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Justin Shatuck has released an interesting plugin that sends new commenters a thank you email for commenting, with the ability to customize the message. I’ve installed it on this site, as I’m trying to develop a bit more of a community, however, with so many WP sites, I know that is a tall task. Anyway, if you want to see how it works, leave a comment, and you should receive a message from me.
Napolux.com
I’ve always wished that more people would comment on this site, about their opinions, experiences, general impressions of the plugins/themes/updates that get posted, but alas, I’ve not had much luck. I’m installing Napolux’s MyAvatars plugin, which uses your MyBlogLog avatar in the comments. Not that I expect that to create a mad rush to start commenting, however it’s always nice to have something visual to put with a commenter. I may have to add one of those widgets as well, as it’s kinda funny to click a link to a site, and all of a sudden see yourself as a recent visitor. What are your feelings on those?
A greatly improved comments template for your blog offered up by Christian. Features include separated trackbacks and pingbacks, author highlighting, and many more improved ways of making your comments less “boring”. Well documented as well. Look for the improved template integrated here at WP Station with an upcoming reboot November 1.
nektros - Cynicism in a Hot Dish
A nice tutorial on how to edit your comments on your blog. An often overlooked design element, customizing your comments is a great way of giving your site a unique look.
Another way of combating spam. This allows to ban a commentor by email, IP, and several other options. Similar to the blacklist feature, this however spells out for those not familiar with such.
Have a lot of comments on your blog, where discussions tend to be responses to previous commenters? If so, this plugin may help organize the comments a little better by allow for visitors to choose which comment they are replying to, as well as quote a comment.
Looking outside the box, I see a plugin of this nature being a building block for using WP as a forum. If You allow registered users a certain level to start posts, and require registration to comment, each post is the start of a thread, maybe you see where I’m going with this.
Anyway, I can see this being a very handy tool for high traffic, high comment sites.
A recent plugin addition to the community, this plugin, by default shows the 5 latest comments, with a gravatar of the commenter. I haven’t tested yet to see if you can show an excerpt of the comment, or it shows the whole thing. Interesting addition of adding the gravatar nonetheless.
hyaline skies
Has released a plugin to help mark commenters as “trolls”. Can be useful for blogs with controversial topics. Can be set by admin to permanently set IPs as trolls, also has template tags for further functionality.
Offers up a quick tip (though meant specifically for K2 hacking, I’m sure any gravatar user can adapt it) on linking a commenter’s avatar to their own blog, rather than back to the Gravatar web site. While I agree it’s good to promote gravatar’s site, (I use a link below the comments box on my personal site), I think it makes much more sense to let the avatar act as a link. I’m surprised I hadn’t seen this tip before.
Andare.ch
This plugin integrates the coComment’s javascript into your comments form, so visitors who use coComment won’t need to use the bookmarklet or some other feature. The new version is updated to take advantage of new features.