Blog Azeroth

I'm looking at updating the comments section of my blog, but wanted to get some advice on what plugins to go for.

The first thing I want to add is nested comments so that the conversation flow can be followed more easily.

The second thing I'm considering is commentluv. Is this something worth doing?

All suggestions welcome!

CommentLuv is nice, and I managed to set up comments so that you can reply to them in Wordpress options somewhere. My memory is a bit at a loss right now (my host seems to be down so I can't check) but I'm sure I use something that enables people to edit their own comments.

Most people seem to use WP Ajax Edit for their comments. I haven't tried it personally, so I can't vouch for it. You can get it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp- ... reenshots/

As for threaded comments, I looked into that for another blog of mine, and the conclusion was that, if the theme doesn't already support them, it's a major pain in the ass. This was a few months ago, so maybe things have changed...

After doing some further digging on this, Jen's right. If I'm going to enable threaded conversations and COmmentLuv, I need to strt hacking about with my Wordpress theme. While it's not difficult, it is time consuming. I'll probably push it out till next month when I have a bit more free time.

Cheers for all the help though!

Intense Debate seems a pretty nice comment plugin, I know Tam uses it and one or two others I have seen using it too, though when I attempted to implement it it messed up my comments big time. For example, my most recent post with 8 comments, when I clicked through had 2 comments posted 7 weeks ago... For now I've disabled it, but if it doesn't do that (fixed when I disabled it - phew!) then it seems pretty cool.

For what it's worth, I hate Intense Debate. I can never see all the comments or find what I'm looking for. Threaded comments on Wordpress is as complex as I'd go...

Actually yeah, I like it on other blogs but it messed up my comments, I lost a few that were posted while it was up while I was waiting for a reply (5 DAYS I had to have it up before I gave up..). So yeah, IntenseDebate was a no go. I've heard good things about Disque but I have threaded comments and a few plugins to improve them (Ajax Edit thingy, CommentLuv, Subscribe to Comments, Smileys) and that does the job just fine

Murloc Parliment did a post about the pros and cons of Intense Debate and Disqus (they're on a blogspot platform).

Hmm.. does anybody know of a decent 'Subscribe to Comments' plugin for Wordpress that is clear and easy to see?

I use this one: http://txfx.net/wordpress-plugins/subsc ... -comments/

(And OMG you made me realize I didn't have it on my WoW blog /facepalm)

Ahh, that's the one I'm using at the moment

I had nothing but good luck on Disqus when I was on blogger, and it's very "subtle." It provides support for importing/exporting blogger comments where IntenseDebate says "screw you." However, Disqus did not integrate well into my self-hosted WP. It refused to show the comment number.

IntenseDebate is working for me - for now - because it integrates well into WP. However, Tam has been having issues with it lately, and if I have problems with it, I suspect I'll go back to default WP comments. ID allows you to separate pingbacks and normal comments, which is why I am sticking with it. I was able to tweak the CSS so it looks more integrated (no weird borders). IT seems like ID has more moderation options than default WP but I could be wrong about that. It also provides the "subscribe by e-mail/rss" thingy.

I've managed to tweak my theme into using in-built threaded comments, but I'm still not happy with the result. It's damned annoying...

I am using the default comments as I had some pingback issues with ID. I was gonna download ajax for comment stuff but it wouldn't play nice with my theme.

Here are the plugins I'm using:

1. Comment Luv

2. Comment form toolbar. Not sure I'm going to keep this as the tooltips are in RUSSIAN, but I do like that people can bold, etc without hand-coding html.

3. Editable Comments. Users can edit their comments for 30 mins, or whatever you specify. YOU, as admin, can edit comments by clicking on the link next to each comment without going into the admin panel. It didn't glitch with my system... Ajax did.

4. Subscribe to comments. The e-mail subscription check box

5. Subscribe to Comments NOW! This is the e-mail form that I have at the end of the comments page for if you want to subscribe by e-mail without commenting. Yeah... some people might want to do that.

Also, I have separated pingbacks from real comments. But you have to do that in the code. SOmething like this: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/ ... wordpress/

I use a plugin called Moderate Pingbacks. It has done an excellent job of placing pingbacks in my queue.

On a side note, why would anyone approve a pingback as a comment? I honestly don't understand why a user (not admin) would want to know.

I can only speak for myself, but I show pingbacks in my comments because I know that when I read other blogs I like following pingback links to discover related blogs and posts.

I like having pingbacks, but I have them separated from comments so they appear under comments.

Example: http://murlocparliament.com/2010/07/21/ ... /#comments

However, fake pingbacks have been a problem for me. Obviously captcha etc doesn't work for those, because... well it's a computer talking to a computer, that's the very nature of the ping! I have various random crap working to keep those under control after I got 900 in ONE DAY.