WordPress Comment Control

I have found a WordPress plugin that does both these things very well, but why is this so important?

The Need For WordPress Comment Control

It is perfectly OK to build websites without any commenting capability. You can simply add a contact form, and write posts based on your response to your emails.

There is even the option of using other people’s sites for comments, and condensing the knowledge into your own “authority” site. This works best by spotting an interesting question on a blog that has not been answered after a couple of days. Write your own killer answer, then add a comment on the original blog referencing back to your article.

That works, but it is difficult to find appropriate questions – most have been answered, or are too old to “wake-up” without looking desperate. That is why I try to make web sites as easy as possible for visitors to make their contribution.

Yes, commenting features attract spammers and well meaning contributors who do not really add much value. These take some management time, but spam control and visitor response are an acceptable part of running a web site.

It is nice to find a WordPress comment control tool that really makes a difference to the time you need to spend – and also helps your visitors.

WP Ajax Edit Comments

I have already noted how standard WordPress comments can be improved. I can now see that the forum can be replaced with blog commenting, and I will talk about all the features in another article. For now, the big breakthrough is WP Ajax Edit Comments from Ajay D’Souza & Ronald Huereca.

It scores well in two major areas.

Admin Assistance

When comments start coming in thick and fast, it is a pain to deal with them in standard WordPress (or at least I haven’t found a quick way). Most times, I have to read the comment on the live blog to see that it is in context as well as not being spammy. Ajax Edit Comments makes this easy

I can now

• Edit the comment
• Take out the link very easily
• Mark it as spam
• Delete it

Or push it into the moderation queue where I can review it later.

What really sets it apart is the ability to move comments. I have not tried this yet as this site does not yet get many comments, but I know it is going to be exceptionally useful on my busiest site. I’ve often left well written, but off-topic comments on articles simply because it is too difficult to do anything about it. Now I can easily move these where they belong, and keep topics tight.

Visitor Value

This plugin has terrific visitor value, with potential for more.

The ability to edit comments is excellent. I feel churlish for suggesting it might be improved, but I would much rather see the editing time being held open until somebody else adds a comment. There could still be a time restriction, but also close editing as soon as a new comment is made on the same article. This would minimize the problem of somebody replying to a comment only to find the original had been changed.

I like the extra feature to request deletion of a comment. A small improvement would be a similar function to ask for moderation. The commenter might prefer approval by the site owner before submitting something contentious. I believe this can be achieved by requesting deletion, then adding a comment that explains you only want to delete it under certain circumstances, but an explicit option would be nice.

Finally, I would love the ability to autosave comments.

I will get a bit more familiarity with the plugin in it’s current state before I start making formal requests for changes. The changes are just icing on the cake really – I think this plugin is exceptionally good as it stands.

Desperation

I forgot to mention in my mini-review that this WordPress comment control plugin is one of the nice ones that let you “skin” it to match your theme. It comes with 6 choices, and Suzanne asked:

Is there an easy way of seeing what the different icon sets are (easier then logging into my host and looking at each image in the images folder)? Do you have them posted anywhere for easy reference?

There is now…

In practice, users only see (I think) the Edit icon. The rest magically appear when you are logged in as admin, and at appropriate places in the Comments administration screens.

Tags: WordPress comment, wordpress plugin, WP Ajax Edit Comments