is threaded comment system, right? CMIIW, since i’m not clearly understand about it yet.
akira07´s last blog ..Make or Break – Website Review
December 13, 2009
7:33 pm
Ya, but I don’t need any plugin for making that feature available on blog. The new version of UBT comes with inbuilt threaded comment system.
December 17, 2009
8:34 am
Hey whats that CMIIW meant Akira? Most of the themes support threaded comments.
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..7 Questions You Should Answer Before Blogging
December 13, 2009
8:15 pm
I think so. My wordpress blog is just a blog-blog and I do not use premium themes for it. More often, I do my own theme.
Jenn´s last blog ..TRIPLE MEDICAL CELEBRATION: A BlogThing Game /CLOSED/
December 16, 2009
3:35 am
Typhoon, i’m vote you to use WP Ajax Edit Comment since sometime i get my finger push the wrong button and just notice it when i’m click “Submit Comment”. Get “blog” become “blgo” word is not comfortable to read, right?
. So, i think it’s needed for this blog. Well, i would like to hear another reader opinion.
akira07´s last blog ..Quick report – My Smartbloggerz Commenting Idol 2 Participation
December 17, 2009
8:35 am
I have used the WP ajax plugin and had some problem. Also it increased the site load time
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..7 Questions You Should Answer Before Blogging
January 4, 2010
2:00 am
I would also suggest considering the ‘full comment systems’ like IntenseDebate and Disqus, which have a number of features built in to the one plugin, whereas the plugins featured here are usually single feature enhancements.
January 10, 2010
2:53 pm
Wow! 15 plugins for a comment section? I guess that is too much plus it will only add more load time with those gravatar plugin. Anyway, it is good set of plugins shared here and it will certainly help us to get more comments and manage easily more comments.
January 24, 2010
3:35 pm
What a helpful list! Ive always been a web designer using dreamweaver but am just making the switch to WordPress. Ive heard a lot of good things about some of these plugins, particularly the keyword luv and commentluv plugins – they make updating sites so easy!
Ali @ Auto Content Cash´s last blog ..About Us
February 9, 2010
9:52 am
Do follow is a must if you want to reward your visitors for commenting.
Jared@Natal Games´s last undefined ..Response cached until Wed 10 @ 4:21 GMT (Refreshes in 23.98 Hours)
February 21, 2010
2:25 am
I LOVE cookies for comments. This plugin adds a stylesheet to your blog’s html source code. When a browser loads that stylesheet a cookie is dropped. If that user then leaves a comment the cookie is checked. If it doesn’t exist the comment is marked as spam. This means that I don’t have to trawl through hundreds of “your page doesn’t look rite in XYZ browser” posts to find the couple of real posts that have got caught up by mistake.
Tony@Auto Cash Content Review´s last blog ..Take Me To The Bonus!
February 22, 2010
10:59 am
Wow, these are some amazing plugins. The WordPress firewall one does not seem to be working on my blog … perhaps it is conflicting with my theme. Still, I am having fun playing with the SABRE plugin mentioned above. Thanks for the list.
Chris@blog marketing´s last blog ..Submitting your blog to directories
February 23, 2010
8:43 am
I am so grateful for this info. I was looking for a way to improve my comment box on my blog and I found this blog on the top of Google. Awesome! Now I can go and download most of these plugins and make my comment section much more interactive and encourage more comments from visitors. I am going to tweet this. Thanks mucho. You ROCK!!
March 4, 2010
4:07 am
I started investigating the top commenters plugin a while back but still haven’t installed it. i guess Im just a little cagey to it still. It does seem to be very effective though…the only thing Im concerned about is losing my pagerank…Ive learned I can “leak pagerank” when using this plugin…?
Billy @ Instant Money Code´s last blog ..About Me
March 21, 2010
7:18 pm
This post really make sense for WP blogs. However, some of the points you highlighted also apply to blogger blogs, especially those plugins that support on Blogger.
Bert Padilla@Webthesurfi Rugs Webdesign´s last blog ..Windows Phone 7 Tablet Concept and Features Leaked
May 15, 2010
7:20 pm
I like to use such plugin but I am worried about spam especially if the link is do follow. What is your recommendation for preventing the system from being abused?
Alan@cordless blinds´s last blog ..Buy black cordless blinds
May 17, 2010
11:54 am
Use Akismet or WP-Spam free plugin.
May 21, 2010
12:01 pm
This post is timely for me. We have none of these plugins and want our blog to be more user friendly and to attract comments. I’ve thought our field is a boring field to blog about, however, I have some topics in mind that might attract more comments.
Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate´s last blog ..West Pasco Washington Homes For Sale
May 31, 2010
8:27 pm
In your 15 wordpress plugin, Twitip ID is the plugin that I’ve nver heard before, thank for that!
Jennifer´s last blog ..45+ WordPress plugins To Enhance Your Comments
June 9, 2010
11:00 am
Related to WordPress comment plugins, I have a post on how to move the Reply button from the first post of the comment-thread to the last post. I think in some situations, this is the desired behavior.
I considered my post requires a little bit knowledge on how WordPress comments works internally. But, anyway, I put the link to my post here, who knows it can be beneficial to somebody.
http://suhanto.net/moving-reply-button-end-wordpress-comment-thread/
June 22, 2010
8:55 pm
these all are really great
but i think that commentluv is better
don’t know…i used a lot of these when i had a blog and comment luv gave me better results
June 25, 2010
2:48 am
I also use the threaded comment plugin. I love custom smilies and gravatars for my wordpress blog.
Mary@keyword search statistics´s last blog ..Court Ruling To Limit Your Right To Share The News On Twitter
June 29, 2010
5:25 pm
Thanks a lot for yet another first-rate WordPress tutorial. I am always trying to find great WordPress tutorials to suggest to my clients. Thanks for posting this tutorial . It’s exactly what I was trying to find. Truly great post.
July 19, 2010
11:32 am
Hey Caroline
I was just reading your comment and I thought you might like to know a guy who is very knowledgable and helpful on word press Justin Popovic http://www.igniteyouressence.com
Justin is a great guy and he has taught me heaps about word press.
Stan Young´s last blog ..I wish there were No Problems!
July 6, 2010
12:50 pm
Hey Typhoon!
I like your list. It’s pretty informative and well-explained. However, we’re talking about 15 plugins here for just the comment section! Don’t you think that’s a bit overkill and that an external plugin like Disqus is just as good for this purpose? What’s your opinion?
July 6, 2010
2:38 pm
Ya, but I prefer things which are part of my own blog and not using other commenting services..It’s pretty time consuming and makes your blog a little slow.
July 9, 2010
5:43 am
I think the “Comment Relish” is one of the best. This does not only make sure that the commenter is human, but it also make them feel that the author is really interested on what they have posted, specially if they keep on noticing that the author is also engaged in the activity.