Don’t Ghettoise Your Comments

When setting up a blog, one of the choices you have to make is whether you want to enable comments or not.  In almost all cases it is a good idea to enable conversation and of course, to make it as simple and as hurdle free for your site visitors as possible.  Conversation, whether positive or negative, has to be a good thing, stifling debate and discussion only leaves you coming out looking like the bad guy.

At the very least it makes sense for you, as the blog admin, to moderate comments and to allow individuals to auto-post after they have been accepted a first time.  Above and beyond this, installing a WordPress plug-in such as Akismet to auto-catch comment spammers is also definitely worth the time spent.  Not only does it help you, but it also helps the wider community.

Beyond this you have to ask yourself whether is it worth ditching the standard WordPress comment forms and head for the land of Disqus.  As yet, for me, the jury is still out.  I hate the idea of forcing blog visitors into the process of having to sign up to these services, giving away their email and details, for the sake of actually making a simple post, though having got past this stage, the process of posting, and being auto-recognized across the entire blogosphere has a real benefit.

That being said, given the coverage of Facebook, why not simply use FB Connect as an option for recognise visitors and keep them signed in.  There is information about the adding FB-Connect to WordPress on the FB Wiki and it is pretty easy and self-explanatory.

As yet I have always stuck with standard WordPress comments, but the more I see Disqus out in the wild, the more I am contemplating trying it on one of my blogs. Above and beyond having an easy to use comment interface that encourages users to comment, you need to remember to be an active participant in the conversation yourself.

Related Posts

• Does A Blog Help With SEO?