The "Comments" section is very important to bloggers, and is the reason why blogging is so different from traditional journalism - because it is instantly interactive.
Also gaining comments on your blog articles is great for your website SEO (search engine optimisation), so it is important you also reward those readers to take the time and energy to respond to your thoughts.
Here are some great wordpress plugins that you may not have even realised that you desperately need:
Highlight Author Comments automatically displays comments made by a post's author in a distinctive style with no need to edit your template files. As the post author, having a distinctive style may make your comments section easier to read, especially if you have multiple comments on one blog.
Even though it is possible to create normal threaded comment style through standard "Settings" and "Discussion", "Enable threaded (nested) comments ____ levels deep", you may want to have a more attractive style to this feature. And this is where this plugin will help. But be careful enabling AJAX in the plugin settings, as some websites may have a problem with this. Excellent plugin.
This plugin redirects people leaving comments for the first time to a page of your choice. To use this plugin, you must create a landing page in your blog first. Then download the plugin and activate it. Use the settings to select which page you want the users to redirect to, and you are set...
If you want an easy option to email all the commenters in your blog, you will find this plugin very helpful. This plugin puts a link underneath each post so it can be done by the admin.
This plugin introduces more social media integration for commenters. They can choose to showcase their profiles from various social media sites into their comment. All a commenter needs to do is enter their username, and the plugin automatically creates a link to their profile based on that username.
With this plugin, commenters can opt to sign up for email notifications for any additional comments added to that blog. This is helpful because if the commenter is interested they don't need to remember to check back with the blog to see if anything else is written.
If you are worried about spammers or spambots, this plugin puts an extra level of submission in, so that commenters are forced to preview their posts before they are officially submitted.
8. WP-Gravatar
This plugin lets you use Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico files with your comments. For more information on Gravatars please click here.
This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a commenter can add their Twitter username. A user configured 'follow me' link is then displayed beneath their details on all their comments.
10. Thank Me Later
Thank Me Later will automatically send an e-mail to those who leave a comment on your blog. Use this plugin to say 'Thank You' to your visitors, and encourage them to further engage with your blog.
Feel free to share your thoughts about these Comments Plugins, or if you have any others you recommend.
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