Surprise Your Readers With The Welcome Plugin For WordPress
15. Jan, 2008 
11 Comments - Leave your comment
Have you ever experienced that warm feeling, when you are just to be introduced to somebody, and that person says “Yes, I know John, we’ve had the pleasure to get in touch some time ago.”?
It feels good to see that people remember you, doesn’t it? But what if you knew this is part of an automatic recognition process? Would it still be enjoyable to you?
Let me tell you this story: a couple of months ago, I’ve discovered an interesting blog, Revellian.com, a mixture of poetry, philosophy, spooky stories and practical blogging advice which can easily get you addicted to it. After a while, I remembered about my discovery, and visited Revellian for the second time. And guess what? In the sidebar, there was a personal message for me: “Welcome back, Simonne…” and my MyBlogLog avatar.
Although I was sure that must be a plugin, I couldn’t stop myself from noticing the positive emotion triggered by that warm welcome. Suddenly, Bobby Revell’s blog became familiar, and made me subscribe and comment, because I felt like somehow I already belonged to that community.
For those of you who want to know the secret of making your blogs more familiar to your readers, find out that it is called The Welcome Plugin, and it can welcome your visitors by name, in these cases:
* If they’ve already left a comment they should keep a little cookie on their computer with their name/email/website. These information help determining the name and avatar (first MBL, if not found, gravatar, or the default image)
* If the visitor is a registered user: in the 99% of the cases this will happen for the admin only, if a WP installation has got only one user. Be sure to set the “email†and “website†fields of your profile, to ensure avatars are shown correctly.
* If they’re MBL users, and you too: only if you display the MyBlogLog graphical widget on your blog, the plugin with a script (you have to activate it below) can recognize MBL users and welcome them.
What do you think? Will your readers love you more, if you welcome them back to your blog?
Related Articles
Author Info
On my friends’ blogs, this would be cool. But on a blog that I’m only visiting for the second or third time, I think it would kind of creep me out, sort of like Amazon’s recognition/donation thing does on some sites non-Amazon sites.
Hey Sam,
That was the first time I’ve seen such thing on a blog, and in the first moment I was pleasantly surprised to see it. After a moment, I realized it’s automated, but I still found it cool. But you are right, it may seem a bit creepy, especially if it is on a blog you don’t usually read.
Talk about spooky, I just wrote about this yesterday. I missed that plugin though. It would be even better if it had Gravatar support instead of MyBlogLog or maybe both. I like the idea of welcoming people, but I wonder how much overhead it creates on busy blogs since you would not be able to cache output.
I like the idea of this plugin. I would probably only set it up to display a “welcome” if somebody had commented previously. Thanks for bringing this up.
Hey Lee, this is funny. I haven’t read your yesterday’s post. I don’t know about its effect on high traffic blogs, but I’ve just installed it on mine and it doesn’t seem to affect the loading time.
Ronald, this is cool. I think our readers will like it.
Hi Simonne! The 1st template I ever used on wordpress had this plug in incorporated as part of the theme. I really liked it and had several comments about it. Then I changed templates, my new one didn’t have the plug in so I installed it. The one thing I believe in above all others in blogging is becoming friends with people and sticking by them…through thick and thin. I have no plans of becoming a really big blog; I like a more personal environment. This is the 1st time I’ve seen this blog! Thanks so much for mentioning me and for the link:)
Welcome here, Bobby! I must admit that one of the reasons I linked to you was that I wanted to show you this blog (which is a small and nice community) and to introduce you to our readers here. However, the main reason was that I liked it so much when I saw the face of my little kitty smiling to me from your sidebar, that I felt the need to spread the word
I hope you’ll like this blog. Your comments are welcome every time.
That’s a great idea to appreciate people who finds time to visit and explore your blog.
David, I’m glad we gave you an useful idea. Thank you for finding time to visit this blog
I wants to include your weblog to my blogroll please inform me what anchor ought to I use?
Hello Dennis!
Thanks for the comment. You can use any anchor to link to us, with hopefully a follow tag!