For those of you who have left comments on articles published here at Performancing.com, you’ll already know that our commenting system is not the best. Although it has yet to be confirmed, there is a chance that Performancing will be moved over to WordPress. If this were to happen, here is the group of plugins I would use to provide Performancing.com with the ultimate WordPress commenting system.
WP-Ajax Edit Comments
WP Ajax Edit Comments was developed by Ronald Huereca of RAProject.com. The plugin gives commenter’s the ability to edit their own comments in an ajax like interface. Although the plugin used to allow you to edit comments inline, the latest version creates a popup where the editing takes place. This plugin packs quite a feature set such as the ability to edit, moderate, delete or submit the comment to Akismet all from within the public comment area.
Comment Luv
CommuntLuv, developed by FiddyP is a plugin that displays the most recent blog post published from the URL which is defined by the commenter. Think of this as an ‘incentive to comment’ type of plugin. After installing the plugin, user’s will be presented with a checkbox near your comment form. If this is checked, when a user submits their comment, the plugin will try to parse their most recent blog post. So not only are they getting a link from their URL being displayed, but they also get a direct link to their most recent blog post.
Do-follow
This is one of the more simpler plugins. Once activated, it removes the nofollow attribute from the links displayed within comments. Thats all there is to it. This is yet another incentive to get people to comment on your blog.
WP Comment-Remix
If I had a favorite plugin, this one would be very near the top of the list. WP Comment Remix is a plugin developed by Jason of Pressography which is also an entrant to the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition for 2008. This plugin is simply put, awesome. Once activated, it places a Reply and a Quote text link within each comment. When a user clicks on the Reply link, a text link will be created and their username will automatically be entered into the text field. The link is created as a means of discovering which comment a person is replying to. No threading functionality here, but this is the next best thing. The quote link takes the comment and automatically places block quote tags around the text. Does this remind you of a forum yet? The plugin also allows administrators to reply to comments from the administration panel. When you combine this plugin with WP Ajax Edit Comments, you end up with a really powerful commenting system. However, we’re not done yet.
Subscribe To Comments
Subscribe to comments developed by core WordPress developer Mark Jaquith takes care of the need to be notified of when a new comment is published. Once activated, a check box will appear near the comment form. If checked, the user will be notified via email whenever a new comment is published for that particular post. This works similar to the way you would be notified of a new post within a forum. The latest version, 2.1, offers a boatload of features such as the ability to skin the subscription management area of WordPress, security features, recognition of subscription status and much more. This is another one of those plugins that I install on every WordPress blog I create.
Comment Karma
This plugin is from 2006 so it may no longer work. But according to the comments on the release post, this plugin is still functional, even after all of the major WordPress versions which have been released since then. Comment Karma developed by Alex Bailey allows commenter’s to press a thumbs up or thumbs down icon which will either boost a comments karma or decline a comments karma level. This gives commenter’s the chance to moderate each others comments.
If you find this plugin to malfunction on your blog, give SezWho a try which is a third party comment moderating service that carries a user’s reputation along with the comment.
TinyMCE Comments
tinyMCE comments developed by Thomas Au provides a What you See Is What You Get editor for your comments. The editor provides standard functionality that makes it very easy to bold text, change fonts, create lists, etc. Another way of making things easier on the commentator!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are some really powerful plugins available for WordPress which can take commenting to the next level. With these plugins installed as a group along with built in Gravatar support, you’ll have yourself a hand dandy commenting system which will be a blast for your visitors to use. Not only will you have made commenting much easier for the end user, but you will have also provided non monetary incentives for being part of the community. If you ask me, this is a win win situation.
I’m curious to know which commenting plugins you are using for your own WordPress powered blog. If you had to create your own powerhouse commenting system without using a third party service such as Disqus or CoComment, how would you go about it?
On a final note, if Performancing were to have a commenting system which contained the features these plugins provide, would that be enough to get you out of your RSS reader and into the conversation?
11 thoughts on “The Ultimate WordPress Commenting System”
Nope. All of these plugins are for WordPress only. What is it about WordPress that is so difficult for you? Perhaps I can help you out.
Hi. All these plugins only work in wordpress right? I’m trying to get my head around wordpress after giving up on it a few weeks ago. I am a new blogger so all of this is just way confusing for me but these plugins look cool. Can you use any of these on blogspot blog?
hahaha great comment JumpingCow! I’ve hear of the sanity checks performed in PHP before but never have learned what the term means. Ronald, the author of Ajax Edit comments continues to do a wonderful job with his plugin.
Like to preface my comment regarding the ajax edit.. it looks like the developer was notified of this issue and has fixed it. I JUST got the new update today, and it is loading the comments properly now…. now I just got to get it to work properly with keywordluv. When you edit the post, it will strip the real name@keyword phrase and just put up the keyword phrase.
A sanity check program would spot where conflicts are taking place so you can quickly correct the code… sanity short for sanitize .. make it clean..
We already have sanity check for humans, it’s called Youtube… it’s confirmed most of society has gone nuts 😛
On the Comment Luv plugin, there seems to be an issue with webhosts that don’t do CURL. That is some sort of programming lingo, so don’t ask me what the heck CURL is.
This came to my attention, because one of my webhosts (DreamHost), is one that doesn’t support the Comment Luv plugin. Another host i use (HostGator) does allow this type of plugin.
Examples: If you visit a blog such as my (Groovy Vegetarian), which is powered by Dreamhost, the plugin wont work. But if you visit a blog powered by HostGator, such as my (Bloggers Search) the plugin does work.
CURL issue. Any programmers here care to weigh in on this, please do.
Every blogger should add OzH Absolute Comments to their wordpress plugin collection.
http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/absolute-comments-manager-instant-reply/
This wp plugin allows admins to reply to comments directly from the admin dashboard. This is the only one that is currently updated to support WP 2.5, another one called Better Comments Manager. This one is just as good, but it is NOT updated. A pity because it is really good.
WP Ajax EDIT, was acting up on my main blog (Groovy Vegetarian), this might have been due to the theme, not sure. But it is a solid plugin, i need to remember to add this one to all my other blogs. Thanxs for the reminder.
Good list!
I liked WP-Ajax Edit. I used it on my blog when I had a comments section. Once I get my other blog up and running (if I use WP), I’ll probably use it as well.
I see where you are coming from. But what if the plugins work on my blog without any issues but break on someone else’s site. There is not a whole lot I can do about that situation. WordPress 2.6 did cause some plugins to break but all of the ones I mentioned in this post work on my 2.6 install.
As for the sanity check, do that have something like that for human beings?
Ahh, Live Comment Preview. I used to use that one on my own blog until people started to complain to me about how it was slowing the site down or something of that nature. I have heard of KeyWord Luv and I’ll have to look into that as that could be another incentive for Performancing commenter’s. Thanks for the stumble.
Let me know what you think of WP-Comment Remix.
Funny you should bring this up now, as I am in the process of creating the ‘ultimate’ wordpress setup complete with the very best plugins available today to enhance it in every way. I was working on comments just last night. I already setup 90% of what you mentioned here. However, using WP 2.6 and the latest in Ajax Edit Comments, I was not able to get it to work properly. All the pretty buttons appeared as they should, but attempting to edit a comment in FF2 would just bring up the edit window without the ability to edit. Would just show ‘loading…’ indefinitely.
There are some other plugins that I found and attempted to test out that didn’t always perform well either under certain browsers. I highly recommend you test these out on their own and together with other plugins before giving them endorsements in tandem. It could save yourself and your readers hours of headache.
In short you will have two options. Spend hours upon hours trying to figure out what is wrong to make it work, or test it, doesn’t work, move on. All these plugins use various js code all competing for execution on your page, you are bound to have breakage.
Here is a solution… The ultimate wordpress plugin would be called ‘sanity check’ that could basically go through your entire blog code including the plugins and pulls out where the conflicts are taking place to report to the developers of the plugins. Perhaps you would like to join the ranks of wordpress plugin developers. You now have the most in demand plugin idea ever.
Jeff, very nice collection of comment plugins. I am gonna definitely try the WP Comment-Remix plugin. I would also like add a couple more to the list, if you don’t mind.
KeyWordLuv – This plugin lets your users to leave a comment like Tom@Top WordPress Plugins and with DoFollow enabled, their link will be linked only to the keyword and not their name, This serves both the author and encourages readers to leave comments. More here.
Live Comment Preview – as the name implies. Just activate the plugin. No editing theme files.
I use pretty much all of the above except Remix but will be adding that shortly. Thanks for a cool article. Stumbled!
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