There are so many WordPress Plugins that deal with blog comments, I’ve been working on this post since a month before this month long series on WordPress Plugins began. I’ve not covered all of them, so please include your favorites and why in the comments below.
There are so many things you can do with comments, from live commenting, various types of comment lists, threaded comments, silent (whispered) comments, count counting, comment scoring, and more. For information on handling comment spam, see WordPress Plugins Battling Evil.
Many of these WordPress Plugins for comments involve editing and modifying the WordPress Theme template files. For instructions, tips, and installation information on WordPress Plugins in general, see How to Install, Configure, and Use WordPress Plugins.
Monitor and Subscribe to Comments WordPress Plugins
Subscribe to Comments is the most popular comments-related WordPress Plugin. It allows readers to subscribe to comments on a specific post to be notified by email of new comments. Most WordPress bloggers really love this, believing this is a major draw to get return visitors. For customer service and support oriented blogs, this is a “must have” WordPress Plugin so people can easily be notified when there is a response to their question.
Enroll Comments WordPress Plugin is another “subscribe to comments” Plugin that works with WordPress 2+ versions and features AJAX. It allows quick and easy subscription and unsubscription options.
Note: It is considered bad form and manners if you set the checkbox for subscribe to comments checked. Please set it to unchecked so your commenters can choose to subscribe to the comments and not have it forced upon them, nor their email inboxes flooded with comment announcements. I once got 40 comment notifications by email in one day from one post that I didn’t know I’d subscribed to. It took me over an hour to figure out how to unsubscribe. I was not happy. Don’t do it.
Most Recent and Most Popular Comments
There are a variety of WordPress Plugins which showcase the most recent and most popular comments on a WordPress blog in the sidebar of your WordPress Theme. This is a great way to show activity on your blog and to highlight posts getting a lot of attention.
WordPress Plugins which will help you display the most recent comments on your WordPress blog include:
- Recent Comments WordPress Plugin by Jodies
- Recent Comments Plugin by R. Marsh
- Recent Comments WordPress Plugin
- Brian’s Latest Comments
- Fuzzy Recent Comments WordPress Plugin
- Fresh Comments WordPress Plugin
- WordPress Recent Comments Plugin / Widget
- Zap Recent Commented WordPress Plugin
The Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin also offers a variety of ways to showcase the most recent comments and most recently commented posts.
A novel twist on the most recent comments is Latest Comments with Gravatars WordPress Plugin which shows the latest comments featuring the commenter’s gravatar image in a list.
I featured a lot of different WordPress Plugins for comment statistics in Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins. A few popular ones include:
- Top Commenters WordPress Plugin and Widget
- Show Latest Comments WordPress Plugin
- Most Commented WordPress Plugin
- WP Most Commented Posts WordPress Plugin
Show Top Commentators WordPress Plugin displays a list of the top commenters on your blog by name and comment count with optional links to their blogs.
Comment Plugger creates a list of the last people to comment on your blog and creates a link to their blog if they provided one.
Some of these allow for a variety of customized features and options. Some are widetized for easy insertion into your widgetized WordPress Theme. Check them out to see which one has the options that meet your blog’s needs.
Managing Comments
Managing comments on your blog can be a challenge, especially when a post elicits many, many comments. There are WordPress Plugins which help you manage your comments in different ways, including adding comments to your post feeds.
To handle a lot of comments on your blog, consider a Plugin that reverses the order of the posts such as Reverse Order Comments Plugin. For blogs which offer customer support, such as WordPress Plugins or Themes, reversing the order help brings the most recent comment to the top of the list.
You can also force the comments into various pages rather than just one long list of comments. The WordPress Paged Comments Plugin breaks the comment list into pages and reverses the order so the most recent comment is at the top of the list. This way the visitor doesn’t have to page through pages of comments to find the most recent comment.
Feed With Comments WordPress Plugin puts your blog comments in the feed with that post, connecting the conversation with the post content. See also Bls Feeds with Comments.
If you want some control over the “language” your blog comments may get, the Devowelizer WordPress Plugin helps to “safety net” your blog comments by changing a few letters of swear words to make them acceptable to publish (get around spam filters) for those who permit “colorful language” in their blog comments. It filters the swear words to get them past the spam catching filters. Polite-ifier WP Plugin is another similar Plugin, but I don’t know if it will work with current versions of WordPress.
While I’m not in favor of this practice, some people like to strip all the HTML tags out of comments for security reasons. The Comment Without Tags WordPress Plugin makes that happen automatically when the comment is saved.
Commenter Spy WordPress Plugin provides geographical location information in your Comments panel to help you determine where the visitor commenting on which country your visitor lives in or arrived from.
Alex King has an interesting WordPress Plugin called Old Post Alert. When a post passes a a month “old”, the Plugin displays an “This is old” banner in the comments form. If you suffer from getting a lot of irrelevant comments on old, past due posts, this might help make your readers know that this is “old news”.
Comment Timeout WordPress Plugin helps you automatically and manually control when a specific post’s blog comments should close.
Auto Moderate Comments WordPress Plugin is a similar Plugin but it doesn’t close comments as much as helps you automatically moderate them. It compares the comment time and date to the date of the post, date of the last comment on the post, and other information to make a judgment about releasing or moderating the comment. Just because a post is old doesn’t mean it still can’t come alive, so this helps you keep your comments open while giving a little protection.
WP Chunk WordPress Plugin shrinks down long and ugly URLs that people leave in their comments.
There are more WordPress Plugins which help you monitor the activity and traffic of comments on your WordPress blog listed in Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins.
Comment Statistics
While I listed a lot of comment statistics WordPress Plugins in in Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins and Testing Readers: Survey, Polling, Rating, Testing, and Reviewing WordPress Plugins, I found a few more that offer some interesting statistics and rating scores on your blog comments.
Comment Analysis WordPress Plugin by Be Lambic or Green is a potentially powerful comment statistics Plugin. You can customize a listing on your blog (or from within your Administration Panels if you wanted) to include your total comments, total pingbacks, total trackbacks, last comment, last pingback, last trackback, latest comments, latest commented posts, and most commented posts. You can feature some or all of the comment statistics.
Comment Count counts the number of comments on a specific post or globally.
Comment Karma allows you to rate a commenters comment with a thumbs up or thumbs down, accumulating points. For highly social sites, this is another fun way to get interaction from your readers, allowing them to score each other. Currently, the Plugin does not offer statistics on who has the highest score with their comment in a post or globally. Another one to try is Rate Comments WordPress Plugin.
Month Comment Count WordPress Plugin provides a count of how many comments your blog received during that month.
CountComments by Author WordPress Plugin adds a count of how many comments each “author” has submitted to your blog, keeping a running tally. Authors/users must be logged in for their comments to “count”.
Styling and Formating Comments
You can style your blog comments form and comments within your WordPress Theme to change the look of the comments area, and you can add some fun WordPress Plugins to change the look even more.
On a simple scale, many WordPress bloggers want posts from the authors to look different from the other comments, singling them out visually. Plugin pour WordPress: affichage personnalisé des commentaires (English and French) and Author Highlight WordPress Plugin highlight author’s comments. This is excellent and recommended for WordPress Theme and Plugin authors and others who provide support via their blog. The most important answers in the comments come from the blog owners, so making these stand out helps visitors scan the comments list for the answer from the authority figure.
Custom Comment Text WordPress Plugin allows you to customize the comment text that says “You have 2 comments” to whatever you want. This is an easy way to add some custom lines to encourage comments on your blog.
Tired of seeing the date and time of the comments on your blog? Change them with the WordPress Relative Date Plugin. It sets your post and comment dates to be “2 hours ago”, “1 month ago”, “2 years ago”, and such.
WP Grins WordPress Plugin and Smiley JS Buttons WordPress Plugin add “clickable” smilies to your post and comment forms, encouraging you and your readers to click on the smilie icons to use for writing posts and comments.
Comment Quicktags WordPress Plugin adds a quicktag button bar to your comments form to help the commenter format their comment, similar to the Write Post panel buttons.
I found two WordPress Plugins which allow the commenter to have access to edit their comments after they make them for a specific time period. I couldn’t tell if these work in WordPress 2+ but they are worth a try. They are Zero Rule’s Edit Comments and Jalenack’s Edit Comments.
Filosofo Comments Preview WordPress Plugin and Comment Live Preview offer a preview button option for blog comments near the comment form. For more information on using comment previews on your blogs, see Comment Live Preview Placement.
Quoter WordPress Plugin allows the user to quote easily from a post or another comment inside of their comment to keep the conversation connected and flowing. Requires WordPress 2+.
CoComment Enhancer Gives comments the option of tracking the comments for that post using CoComment.
NoFollow and Follow WordPress Plugins
It appears that the use of the rel="nofollow" to stop comment spammers is over. It never worked in the first place. WordPress currently automatically turns on nofollow on every link side of a comment. There are several hacks to remove the nofollow directly from the core programming. Or you can remove it with the following WordPress Plugins:
- I Summon One Kim – Dofollow WordPress Plugin
- Semiologic’s Dofollow Plugin For WordPress
- No-NoFollow WordPress Plugin
- GoodLinks WordPress Plugin
- Link Love WordPress Plugin
Andy Beard offers some others, including some nofollow WordPress Plugins.
Threaded Comments WordPress Plugins
Threaded comments allow comments on a blog post to be connected together. Instead of replying to the entire queue of comments, you can reply to a specific comment, connecting your reply to that comment and not the rest of them.
Brian’s Threaded Comments WordPress Plugin offers threaded comments on your WordPress blog, similar to forums.
Paged Threaded Comments Plugin is a combination of Brian’s Threaded Comments and WordPress Paged Comments Plugin.
Yet Another Threaded Comments WordPress Plugin is, as titled, another threaded comments WordPress Plugin designed to be less reliant upon Javascript. It’s new and still under testing.
AJAX Comments WordPress Plugins
Through the use of AJAX, pages no longer need to reload in order for a comment to be submitted, speeding up the process. Some WordPress Plugins which control comments with AJAX include AJAX Comments WordPress Plugin and Inline Ajax Comments WordPress Plugin.
Expand Comments WordPress Plugin is designed to work off the front page or category pages of your WordPress blog, not on the single post view. On most multi-post view pages in WordPress, you will see a post meta data bit that there are “6 comments” on the post. Instead of clicking the link to view the post, and then the comments, you can click “Expand Comments” and using AJAX, you can see the comments right on the front page of your blog. This is great for blogs with short posts and those who put more emphasis on the comments than the posts, bringing them right up front.
Where Do Comments Come From?
EasyIP2Country WordPress Plugin puts an icon representing the commenter’s country next to their comment name.
IP to Nation WordPress Plugin and WordPress IP to Country Plugin also showcase the country or “nation” of the commenter.
WordPress Browser Detection Plugin has an option to show the world which web browser the commenter used.
Gravatars, Avatars, and Funny Pictures on Comments
Gravatar Signup WordPress Plugin allows you to give your users the opportunity to sign up for their own Gravatar image to be shown on any blog comments that feature Gravatars. Why not invite others to join in the fun?
MyAvatars from MyBlogLog WordPress Plugin and MBLA – MyBlogLog Avatars WordPress Plugin replace Gravatar with MyAvatars from MyBlogLog shown next to comments.
Plugins which add avatars or gravatars, images or graphics representing the comment author, include:
- Gravatars2 WordPress Plugin
- Favatars WordPress Plugin
- Comvatars WordPress Plugin
- Latest Comments With Avatars Reloaded Plugin
Live Chats and Shoutbox WordPress Plugins
Shoutboxes offer the ability to have a live chat on your WordPress blog. Visitors can leave messages or talk to each other while visiting your blog.
Jalenack’s Wordspew WordPress Plugin was one of the early popular shoutbox WordPress Plugins. He has turned over support to Pierre Sudarovich whose improved it dramatically. It now includes a sound alert, a list of whose online, anti-spam features, adds smilies, and more. It works with the latest versions of WordPress.
Rudd-O’s Wordspew claims they have made a few improvements in the original code, including decreasing the burden on the database and speeding up and securing the process of handling the live comment load.
Wordspew Ajax LiveChat eXtended WordPress Plugin also an improvement from Jalenack’s original Plugin. The author says that there are now “enhancements in the WordPress LiveChat-Backoffice, added User-Capabilities and provided gettext translation”.
Interesting Odds and Ends for WordPress Blog Comments
I featured the novel Whisper WordPress Plugin in WordPress Plugin to Whisper Comments to the Blog Administrator. It allows comments directly to the blog administrator that aren’t “seen” on the regular blog comments.
Comments Posted Elsewhere retrieves a list of comments from other sites. It’s not simple to install, but if you need to keep track of comments between blogs, this could be an interesting tool. There is a Tutorial to go with it.
Smart Unread Comments WordPress Plugin keeps track of comments which haven’t been read by the user since their last visit and creates a list of them. It uses cookies, not the database, to keep the records, helping the returning visitor see only the new comments since their last visit. I can’t find information if this works in WordPress 2+.
FAQ Auto Responder for WordPress Comments is an interesting twist on a FAQ and responding to comments. If you, for example, have authored a WordPress Theme or Plugin, you will probably get the same questions over and over again that come from mistakes people make by not reading the well-written and specific instructions on how to use it. You can create a list of the most common questions and their answers and the Plugin will auto-detect them and automatically respond with the appropriate answer. You could use this for all types of customer service support blogs. Very clever!
Official Comments WordPress Plugin checks in with the WordPress Support Forums to see if you are logged in. If you are, it highlights your comment on that blog differently than the rest of the commenters, honoring you as an “official WordPress user”.
WordPress Review Site Plugin turns your WordPress blog into a review site, where the comments people have to make on products, services, and more, rule. If you want your reader’s voices to be heard loud and clear, this might be an interesting Plugin to integrate into your WordPress blog. I covered it more in depth in Testing Readers: Survey, Polling, Rating, Testing, and Reviewing WordPress Plugins.
What Are Your Favorite Comment WordPress Plugins?
I’m sure I missed some WordPress Plugins that help your readers comment on your blog. I covered Plugins related to comments in:
- Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Widgets: The Next Generation of WordPress Plugins
- Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin
- Testing Readers: Survey, Polling, Rating, Testing, and Reviewing WordPress Plugins
- Subscribe, Email Mailing List, Blog Update Alerts, and Newsletter WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Plugins To Help You Administer Your Blog
- Blog Navigation WordPress Plugins: Related, Recent, Most Popular Posts and More
- WordPress Plugins Battling Evil
What are your favorite WordPress Plugins that help you encourage, manage, style, and have fun with your blog comments?
Related Articles
- Comments on Comments
- What is Comment Spam?
- Comment Live Preview Placement
- How NOT to Comment on Comments
- Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging
- You Must Be Logged In To Comment
- One Year Anniversary Review: Comments on Comments
- I’m Winning the Battle Against Comment Spam
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network 
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139 Comments
personal favorite plugin:
JAL Edit Comments. gives people 15 minutes to fix typos.
i found it from fauna, which also has a built in version of quotr. i find quoting a much more manageable system than threaded comments.
I thought I should mention my plugin VAC – View all comments. On every comment, a link is displayed to get a list of all comments made by this person (distinguished by the given email adress)
Lorelle,
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.
Without it prechecked, the reader may forget, make their comment, and they don’t get notified of any follow-up conversations. I appreciate sites who preselect it for me. If the chain gets out of control, there’s thankfully an opt-out link to click.
It’s not spam… it’s a conversation with your readers.
Respectfully,
Doug
Hi Lorelle,
Seems you have missed my simple-recent-comments plugin, which is probably the simplest, but still effective and customizable, “recent-comments” plugin for WordPress. Also, it is quite popular among theme authors because the code can be cleanly integrated into the themes.
Apart from that, this was a very nice compilation (as always) 😛
Best regards,
George
Hi, I am looking for a way to selectively close comments on individual posts – for instance if I have updated the article in a new post I would put a final comment on saying where the new article is and then close the comments on the old one.
I am sure there must be a way to do it – a tick box be each item on the Manage Posts page for instance.
On the Write Post Panel you will see a “box” for Discussion. Open it and uncheck “allow comments”. It’s done.
Ah, I see – under edit post. I thought I had seen it somewhere. Thanks.
hi, is that neccessory to plag in ?
Because most of the time when we see to the comments so most of the time comments are unreasonable and reasonable so what should i do.
I don’t understand your question. Are you talking about how to use a WordPress Plugin for a WordPress blog? See How to Install, Configure, and Use WordPress Plugins.
There is no WordPress Plugin to confine comments to intelligence. Yet. 😀
hi, thanks for this great list of plugins…
I’m looking for a plugin to display “random comments” on the sidebar… with a link to the commenter and a link to the commented post…
do you know about something like that.
sorry, I’ve been looking around and I couldn’t find it ;(
thanks in advance
Random comments? I would think most popular comments and most recent comments would get you more mileage. You can check out Random WordPress Plugins: Rotating Banners, Header Art, Images, Quotes, and Content on Your Blog and possibly the Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin might have a random section for comments.
I have no idea. Haven’t heard that one.
Hi Lorelle,
about easy-ip2country, its pretty much deprecated since its functionality was integrated into FireStats.
FireStats can update the countries database for the user.
in addition, it can add browser+os icons to the comments as well.
Is there a plugin that will add a “moderator” role to the users accounts? I want to be able to give certain registered users the ability to moderate comments but not do anything else (such as create posts, etc.) Admin, author and editor accounts still give too many privilages.
See WordPress Plugins for Multiple Blogger Blogs for a variety of options on this.
Hi Lorelle,
First, thanks for all the useful posts you’ve made.
My query is this: is there such a plugin as a comment responder where I, the admin, can have several pre-made replies which i can shoot off to commenters with minimal fuss? My situation is, I want to notify all commenters, including those who don’t get their comments published. I work on a child-friendly site, and if any comments are inappropriate, I want the commenters to know this. Essentially, I need just 2 options, something like: “Thanks, your comment was published” or “Sorry, your comment was not published, because etc etc”.
Any ideas hugely appreciated.
Eeww, that’s tedious. No, I know of no Plugin, but there’s a contest going on with Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition Blog and they might take requests.
Since you reply on the post itself and not through the Administration panels, this is going to be a hard one. I do know that Firefox has a macro extension called iMacros for Firefox and that might help you create a script you could use for each appropriate comment.
In your request to the Plugin makers, ask that radio buttons be added to the Comments panel and/or Moderation Panel so you can just click your option and it should be published, but it’s going to be a tough one.
Let me know what you find out.
Phew…I never knew so many plugins existed just for commenting alone! Great List. Thanks Lorelle for it.
Good Lorelle. This is the biggest and densest post I’ve came across from ages. Am off to hit Ctrl-P and try and digest this. Is gonna take me half the day just to go through the links – let alone understand half of it. Cheers for making my day at work fantastic one again
Justmarketing: I see that you have a WordPress.com blog. WordPress Plugins do not work with WordPress.com blogs. That’s one of the limits in “free” on the blog service. However, if you are thinking of, or already have, a full version WordPress blog, then these Plugins will be of use to you.
Thanks.
Hi Lorelle!
Any sighting of a plugin to report comments by category? I need 2 sections on my index page, with the most recent comments for 2 categories!
Thnaks for the great resource.
Peter
I think that the Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin does that, but you need the fix for the latest version of WordPress found on the WordPress Support Forum.
From there, it’s just searching through Google and the Plugin resources to find what will work best for your needs.
Hi Lorelle,
Thanks for the great list. I was wondering if you had seen any Ajax type plugins that automatically refreshes the comments when there are new ones so the user doesn’t have to refresh the page?
Thanks!
Chris
There are some listed in the article above. Give them a try to find which one works best with your blog.
It seems the Ajax plugins above post the comment without reloading the page, but they don’t notify a user that it’s been updated. Here’s what I’m looking for…
UserA posts to my blog asking a question. Right after this UserB visits and sees UserA’s comment. When I answer UserA’s question, I’d like some type of notification or page refresh to automatically happen for UserB to see that I’ve answered the question. I’m basically looking for something where someone doesn’t have to continuously reload the page to see that someone else has posted a comment.
Now, that being said, if I’m blind and not seeing something listed that’ll do that please forgive me. 😀
The popular Subscribe to Comments sends an email. I’ve not seen a “constantly reloading without loading with notification” style Plugin. Not that many blogs require such instant response. If you find one, please let me know.
Thanks for the suggestion and I certainly will.
Hi Lorelle,
As the fount of knowledge for WordPress, do you know what happened to the Subscribe To Comments plugin site? I’ve been trying to access it it the past few days and it’s been down. http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
Did it move? I guess I can try the Ajax one…wooh!
@Irene Duma:
I doubt it moved, but you can find it on the official WordPress Plugins directory at Subscribe to Comments.
Wow yeah, now I’ve got what I need, thanks for this list 😉
I recently released a new plugin that youmight like — probably categorie under the “funny pictures” section. It’s called:
Comment Spotlight
It allows the admin to “mark” particular comments with an image — be it “Good Comment!” or “What an idiot!” or anything you like. (The “spotlights” are customizable via Options panel.)
Enjoy. Good article, BTW. 🙂
Is there a plugin which adds an interface to the comment box that enables the visitor to format the comment. e.g using italics, bolds, underline, strikethrough, colors, fonts in comments…? it would be so much more creative than smileys…
I believe I listed some Plugins which add on those features in the article, but you can search the WordPress Plugin Directory to find the most recent versions.
Would you know of a plugin to limit a comment author to being listed only once in the Recent Comments? I have a persistent troll who’ll “spam” lots of posts, and while they are all valid individual comments, I’d rather he not consistently load up the Recent Comments. I’m hoping I could list only his most recent comment and discard the further mentions, leaving room for other people’s comments in the widget. Any ideas?
@ hans:
Recent Comments is a WordPress Plugin, and there are several of them. You will need to talk to those Plugin authors to see if they will add this option. There might be others who want this. I don’t know of a specific one, but I don’t know much about those particular Plugins beyond this article. Let me know if you find one, or work with an author to add that feature. I think it’s interesting.
I am looking for a WordPress plugin that will flag posts for moderation based on content. That is, if the comment contains a word from my list (e.g., a word I deem offensive), then the post is automatically flagged for moderation. Otherwise, if no listed words found, the comment is published. Do you know of or recommend any plugins for this?
Thanks!
Matthew
@ Matthew Weaver:
There are Plugins to do this, but use the WordPress built-in feature under Settings/Options > Discussion > Comment Moderation and add the words you want WordPress to act upon with moderation.
Great list thanks a lot
Does anyone up here know how to be able to modify the look of certain comments ? For example, i would like to put in red the “troll” comments, and in green the comments that makes the conversation going to interesting results, the whole stuff being done in the admin panel of wordpress…
is it possible ?
@ lomig:
I’m not familiar with such a Plugin, but you can always ask in the WordPress Forums to see if there is an interest in such a Plugin or write your own.
hi,
just to say i found the plugin which allows to design comments and add CSS styling to particuliar comments : COmment-Highlighter
wow.. the layout for this site is definite well thought of. I like the part where the gradient background of the post applies and sort of creates a contrast when it reaches the middle part. Then on the sidebar there are other widgets, but wouldn’t distract from the content.
This is very very useful plugin collection. I been using wordpress for past 2 years now. Still trying to tune my site always for the better user experience. Thanks a ton for these collections.
by reversing the comments order, I think people won’t give their best try to put comment on first place.
Hi Lorelle – I’m looking for a comment plugin that will allow someone to embed an image. I have a photography client that wants to encourage blog visitors to share their photos on particular posts. Any suggestions from one and all are much appreciated!
@ Lisa:
Are you talking about submitting photographs or putting photos in comments? If WordPress is setup with no filtering of IMG tags in comments, they can add a hotlinked image without anything special. If you want them to submit photos through a submission form, which is what most do, then use a contact form that allows uploading of image files.
Hi Lorelle, Lisa,
I, too, am interested in enabling my blog visitors to share their photos easily through the comment form or a submission form (i.e., put photos in comments). Lorelle, you suggest using a contact form that allows uploading of image files. Please forgive my ignorance, but I have no idea what that means (I’m new to WordPress). How on earth do I change my contact forms? Thanks for suggestions and patience.
thank you for sharing these useful comment plugins! god bless!
wow..awesome and very well compiled..very helpful.
hey do you know of a plugin wherein all the user can see, admin replies along with comments to which admin replied..
i mean, all the comments to which admin replied along with the comments should be seen somewhere in sidebar…
is this plugin available.
thanks a lot for this post..really appreciated..
I think you want a Plugin that showcases or highlights the author comment. There are Plugins that do it and you can do it yourself with a little WordPress Theme styling. There are a variety of theme, some mentioned I think in this article. Look for keywords such as author, highlight, and comments.
I am looking for a plugin that has comment rating and that stores the points of a user, as well as threaded. Couldn’t find anything till now. Does anyone know about similar plugins?
Nice collection:)
Thank you so much! 🙂
I just did some testing with the Intensedebate plugin. Automatic (the company behind WordPress) has recently acquired Intense Debate. Intense Debate is a commenting system that allows some cool features:
– comment threading
– rate and flag comments
– reply by email
– importing and exporting of comments
– embed youtube video’s
– embed polls
Unfortunality it doesn’t support different languages yet so for me it didn’t work. Also the open-id function need some improvement. But it seems like a really cool plugin, try it out!
Please give them your feedback so they can improve it. Thanks.
Hello Lorelle & thanks for this great list of plugins…! I just started using this set of plugins and am impressed by the quality of the code.
THANK YOU for this great and useful article !!!
I was trying to find an email notification plugin and did find “Comment Reply Notification” but it doesn’t include an unsubscribe option (?)
Without this option users will receive emails even if they don’t want to follow the thread anymore. Any idea how I can proceed. What did you opt for ?
Thanks again and keep on the good work 🙂
Wondering if you or any of the readers here might know where I can get a old plugin that was created to allow comments on wp pages (versus wp posts)
I found it several months ago and stupid me, forgot to bookmark the page and now can’t find it for the life of me.
It allowed comments on (static) pages in wp.
Thanks for any help that can be provided. i even bookmarked this page so i can check in later HA 😉
Um, you don’t need a Plugin. If your Theme allows it, comments on Pages are automatic. Just enable them on each Page’s edit panel, in case it is turned off. It’s always been that way.
Comment Highlighter looks good but I need to be able to flag certain comments – based on content and legal objections – and hide the content of the comment but retain a marker showing that the comment has an injunction against it.
Any suggestions for this one?
Hi Lorelle… As a way to incentive readers to comment in my blog I use to run a “Top Commentator” competence every month. The problem is that you gain quantity and lose in quality of the comments.
I wonder if there’s a plug in out there that you or your readers may know that can give the reader the chance to vote other reader’s comments and show who is the best rated commenter at any given time (let’s say during the month, week, day… etc) I tried GD Star rating (very complex but widget is shown per post only and not global) and other plug ins like Top Comments or Comments Vote with no result.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance…
There are comment rating systems as WordPress Plugins, but if you want to reward comments, make content worth commenting on. Encourage commenters to guest blog. Write about them. Interview them. Playing games is old hat and worthless unless you are a teenager and a game site. No one really cares. Honestly. Focus your energy on your content and reward readers and commenters with comment worthy of commentary. Cut the clutter. 😀
You are completely right lorelle…Comments must be a reflection of your content. Thanks for this reality slap in my face 😉
Comment Karma plugin has evolved into Comment Rating, which allows visitors to rate comments in a Like vs. Dislike fashion with
clickable images. Poorly-rated & highly-rated comments can be displayed differently, i.e. highly-rated comment can be highlighted, poorly rated comments can be hidden in a click to see manner.
Hi dude, I have a WordPress comment plugin or standalone Web application to record, save and listen audio comments/messages.
Voice-it allows you to record voice messages and send it to you or your friends by mail as mp3 attachments.
You can use it in your website, on facebook or download the widget for other platform.
Try it and send us your message, or send a voice messages to your friend! Isn’t easy?
I hope you enjoy it.
voice-it-record-and-send-voice or voice-it.biz
Great list thanks
Acting in a situation without first informing oneself of the circumstances of the situation can lead to even the most well-intended actions yielding miserable consequences. ,
Hi Lorelle ,
Can you pls suggest a plugging that will show all my comments , without hitting the “comments=>” link.
Just as it is here on this page
I’m not sure what you are asking. Most WordPress Themes show all comments by default. If your WordPress Theme “hides” comments, then change Themes. There is no WordPress Plugin or anything needed. It’s a Theme issue, if I understand your question.
Many users use different names while commenting each time in my blog. So if one time a name “George” is used and in next post name “George Elite” is used and both are the same people, they both appear in the top commenters list as well as in posts as different names. Is there a plugin to that will use one name for all the comments of a specific commenter.
No. When someone leaves a comment, their information is automatically stored in their cookies for their return visit, filling out the form automatically. If they clear their cookies, then they have to enter the name again, and there isn’t a way to constantly verify who a commenter is. IP addresses used to be the way, but now an IP address can change without notice or when the person travels or accesses from a different device. Very few people keep changing their names as they get in a habit and leave it at that, so this is really rare.
Hi Lorelle,
I was just recommended CommentLuv & IntenseDebate by a friend.
IntenseDebate has been bought by Automatic (creators of WordPress) and they have a really cool “Plugins” page where you activate plugins without having to install them separately in WordPress. Hopefully more plugin authors will submit their plugins for approval.
CommentLuv is now a plugin for IntesneDebate. There is also an AddToAny Share plugin, Blog Tweets plugin, Smilies plugin and a Spell-check plugin … among others.
Does anyone know of a comment plugin that will help you delete comments older than, say, a year?
Not sure why you would want to do that as you can clean up junk as you go, since you do have control over the comments as they are “content” on your blog, and comments are of value many years down the road, but I’m sure their is. Just not what I’ve needed so I’m not on the lookout for one. Thanks.
Because I have so many comments I have to pay for two dedicated servers each month to run the site. It costs a ton, especially in this economy. Trying to figure out how to prune intelligently, since none of the outsourced comments solutions right now are ready to import my comments.
I never knew so many plugins existed just for commenting alone! I’m just discovering this on some blogs, quite amazing, i’m pretty new on wordpress and will have to work with it for some customers so thanks Lorelle and have a great week end
thank you for sharing this big plugin’s list 🙂
now I have to decide which I have to use 😉
hi, thanks for this great list of plugins…
I’m looking for a plugin to display “random comments” on the sidebar… with a link to the commenter and a link to the commented post…
do you know about something like that.
sorry, I’ve been looking around and I couldn’t find it ;(
thanks in advance
Hi Lorelle… As a way to incentive readers to comment in my blog I use to run a “Top Commentator” competence every month. The problem is that you gain quantity and lose in quality of the comments.
I wonder if there’s a plug in out there that you or your readers may know that can give the reader the chance to vote other reader’s comments and show who is the best rated commenter at any given time (let’s say during the month, week, day… etc) I tried GD Star rating (very complex but widget is shown per post only and not global) and other plug ins like Top Comments or Comments Vote with no result.
The only way to encourage comments is to have something worth commenting on. There are no Plugins nor gimmicks that will work.
Hi there,
I’m in a mess and was really hoping that you might could help me. I just need to paginate my comments with 50 comments per page and even though I am using WordPress 2.9.2, the paginate function isn’t working. When I looked closer at my comments.php file, I notice that the wp_list_comments function isn’t there. I guess it’s not in the theme I’m using. Is there any way possible you could help me figure this out? I will even pay you for your services. I just want my comments to be formatted the way they are now and paginated instead. Please let me know if you could help or if you might know someone that can. Thanks so much!
Sincerely,
Melissa
There are WordPress Plugins that will help you do that. Some are listed here, and there are newer ones in the WordPress Plugin Directory.
Related to the WordPress comments, I’ve published a post about a custom-positioning WordPress comment’s Reply button. By default the ‘Reply’ button is placed on the first post of a comment thread. We can move it to the last post, to make it easier for our readers to find the button and click it when replying a long comment-thread.
OUr blog is only one page. My boss has me frequently deleting old comments.
My question, is there a plugin that I can use to only display like the latest 30 comments?
I see plenty of plugins for the sidebar to accomplish this, but none for the post themselves
There is no Plugin to do that, and good for your boss for having you clean out old comments, but honestly, if you are getting that many comments on your one page, it might be a good idea to write more to encourage more interaction. 😀
There are Plugins that will close comments after a specific date, and change the order in how comments are displayed, but this really isn’t the issue. The issue is that you have comments, which may or may not be valid to your business since you aren’t in the business to communicate with your customers on that one page, so I recommend that you close comments and delete all the past comments. Redirect folks to an email contact and be done with it. Simple.
ACtually we ARE using our blog to talk directly to customers. We’re in the hotel business and I’m sure you’ve heard of Trip Advisor. The problem with a site like that is that disgruntled employees and competitors can post whatever they want about your property whether it’s true or not.
So we’re using our blog to answer the concerns of people who have stayed here or are thinking about staying here in a public forum. It’s been working.
So there are no post beyond the initial one and the comments are the mainstay of this blog.
Excellent. Then I recommend that you use the mass edit and bulk strategies for dealing with a lot of comments, ensure you have Akismet running, and consider it part of your work. 😀 It’s a daily part of mine, producing many blogs, and if there was a way to do this more effectively, I’d be on it in a second. Just remember, if you do anything that gets in the way of a customer leaving a comment, you will inflame them even more. I wish I had something more to offer, but other than recommending you spread their comments across more posts so they aren’t all focused on one, that’s what the rest of us have to do.
I really need to use this wordpress comments so I maybe able to control who comments and what will they comment on my site…
Yea that’s what I figured… lol. Just thought I’d ask. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.
nice plugin… i love this
is theres any update for WP version 3 ?
This is not an article about a single Plugin. You will have to contact the author of the Plugin you are interested in for update information.
I´m thinking in change my blog from WordPress. Now you give me one more reason to dont do that. I’m starting to get crazy with my indecision 🙄
I don’t understand why this should be a debate. You can try WordPress.com for free to see if you like it, and if you do, install WordPress from WordPress.org on your blog. Millions have chosen it, include CNN, Forbes, Ford, NY Times, TechCrunch…me. If you can’t trust those will millions to spend on software choosing to go with a free blogging program, then how can you trust anyone’s recommendation? I think it’s that simple.
Did you check with the author? Ask them to update them, or give them a little encouragement. If not, there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
Is there a plugin that allows the closing of comments at a specific date and time? I don’t want to close them after x amount of days so much but at a specific date at a specific time. I can’t find anything that allows that.
There are several Plugins that do that. Search the WordPress Plugin Directory. However, please see “How Not to Comment on Comments”. Closing comments does not prevent or slow down comment spam, it only pisses off visitors who can arrive on any page at any time and may want to have their say.
Do you know a plugin how I can show comments on a static page?
Bye
Willi
Static page? Do you mean a WordPress Page or a static website? WordPress Plugins do not work on static websites. To turn on comments on a WordPress Page, just edit that page and check the “enable comments” option.
I think the best wordpress plugin to use for managing comments is DISQUS WordPress plugin. I have used it on my website and it really works great. It has got great features and a lot of functionality. You can see it working on my website.
While a lot of people like it, a lot of people don’t. That is why it’s nice to have so many choices.
Nice list, but I’m looking for a way to search for all comments made by a certain IP. Know of anything?
No Plugin needed. Just enter the IP address in your Comments > Search Comments form at the upper right corner of the comments panel in WordPress.
Plugins are usually open source extensions for WordPress, some are free and some you need to pay for, but basically they just expand upon what WordPress can do.
Great list, Lorelle. Thanks for that. Well, I am a newbie and I have been looking for a plugin that will show the, say, last 50 most recent comments under a Category page, not a static page. There are some that do that, but they need to be inserted into templates – something I am quite unskilled at. Can you suggest a plugin that would do that?
Thx.
I don’t understand. WordPress automatically lists the most recent comments on a post. There are widgets and Plugins which list the most recent comments in the sidebar. I know of no way to get the most recent comments on a Page, or why you would want to as it separates comments from content, something that is bad manners and odd. So I’m not sure what you are asking as that isn’t normal.
Hi Lorelle, perhaps an image will explain what I might have mistakenly written. What I have on my mind is a page that will gather all the most recent comments from different posts. Here’s a site that features this “latest comments” page
http://japantoday.com/
http://japantoday.com/recent_comments
I want my site to display a page like that, I have been studying how to do it via php (but I am a newbie as I said), so a plugin would make wonders.
Thanks.
What you are seeing is a page displaying the sitewide comments feed. Honestly, it’s useless and not helpful at all, and can run the risk of being tracked by Google and others as duplicate content or spam. Most people do things like this because they are helpful to the site owner, but rarely are they helpful the reader. If you are doing this for you, not the reader, then I recommend you learn to use a feed reader and just subscribe to the sitewide comments feed created automatically by WordPress. If you really want to do this, use a Plugin or custom Page that displays the sitewide comments feed. Perishable Press has an article that might be helpful, though it is designed to import feeds from other sites.
I want my site to display a page like that, I have been studying how to do it via php (but I am a newbie as I said), so a plugin would make wonders.
Thanks.
Reply
A page like what?
Oh, I already have a widget that shows the last 25 comments in the sidebar. But I would like to have a page doing that, just like in JT.
Thanks.
Thanks for the Perishable link. I will give it a try later.
I am subscribed to JT, and after logging in, the first page I look for ir “recent comments”, to check what is going on. I guess everybody else does the same.
Sincerely, the only reason I keep returning to JT is the “recent comments” page. It may not be really useful, but it keeps attracting readers, and that’s what matters in the end, isn’t it? O That’s why I think of having one on my site.
Anyway, I appreciate your advice about Google tracking. As for the plugin or custom page that displays the sitewide comments feed, can you recommend one that you know of?
Thank you.
I just did. It’s in the Perishable Press article. 😀
Well, thanks. I have managed to get RSS feeds inserted on a page. It is not the way I planned, but it’s working fine.
SO Many thanks Lorelle..
Do you know how I can make my comment form retain the info (ie Name, Email, etc) so the commenter doesn’t need to reenter it each time?
Have them register. A cookie is created and they are recognized next time they visit or login.
Hello! I have a question. Is there a plugin that allows me to just simply click a button or type a [/code] in order to thank or like commend those who commented on the previous posts. I believe the proper terminology was plugs. Where you would plug other people and their websites because they commented on yours. Or would I need to manually do this?
Thanks.
Let’s see if I can understand what you are trying to do. You want to thank those who commented on previous posts? Where? In a blog post? Then write it manually. In the sidebar? There are many WordPress Plugins that will automatically showcase commenters in a variety of ways, many outlined here, and many new ones in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You’ll have to poke around and try them to find out which meets your needs.
Hello, have enjoyed getting your tips for years. Thanks.
On my homepage, under each post I’d like to display a link to most recent comment for that particular post, with a comment excerpt. I’ve got it close (see homepage) but still not totally there by doing basic hand coding, not with a plugin. But I’d be happy to use a plugin. Does anyone know of a way to simply get a most recent comment excerpt to display under a single post? As in “Most recent comment on above post: ???”
Thanks for any help.
There are tons of ways of doing that, and Plugins, too. Customizable Post Listings and Customizable Comment Listings would be excellent for that. However, those that have done that in the past didn’t last long as it was just so much clutter. Unless you sit on your blog comments constantly, nothing is more fun than a visitor landing on the page and seeing comments for viagra and worse. If you have a very active community, they might enjoy it, spam or not. 😀
Thanks for the tip. I’m looking at the plugins but can’t see any obvious way of showing recent comment specific to a post, with excerpt… but I can probably figure it out. As for spam, we’ve got it totally under control, at least for the time being… Using combination of plugins, blacklists and that sort of thing.
The two Plugins I mentioned will do it. They have a feature for recent comments specific to everything, excerpt included. It will just take some customization of the WordPress Theme to include the Plugin tags.
Dear Lorelle,
I would like to award the top commenters of the month. I am looking for either a plugin or a manual way to discover the top commenters.
In my blog people cannot register, so the best way would be to filter per e-mail, not username.
You suggested the “WordPress Top Commenters Plugin / Widget”, however I can see this is a pretty old plugin…
Do you know if nowadays there is something that can help me to achieve this kind of data?
Thanks in advance
There are WordPress Plugins that will tally up those with the most comments from the database. They need not register. I don’t know which ones will work but they are free to try and experiment with. There are a lot of options today to choose from, each with their own unique quirks and options.
I’ve just released a new plugin called Decent Comments and it’s available at the WordPress Plugin Directory.
I wasn’t satisfied with any of the plugins available, at least not for what I had in mind – a thing as simple as to show an excerpt of comment’s along with avatars. Decent Comments is the result: it shows what people say, it provides widgets, shortcodes and an API. It’s able to display comments including author avatars, links, comment excerpts and provides adjustable settings.
Customizable Comment Listings continues to be my personal favorite. Thanks for mention of yours.
Pleasure 🙂 I consider it an important part of showing the interaction that’s happening on a site, and to have a quick view on people’s thoughts is one part of what makes it more interesting, thus the motivation for it.
Thanks for the awesome list but I actually want to ask if you had any ajax plugins because I am having some problem with refreshing my blog pages.
I don’t “have” any WordPress Plugins, and I don’t know which Plugins have AJAX features or not. If you are having trouble with AJAX issues, check your extensions or add-ons to your browser as ad blockers often interfer with such JavaScript features. Or switch browsers to test this. Thanks.
Oh my God! That’s total 93 plugins you mentioned in this post only related to comments. How many of these are you currently using?
I’ve used many of these for myself and clients. I tested many of these at the time I wrote this article many years ago.
Thanks.
Hi, that’s what I was looking for!
Is it possible to show comments from a specific category only?
Thanks!
You mean you wish to feature comments in the sidebar from all posts within a specific category? Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin or Customizable Comment Listings WordPress Plugin might do that but I’ve not ever had a client nor the desire to investigate that. Good luck with your search to find out how to do that or a WordPress Plugin that can do it. Unfortunately, no Plugins or code like that can be used on WordPress.com sites.
Hey, this is a gem! There are so many plugins for Comments posted in here. Have you used all of them before?
Can you please suggest what is the best plugin that you commonly used? I need something where I can easily manage comments for moderation.
Thank you for this post and looking forward to your reply.
As mentioned in the article series that this article was a part of, there are no “favorites” just the ones that you can’t blog without. Each one works individually for each person and their site’s needs. Good luck with your own blogging and use of WordPress.
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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.
Interesting and tiny perspective on something that is, how shall I say it – annoying? No, offensive – to the majority. Users need the right to opt-in not be forced into something they may, or may not, want. Let them choose.
GOOD ONE !
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