Then WordPress removes the incentive for you to contribute by adding a nofollow link to your comments!

In turn, I remove that nofollow attribute, in most circumstances, so that you get search engine rewards for your valued contribution.

I interrupt my series on the shrewdBar development of a Pods package to highlight the benefits you get from joining the web hosting discussion on this site. By discussion, I mean adding valuable questions, comments or theories to existing topics, or starting a new discussion on a web hosting, or WordPress, related topic.

I have updated my link policy today, to explain more clearly how you can get incoming links to your site.

I have also added a top contributors list on the sidebar, to give extra links for those who contribute most. This list is automatically generated by the No Follow Free (NOFF) plugin. This plugin removes the nofollow attribute from links. It has a range of settings, but the important ones for you relate to the thresholds at which nofollow tags are removed. I have lowered the default settings so you get the nofollow free benefits as a guest when you add more than one comment, and immediately if you register.

I’ll be on the lookout for abusers, and raise the threshold later if necessary.

The purpose of this policy is to encourage meaningful debate without rewarding the people who add “me too” comments. Can you think of improvements, or is the whole nofollow debate flying over your head?

Encourage commenting, and you add effortless content to your site.

Make it hard, and your visitors will walk away

Comment control using spam management plugins is important, but if you don’t encourage commenting you might as well just close the comments and forget the whole thing.

Don’t worry about spam comments. First, think how you can encourage visitors to contribute to your site by way of comments, then worry about weeding out the ones you do not want.

If you run a forum, you might consider doing away with comments altogether. If so, change the default settings in the discussions section, and stop reading this. My view is that the more opportunities you give for visitor contributions, the more those visitors are likely to return – so read on to learn how to commandeer comments to keep your visitors returning.

WordPress Comments Plugins

First to be installed is Quicktagzmilies from Zfen. This makes it so much easier to add HTML code to posts. Much easier than having to type <blockquote></blockquote> etc.

To install this plugin, you have to edit the comments.php file in your theme. This is a bit of a pain, especially as you have to remember to do it if you change theme, but it is worth it. One day I’ll look to see if there is a way to avoid this, but it is very easy to do, so not a priority.

Go to the editor in the Appearance section of the admin area and select comments.php. Find textarea^* and add Quicktagzmilies code (it’s shown in the settings screen) as a new line above it: <?php if (function_exists('quicktagzmilies')) { quicktagzmilies(); } ? >

Next, your visitor (now contributor) may want to know if anyone else responds. Subscribe To Comments plugin has been extremely useful, but not updated for a long time. I have opted for a new version, based on the original: Gurken Subscribe to Comments from Martin Spuetz. This is a fairly basic subscription service, so if you find something better, please share it in the comments here, or in the functionality forum. I’d like to see subscribe / watch functionality for comments that gives the same benefits as the equivalent functions in the Simple:Press Forum plugin – could be another project for the future.

Finally, now that you have happy contributors, do you think it fair to deprive them of a little glory? For some reason, WordPress puts nofollow attributes on the links your contributor provides. The merits (or lack of them) for this are beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll just explain the very easy way to stop this. Install NoFollow Free from Michele Marcucci and the problem goes away.

It’s over to you now. How do you comandeer your WordPress comments to work for you? Add your coments below!