Add Subscribe to Comments Option
January 21, 2010 ·
Everytime you write a WordPress post, you have the potential to turn it into a discussion by allowing people to comment/ask questions then reponding or replying yourself. Your comments and readers comments you have approved appear on your website below the post they relate to. The dilema is always whether you should email the commenter with the answer to their question as well as posting the answer in your comments or just hope they will return to your post to check if you have answered.
Keep Readers Up to Date on Posts of Interest
The Subscribe to Comments plugin solves this problem by adding an option to your comments form so that readers can receive email notification of any comments added to a post they are interested in. From the reader point of view… you write your comment/question below a post and tick the subscribe button if you want to be emailed the answer.
Why Use Your Comments Form
The comments you receive on your posts and the answers you give go a long way to building your website’s credibility and establishing yourself as the expert. In addition to this relevant comments can attract search engine listings in their own right. I often use the comments form myself to add updates and additional info to my WordPress posts. Readers can then keep up to date with changes to a plugin, a better technique or a link to another relevant article by subscibing to comments.
Add An Explanation to Comments Form
I think it is good policy to reword the introduction to your comments form to invite people to make comments or ask questions. You might even want to indicate the sorts of comments you expect. I have added a line of text to my comments form telling people what the subscribe to comments box is for.
Add Subscribe to Comments Plugin
- Download Subscribe to Comments Plugin…
- Upload to your website and activate.
- Go to Settings on your sidebar to access the subscribe to comments admin page.
- You can change text to the right of the tick box as well as the email address and website title the email notifications come from.
- You’re Done!
There are lots more great plugins to boost the effectiveness of your comments form, many linking directly to Twitter and other social media sites. More comments related articles coming to this website soon!
Many of the latest versions of Studio Press themes include this feature as standard.
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Categories: Blogging, Website Ideas, WordPress Plugins, Wordpress Tutorials, social media
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About Jo Couchman
Chief website designer at Creative Web Ideas and author of the Creative Web Ideas blog. If you enjoyed this post - Subscribe to Email Newsletter to receive future posts by email.
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I think that this is a great plugin and have installed it on my site.
The power of the plugin is that it lets you know what other people are saying and prompts you to respond to later comments.
Can’t be bad if you want to keep the discussion going.
I’m reluctant to leave comments on sites, which don’t have this plugin because you have to remember to keep going back to see how the comments are progressing.
This one is on my list of top plugins.
Thanks Keith. I often comment on people’s Twitter page when there is no subscribe to comments box. That way I have a record on my Twitter page if they reply.
Hi Jo
Just added CommentLuv to my site.
I comment on a few sites that use it and it seems fair to return the courtesy.
Any thoughts on using this plugin?
I probably wouldn’t use it on my site as I like to keep each post quite clean with only info relevant to my post on it but it might work really well on other types of sites. It has the potential to attract a lot of self-promoting commenters too.