Comments and New Plugins
October 8, 2007 by Lillie
If you’ve made a comment here recently, you’ve probably noticed a couple of new plugins.
Live Comment Preview does exactly what the name implies – it gives a live preview as you type your comment. Most of us find it much easier to spot a mistake when a comment goes live than when we’re typing in the comment box. With Live Comment Preview, you can preview your comment as you type it.
But if you still make an error – and don’t we all from time to time? – there’s WP Ajax Edit Comments. This plugin allows the commenter to edit a comment for a designated amount of time. I’m using the default setting of 15 minutes, which is enough time to see the error as soon as it’s posted – when I see mine 
– and correct it right away.
If you moderate comments, the comment won’t be sent through moderation again. However, it will be sent through Akismet again. That precaution will prevent a spammer from leaving an innocuous comment, then changing it to spam after it’s moderated.
I wish every blog used these or similar plugins. I am embarrassed at the number of comments I’ve left all over the blogosphere with errors that I’ve caught … just after the comments went live, with no way to correct them. Errors in comments don’t reflect very well on me as a writer and editor, and I cringe every time I see a mistake I’ve made. I want to give my commenters the opportunity to catch their own errors.
As I state in my comment policy, I will correct typos in comments, but I prefer for my commenters to edit their own comments.
Thank you to each person who has posted a comment here, and special thanks to those who comment regularly. Blogging has become much more of a conversation than I expected when I started, and I love hearing from my readers. I’ve thought of adding a top commenters plugin, but my sidebar is already too crowded. Even if I don’t recognize commenters in a post or listing, I do respond to every comment, and I appreciate every one!
Updated 10/9/07: Commenter Misti Sandefur, reminded me of another comment plugin that I love. I’ve used Subscribe to Comments for a while, so it’s not new to me, but it’s an excellent plugin folks should know about. Maybe it’s new to some of you.
updated 10/9/07: Thanks to Mike Olbinski for helping me get Brian’s Threaded Comments working with my current theme. this is a wonderful plugin that allows commenters to reply to specific comments.
[tags]comments, Live Comment Preview, WP Ajax Edit Comments, WordPress plugins, Subscribe to Comments[/tags]
Hi Lillie, I’m most envious of your plug-ins!
Being a typepad user I’m a bit more limited in the options for customising my site (although they do give us a preview option at least).
On the top commenter point I think you’re right to protect your sidebars. You can always link to commenters manually as a round-up or thank you post – but that can be quite time-consuming, especially if you have a lot.
Joanna
Joanna,
I’ve never used Typepad, but I really like WordPress because there are so many options for customizing with plugins and themes.
I know several bloggers have started to mention their commenters in a post each month. I’m thinking about that, but I always seem to have more to blog about than time to do it.
Lillie, for those bloggers who can’t or don’t offer this option, I always try to read my comment after I type it and before I hit submit or send. There have been times, however, when I still missed something, and yes, it is embarrassing. Nevertheless, we all make mistakes.
With Blogger I too am limited to features I wished Blogger had or would consider, and one of those is the subscribe to comments feature, which I suggested to them. I’ve thought of moving my blog to Wordpress, but the experts say you could loose traffic when you switch your blog after you’ve been with a certain host for a few years. In addition, you also lose all of your past posts. I see from my stats that my traffic continues to grow each day, and I’d hate to lose those readers, so I suppose I’ll stick with Blogger and hope they improve more of their features in the near future.
Misti,
I started out with Blogger and still keep a blog there. Periodically, I post there – but mainly just links to posts on this blog. When I first moved to WordPress, I posted several messages about the move with links here.
Of course, I hadn’t been blogging as long or as regularly as you when I moved so I didn’t have the traffic you have. However, I think your readers will follow you to your new blog.
Another advantage of keeping the Blogger blog is that some Blogger blogs don’t allow anyone but registered users to comment. This way I can comment, and if anyone follows the link to my Blogger blog, they will be able to find my “real” blog.
Thanks for reminding me of Subscribe to Comments. I’m going to add that as an update to my post. Though I’ve had it for quite awhile, it’s an excellent plugin that folks should know about.
Just checking out the live comments to see how it looks and functions.
Pretty sweet!
I wonder if this is compatible with Threaded Comments?
Mike,
I don’t know whether this works with Threaded Comments or not. Unfortunately, Threaded Comments does not work with this theme. I really, really liked that plugin … but not enough to change themes.
I’ll bet you could figure it out, or if you knew enough, tweak the code to make it work, but it would take some time
What part didn’t work exactly?
“If you knew enough …” Ah, I could do lots of things if I knew enough.
Comments don’t thread – it’s as if the plugin isn’t even activated – nothing happens.
Well, just to make sure you are doing it right…you know you are supposed to ALSO copy his version of “comments.php” into your theme’s folder, overwriting yours, correct?
I like the editing feature! I tend to see errors in comments only AFTER I’ve pressed the submit button. OUCH!!
Does anyone know about a plug-in that will allow me to reply to a comment without having to go directly to the blog to respond?
I use a theme that’s compatible with WP 2.3.
I also need to know if there’s a way I can get an email notification to my email box everytime someone comments and then reply from there without having to go to the admin panel?
Anyone know?
Thanks!
Stephen Hopson
Lillie,
Thanks so much for the link, it was helpful. For now I think I will stick with Blogger and hope that later down the road they’ll add some of these newer, better features. Later, I may create another blog to see if I like WordPress, and then if I decide I do like them, and it’s not too complicated, I might switch over. Thanks again!
Lillie,
I really like the comment editing feature! There are few things as annoying–to the perfectionists among us, at least–as clicking “Submit Comment” and then noticing that we’ve made an error! Most comment programs don’t allow the commenter to correct errors after submission, forcing us to relive the indignity of our errors every time we return to those posts. (And, as I’m sure you’ll concur, for us editor-types, that’s tough!)
Jeanne
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