These are the best WordPress plugins I personally use and feel really enhance my comments page not only for me but for those who comment as well!
CommentLuv
The support is very quick, especially if you contact them via twitter. I love this plugin because it enables the commenter to quickly link to and display their OWN recent blog entry at the bottom of their comment. It brings them more traffic, gives you something new to read (and comment on!)
DoFollow
Basically this allows you to remove that pesky “nofollow” attribute from links. What that does is, again, bring more traffic and page rank to those who comment on your site! You can read more about the “nofollow” at SiteSketch101.
Subscribe to Comments
Just as the title suggests, this lets the commenter “subscribe” to the comments. This is great because I know if I leave a comment on a blog, I like to keep in the loop so to speak, return, etc.
WP Twitip
This easily adds a field for people to input their twitter id. I’ve found that my commenters tend to get new followers this way!
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The BackType one sounds really cool. I’m so mad at commentluv right now though. It will NOT let my feed show up on anybody’s pages. See below? NO LINK. And I cannot get it fixed. (insert many expletives here.)
I sent a tweet to commentluv so I hope we can figure this out!
Hi from Twitter – Thanks for these tips – v. helpful! I like this blog, oh yes I do!
Thanks for this. Working on tweaking my comments section and these will be loads of help in making it.. I dunno.. worth while? Nobody wants to comment if the commenting area looks all ugly (which mine does).
Hey Sara, Question for you – also about commentluv. It has been displaying a post I posted days ago (see below) instead of the ones (or most recent one) I’ve posted since then. Any idea why? I’ve never had a problem with them before.
@Keeshia I do feel that when you work hard on your comment page design it does encourage readers to comment. Things like CAPTCHA just annoy the heck out of me and takes forever to write a simple comment!
@Melodie hmm the only reason it would do that is if something was weird with your RSS feed as that’s where CLUV is pulling the data from. It probably is working fine now I hope!
Thanks Sara, It’s working today!
Those are great plugins! I’m going to try out “BackType Connect” “CommentLuv” and “WP Twitip”. thanks for
This is a great post! I just activated two new plugins from the list. Thanks! Following you on Twitter now too.
Awesome! Which two plugins did you decide to install?
Twitter ID and subscribe to comments. Thanks again!
Thank you for this specific post about plugins for the comments section! I’ve added 3 of your 5 recommendations and I already had one installed – they’re great!
I’m wondering if you can help me with something. I’d like to find a way to make my comment section more organized. I’d really like to see my individual replies to people falling directly under their comments. Do you know how to do this? I installed one plugin but didn’t like it because my name wasn’t a link, like it would normally be when I post a response.
Also, I’m wondering what you are using below where it says “checkmark to get a response to YOUR comment…” Will I only receive a response to MY comment if I check this box… or will I receive an email each time someone comments on this post after me?
I installed a plugin whose concept I really like but I haven’t got it work properly yet. It’s called “comment reply notification” and I can set it up to automatically send MY reply to the commenter. I don’t see how this can work without being able to specify within wordpress WHO you are responding to though so I haven’t got it working yet.
Sorry for the long winded comment. Just thought you might have some advice/insights for me :)
Thanks for all your informative posts!
I created a custom function for my own threaded comments however the wordpress thread comment plugin works well and you can customize the display/design.
Thanks! I think I’ve got it all figured out now! :)