The Reader Appreciation Project

Comments on a blog are crucial to building community, meeting others, and (most importantly) interacting with your readers.

We’ve written many articles here on the importance of having comments enabled. Even Liz Strauss has weighed in on the issue:

My personal opinion is, that if I read a really great article and I come to the end and I can’t leave a comment… These days, my response is sort of like, “They don’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to them.”

However, there are some times when it might be better to disable comments, regardless of the consequences.

You’re On Vacation

When going on an extended vacation, perhaps it’s better to disable comments temporarily rather than let a potential spammer take over your blog.

An alternative to this is enlisting the help of a trusted friend to help moderate your comments while you’re away. If you are in charge of a multi-author blog, perhaps temporarily promoting one of your authors is a good fit.

You’re Done With Blogging

You’ve had it! You’ve experienced everything the blogosphere has to offer and you’re ready to move on.

If you decide not to sell your website and just leave it up for archival purposes, then it would be wise to completely disable comments on your blog.

You’d Rather Concentrate on Writing

In the case of Shawn Blanc, he didn’t want readers to think they had an obligation to comment on every post. Shawn concentrates on his material, and allows readers to weigh in to him via e-mail.

Prominent blogger Seth Godin also follows this approach.

You Don’t Ever Respond

If you find yourself never responding to comments, then perhaps it’s time to turn those comments off.

I’m definitely not perfect, but I do try to respond to all comments. However, if one never makes that attempt, then perhaps comments aren’t a good fit.

You Don’t Have Time

A while back, a blogger named Avinash decided to disable comments on his site. It was temporary, but I understood his reasons.

Some bloggers simply don’t have time to manage comments.

Bloggers have to deal with:

• Spam
• Moderating
• Trolls
• Responses
• Requests

Managing comments is a lot of work, and if you simply don’t have the time, then perhaps leaving them off is a better solution.

There Are Legal Issues

There has been some debate in the blogosphere recently about who owns comments.

There are also countries out there where the blogger is liable for a reader’s comment.

If a blogger is fearing arrest (or worse) over a comment someone else made, then perhaps it’s better to leave them off.

Conclusion

I’m absolutely 100% for having comments enabled. It’s one of the first steps in reader appreciation.

However, comments aren’t for everyone.

In your opinion, is there ever a time when a blogger should disable comments completely?

In a crowded, smoke-filled room, a person asks me, “What are you singing?”

I stare at the blank sheet of paper in front of me, where I am to fill out my name and song request.

“I’m not sure yet. What about you?”

“Oh.” the person replies, “I’m not going up there.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I get horrible stage fright.”

“It’s just karaoke. Nobody expects you to be an expert singer.” I say trying to reassure my friend.

“I’ve tried it before. I just froze up.”

I smiled, “Sometimes you just have to forget there are other people in the room and sing for yourself.”

Karaoke and Blogging

Singing karaoke in front of a bunch of strangers is an intimidating experience.

If you’ve ever written a blog post for a rather large audience, it is an equally intimidating experience. You’re placing yourself out there for all to criticize.

It is my belief, however, that the more comfortable you become with yourself, the more your audience will be comfortable with you.

In the longest day of the year, hidden away in your personal oasis, you can get Google send 16350 visitors to your blog only by blogging about the first day of summer, or you can close your eyes and imagine how ICANN is going to open up the internet to those who will show full wallets and solid business plans.

No matter how much you’d be thinking, you’d never guess what’s in the Mojave Desert, nor for how long is Microsoft going to support Windows XP in the future. Some people may not care, but I do, because I tried Vista once, and on Mac I’m lost forever. How to get used to a one-button mouse when you have so many fingers willing to click?

My brain got a bit fried today because of the incredible summer heat, so this was the best possible shape I was able to give to all the interesting things I’ve read and wanted to share with you.

There’s one more before I go: if you need to install WordPress on many domains, forget the never-ending ftp and get Easy WP Installer to help you.

A while back, when I released the new commenting section for this blog, one of the requests was the inclusion of smilies.

I installed WP Grins, but the overhead of the Prototype library was immediately noticable on the site.

Since I was already using jQuery here, it was apparent I wanted to port the plugin over.

I worked on a “lite” version on Friday, and talked to Alex King to see if it was okay to give you guys a download. He mentioned that he would be happy to do an update to the existing plugin, but had to do his own internal testing to make sure the lite version wouldn’t break blogs.

Until Alex is able to make an official release, I’m going to post a download link here for you all to check out.

Download Link

Here is the download link for WP Grins Lite.

The only difference between this plugin and the original is the use of the jQuery library.

Installation Instructions

Unzip the “wp-grins-lite.zip” file and copy the “wp-grins-lite” folder into your WordPress plugins directory.

From there, just activate the plugin in your admin plugin options.

WordPress Versions

This plugin has only been tested on WP 2.5, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for 2.2+ installations.

Conclusion

WP Grins Lite is simply a port from the Prototype library to jQuery. The functionality should still be the same, but the footprint lighter.

Do you still remember the moment when you published your first post? What were your feelings? Were you anxious and eager to see readers commenting on your thoughts? Were you checking on your blog 100 times a day, from fear of not answering a comment fast enough? How did you feel?

All these questions popped in my head when I discovered that a new blog was born, authored by Doreen, Jim Kukral‘s wife, and named Mom Goes Green. I liked the way Jim described what he saw in his wife’s eyes when she hit Publish for the first time. I liked this new, fresh blog, full of the energy given by the beginning. But what I liked most was the impressive number of comments.

Do you know why? Because this says something about Jim Kukral’s readers. And if I’m going to tweak an old saying, like “tell me who your readers are, and I’ll tell you who you are”, then you’ll see how much Jim Kukral respects his readers and makes them feel at home in his Daily Flip.

Andrew Rickmann, friend and fellow RA Project contributor, has released a new plugin called Fun With In-Context Comments for WordPress 2.5.

The plugin allows you to add questions to your comment section, which readers can optionally answer.

Applications

The applications for such a plugin are enormous. If you’re running a political blog, you can ask questions on current issues.

If you’re running a celebrity blog, you can ask questions based on a certain celebrity.

And, most importantly, if you are writing a support-type post, you can ask users for their browser, operating system, and whatever else you can possibly think of.

Brief Overview of Features

When you head into the WordPress 2.5 Comments panel, you’ll see an option for “Global Contexts”. From there, you can specify a number of options. You can also add questions, which you can then optionally add on any post or page with comments enabled.

Global Contexts – Adding a Question

The neat thing about this plugin is you can also add questions from a post, which will only apply for the post in question. This makes the plugin both flexible, and completely post independent.

Post Contexts – Choosing or Adding a Question

From a commenter’s point of view, you are presented an optional question when leaving a comment, which will then show up in the comment.

Leaving a Comment

And the final feature I’ll mention: It’s fully compatible with the latest version of Ajax Edit Comments.

Compatible with AEC 2.1

Future Versions

Andrew mentioned to me that he’s planning on adding a feature to tally how many people have answered a question in a particular manner, which is very similar to a poll.

Conclusion

Fun With In-Context Comments is a nice way to unobtrusively ask readers a question, which will hopefully put a reader’s comment in the context of a post.

The plugin will help with support issues, and will also assist readers when filtering comments based on a particular answer.

As a sidenote, Andrew’s plugin is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, please check out his plugin over there and give him some feedback.

I also have the plugin installed here if you’d like to try it out on this post.

Ajax Edit Comments has a new home now.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 is ready for release. For the download, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page.

Feature Additions

• Option to disable icons.
• Option to disable Gravatars.
• Added auto-scroll to comment.
• Option to customize title text and URL
• Option to remove “clearfix
• Option to specify stylesheets.
• Option to remove “More Options” from editor.
• Added additional languages.
• Added numerous plugin hooks so that AEC can be extended for other plugins and/or modules.

Bug Fixes

• Save/Cancel buttons re-styled for other browsers.
• Fixed issue where Admin couldn’t enter blank e-mail address.
• Fixed NextGen Gallery incompatibility.
• Fixed issue where AEC JavaScript was loading in unrelated admin panels.

Feedback?

If you have any issues, or have additional feature requests, please feel free to leave a comment.

Please note that test comments will periodically be removed.

Ajax Edit Comments has a new home now.

I’ve been busy with some fairly sizable updates to the plugin.

Thanks to feedback from various sources including Viper007 and Sean from Pixelwit, I’ve added in a number of updates/changes.

Since there are a fair amount of changes, I’m holding off on an official release and also giving the translators a chance to catch up with some of the changes.

So in the meantime, here’s the download link to the Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Pre-Release.

Here’s a list of some of the changes.

Added Updated Languages

There were many word additions, so I updated the “po” files for the translators. I also added in the Norwegian language.

Icons Can Be Disabled

Several didn’t like the new icons, so I added an option to remove them. The links will look like AEC 1.x. with this option.

Ability to Disable Gravatars

Gravatars were causing the plugin to not work on some blogs. Also, several users were confused when a silhouette would show up when editing a comment.

Bug fix: Admin Couldn’t Enter a Blank E-mail Address

Admin can now enter an empty e-mail address. If any part of the e-mail field is filled out though, it will be passed through validation.

Save/Cancel Buttons in Editor Interface Re-Styled

Buttons are re-styled for maximum browser compatibility. The icons were also removed.

Can Remove ‘More Options’ From Editor

You can now remove the ‘More Options’ option in the editor interface. Doing this will also give you more textarea room in browsers that support the ‘rows’ attribute.

Added Option to Remove “clearfix”

This style can make or break themes. For those that it breaks, it can now be easily disabled.

Added Auto-Scroll to Comment

If an admin clicked on a comment anchor (yourblog.com/#comment-39302), the page would load, and then the edit links would show up. This produces an offset. The plugin now tries to correct this offset.

You can also disable this in the admin panels, since I imagine a few might find it annoying.

Added Option to Change the Title Text and URL

The Title Text and URL in the editor interface can now be customized. If you’re nice though, you’ll leave it as is

Feedback?

Feel free to try out the pre-release. I’ve tested it out as best as I could. I imagine you’ll find bugs in some of the work I did as there were lots of changes.

Any feedback is appreciated.

To follow, or not to follow. That is the question.

This past week I gained about sixty or so followers thanks to Jeff’s Twitter post over at WeblogToolsCollection.

After scanning through each of my new followers, I was faced with a decision. Do I follow just because they’ve followed me? Or, do I follow because there is a genuine, and hopefully, mutual interest?

It’s really the same dilemma I find myself facing when it comes to feeds. I would love to subscribe to each one of my readers’ blogs, but I typically only subscribe if I can relate to the subject matter in the areas of interests, language, and material.

If you are on Twitter, what is your criteria for finding people to follow? Also, what would cause you to unfollow (is that a word?) someone?

For those interested, here’s some of the RAP contributors’ Twitter profiles.

• Andrew Rickmann
• Isabella Mori
• Ronald
• Simonne
• Vivien

The newest WordPress plugin to help with commenting and reader appreciation is that of WP Comment Remix.

Comment Remix enhances your admin comment section, and introduces several post features.

Post Features

Reply, Quote, and Tags

Comment Remix takes your existing comment section and adds the following options:

• A ‘Reply’ link
• A ‘Quote’ link
• Tags

Here’s a quick screen of those in action:

If you click on the reply link, you’ll see something like this in the comment box:

The benefits of the ‘Reply’ option is that the original comment is linked to if others want to read the original comment.

The only issue I’ve found with the ‘Reply’ and ‘Quote’ options is that they are still available if comments are disabled on a post.

On the tags feature, if you click a tag on a comment, only comments with that associated tag are displayed. I’ve been debating with myself how useful this is, since it appears that tags only show up for the particular post I’m on. Also, there is no easy way to edit tags. You’ll have to edit the comment in order to edit the tags for that comment.

Trackback Options

One nice option that Comment Remix has (in the admin panels) is removal of Trackbacks. You’ll find similar functionality in the Comment Sorter plugin I wrote.

In addition to the removal of Trackbacks, the admin has the ability to automatically move Trackbacks to the end of the comment section.

Sort Options

Admin can also specify how the comments are displayed. Comments can be sorted (ascending or descending) by the comment date, or by the commenter’s name.

Other Post Options

Additional post options are the admin’s ability to:

• Disable the ‘Reply/Quote’ links
• Add/Disable tags
• Customize all text displayed.
• Change the number of tags displayed.

Admin Options

The meat of the Comment Remix features come in the admin panel.

Comments Panel Actions

With an interface very similar to Absolute Comments, the plugin gives you the ability to edit, ignore (explained in a minute), reply, quote, and view all comments for a post.

One thing I’d like to see here is better styling of the links.

Reply/Quote Pop-Ups

When clicking on the Reply/Quote actions, you see a pop-up window, which allows you to add your comment and submit.

I’m not quite sure why the author didn’t go with the ‘Thickbox.js’ file, but the pop-up he uses works pretty well.

Once you hit ‘Save Reply’, the new comment will show up at the top of the Comments panel.

In Need of Reply

One absolutely fantastic feature is called the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel.

What this panel shows you is all of the comments that haven’t been replied to.

Once you reply to a comment in this panel, the comment disappears since it is no longer in need of reply.

One feature that is desperately missing here is a ‘Mark All as Replied’, although you can “ignore” comments on an individual basis.

Conclusion

Comment Remix is a very nice plugin that combines a lot of features I’ve seen in other plugins. It’s always nice to have it all in one place, and the admin options (not shown in this review) are quite extensive.

The star feature is the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel, which will help busy blog authors figure out which comments haven’t been replied to.

Comment Remix is still in its early stages, but it’s off to a great start.

As a side note, Comment Remix is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, head over to the Comment Remix post, cast a vote, and give your say.