13 Dynamite WordPress Comment Plugins

by Christian Hollingsworth on April 15, 2009

Comments are the gateway into your reader’s minds. They allow a blog to become community driven, unique, and always evolving. Oftentimes I’m asked by others what plugins I recommend to enrich the commenting capabilities of a WordPress blog. The following are just a few that you might find helpful.

1. Get Recent Comments - This handy plugin allows you to display the latest comments on your blog in areas such as the sidebar. An excellent way to increase disucussion and post exposure.

2. IntenseDebate Comments - This plugin offers unique tools for promoting comment discussion and participation for blogs. Includes Twitter tools, comment-by-email – and much more.

3. Subscribe to Comments - The ability to subscribe to a post is crucial, in my opinion, for a blog’s comment success. It’s a useful feature – and is a perfect way to increase your readership. This plugin is simple, yet gets the job done.

4. Comment Notifier - Much like Subscribe to Comments, but even simpler.

5. Akismet - On the order of protection against comment spam, I’d recommend Akismet – hand down. This plugin is incredibly powerful, as it uses Akismet’s superb infastructure and spam rules. Try it out – and you’ll see why it’s loved by so many.

6. Edit Comments - This plugin is very useful, as it allows non-members to edit comments they’ve submitted. Very handy if you’d like to increase the options you offer to guests and visitors.

7. Cap Comments - If you’re running a comment capped competition, or any other instance where comment capping is needed – try this plugin.

8. DoFollow - For many, removing the nofollow attribute on comment links is beneficial. This plugin offers excellent features to customize and edit your follow attributes.

9. CommentLuv - To increase comment participation, CommentLuv is an excellent tool. This plugin provides a link to the commenter’s latest blog post, and includes it on their comment.

10. Top Commentators Widget – This plugin provides a handy widget showing the top contributors of comments on your blog.

11. Comment Sorter - The Comment Sorter plugin allows blog users to sort post comments by date, and even by normal vs trackback comments.

12. Easy Gravatars - If you’re familar with Gravatar, it’s a service that provides a globally recognized avatar across the internet. Allow Gravatars on blog comments by using this excellent plugin.

13. Custom Smilies - Allows guests to add graphic smilies to their comments on your blog.

As mentioned previously – comment capabiltiies on a blog are priceless. Comments are a simple, useful way for visitors to discuss your content – and add extra value to your posts. Take a look at the above plugins, and find the perfect blend of comment usability and features.

Good luck!

Tagged as: comment, comments, plugin, Wordpress, wordpress comment plugin, wordpress comment plugins

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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

Aaron April 15, 2009 at 9:01 am

Nice post. You were one of the people to convince me to switch to Wordpress for my blog.

I’ve tried installing Aksimet, but it keeps asking for a Wordpress.com API key, which I don’t know how to get or create. Isn’t that different from Wordpress.org that you host yourself?

Smart Boy Twitter: smartboydesigns April 15, 2009 at 1:08 pm

Hi Aaron – glad to see you’re using the blog and enjoying its content.

As for Akismet, you must obtain a key for your blog. It’s to my understanding that you need to purchase a key for commercial use – or it’s free for personal use. You can obtain a personal use key by signing up for a Wordpress.com blog, and using that API key.

Hope this helps!

Smart Boy Twitter: smartboydesigns November 9, 2009 at 12:27 am

Hi Aaron – glad to see you're using the blog and enjoying its content.

As for Akismet, you must obtain a key for your blog. It's to my understanding that you need to purchase a key for commercial use – or it's free for personal use. You can obtain a personal use key by signing up for a Wordpress.com blog, and using that API key.

Hope this helps!

TSS December 30, 2009 at 5:21 am

No mention of DISQUS, despite the fact you’re using it?

Property in India February 10, 2010 at 10:50 am

Is there any plugins that are good for wordpress that automatically makes users and generates comments?

JobGraphs June 2, 2010 at 10:54 pm

CommentLuv seems to be interesting, as it encourages users to comments for backlinks

Underfloor Heating June 25, 2010 at 8:30 am

I respectfully disagree about pre-checking the ‘subscribe to comments’ box. I’ve had the option on my blog for about 4 months now and have had 2 people compliment me on prechecking it and one person question me (but he didn’t complain) about prechecking it.

Linininini January 29, 2011 at 10:19 pm

Thanks!

Tomas January 29, 2011 at 10:20 pm

just testing your diqus plugin

desene animate March 11, 2011 at 12:59 pm

Hey man, I own a website too and I almost never see spam comments on your posts. How do you manage to stop it all? Do you just manually moderate all of it?

Christian Twitter: smartboydesigns March 11, 2011 at 1:07 pm: I use Akismet as a spam guard – and then I just manually approve all comments. It works best for my current situation. Thanks for visiting!

Reply

Mary December 4, 2011 at 7:08 pm