Posts Tagged ‘commenting’

As I was timely reminded yesterday, comments are important to some peoples’ blogs. So there needs to be a way of enabling your commenters to keep informed of the conversation. On a chatty blog, like Birds on the Blog it’s vital but on my transport blogs it’s not so important.

So what options are available for those that like reminders?

Disqus is used by a lot of probloggers and social media bloggers, it enables the conversation to take place in other web locations and be tracked back to your blog. If you are a big fan of stats and tracking, then this is the tool for you. If you click on the link it will take you to the WordPress page where it explains how to install. Easy, and easy to keep track of. It also allows people to comment using a login from another platform – like Twitter or Facebook as well as using OpenID or a Disqus account.

Tempus Fugit have created a fab plugin that has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times and that allows a commenter to subscribe to the conversation.

There is also Subscribe2 which allows html emails to be sent and is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress.

All this is lovely, and helps your community providing the plugin doesn’t conflict with your WordPress theme. If it does that, you are back to the drawing board!

Sarah

Yes, you have plucked up the courage to complete the little box at the end of the post. You have hit submit… What happens next?

If you have a web savvy blogmistress, you may get directed to a thank you page

Comments are the lifeblood of a blog, it encourages a community to form. Where you see comments (like on this blog) you know the advice is good.

So encouraging comments is something I am going to explore over the next few blog posts, and you can download them and try them and see which works for your blog. Remember, not everything works for everyone.

So back to thanking first time commenters, you can download the Comment Redirect plugin here

When installed, after the comment has been made it will redirect the commenter to another page. This can be where you thank them for taking the time to comment, encourage them to come back often and subscribe to your RSS feeds.

This isn’t the place for selling your ebooks or other products, but a welcoming page where your community starts to grow from. You will therefore need to create a New Page and then set that page in the Comment Redirect option under Plugins.

The great thing I like about this plugin is, your regular commenters won’t even notice it, so it won’t interfere with the smooth running of your blog, for your regulars it is business as usual.

As always, if you like this post – tell a few people and let us know how you get on with it

Sarah