Between posts and comments, WordPress.com is an enormous hub of activity. The service recently published its 2015 year in review and the numbers are staggering. Last year, users published 660M posts that generated more than 655M comments. The review looks back at posts that went viral, books published by authors, and coverage of world…
When I founded WP Tavern in 2009, comments were an important part of the site’s initial success. After six years, the site has published its 30,000th comment. At a time where large websites such as Copyblogger and the Toronto Star are closing down comments in favor of social media, the Tavern continues to be a…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Drew Jaynes, WordPress core contributor. We discuss a wide range of topics, from Jaynes’ opinions on Scott Taylor’s work on WordPress 4.4 thus far to his trip to WordCamp Capetown Africa, 2015. We go in-depth on 10up’s investments in WordPress and discuss…
Last week, I shared the lessons I learned and the drawbacks to moderating comments in WordPress. In this post, I highlight six plugins that solve a problem I encountered or enhance comments for both readers and site administrators. All of the plugins are free of charge and available from the WordPress plugin directory. Problem Solvers…
WordPress plugin and theme developers need to take note of an important change in WordPress 4.4 that rearranges the comment form. In WordPress 4.4, the comment form is arranged so that the text area is displayed first followed by the name, email, and website fields. According to Aaron Jorbin, WordPress core developer, the change improves…
In the past 4-5 weeks, I’ve moderated every comment submitted to WP Tavern. Not only was it an experiment to see what would happen but a new way for me to use WordPress. The experiment introduced me to several drawbacks in WordPress’ comment moderation system. Lack of Context Comments that are pending moderation in the…
One of the key features in WordPress 4.3 is that comments on pages are disabled by default. If you only enable comments for posts, you may be interested in WP Comment Humility, a new plugin created by John James Jacoby that moves the top-level Comments menu item to the Posts menu. The following screenshot better…
Moderating replies to comments in the backend of WordPress is tough. For example, WordPress 4.3 displays the reply and who it’s in response too, but doesn’t show the text of the parent comment. You can’t see the parent comment unless you open the author link in a new browser tab. This is not an optimal…
Since enabling comment moderation on the Tavern, I’ve discovered that WordPress does not notify commenters when their comments are approved. On the Tavern, I’m using the Comment Approved plugin by Niels van Renselaar. It allows me to create a custom notification message that is sent when a comment is approved. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s…
Those of you who regularly comment on the Tavern may have noticed that your comments don’t show up immediately after submitting them. That’s because about four weeks ago, for the first time in the Tavern’s history, comment moderation for all comments was enabled. I enabled moderation to address concerns raised by members of the community…
The team behind Postmatic is aiming to breathe new life into WordPress native comments with the 1.0 release of Epoch today. The plugin was created to provide a Disqus alternative with faster loading and submitting for comments. Epoch’s creators set an ambitious goal for themselves on the plugin’s description page: The goal: To provide a…
Since March of this year, HeroPress has published inspirational essays from people all over the world. Instead of allowing comments on the site itself, Topher DeRosia, founder of HeroPress, partnered with WPChat to host conversations for each essay. Unfortunately, many of the articles received little feedback. Starting this week, DeRosia is allowing contributing writers to…
WordPress 4.3 beta 1 was put into the hands of testers last week. Those who have been following 4.3 developments are already familiar with the major features headlining this release, ie. the new site icons, menu management in the customizer, and more secure passwords. However, there are also a couple lesser-known improvements that will have…
The backend of WordPress has a set of tools to help administrators moderate comments, but what if you could bring some of those tools to the frontend? Developed by Foliovision, Thoughtful Comments is compatible with Jetpack Comments and adds the following links to comments on the frontend of WordPress: Approve Delete Delete Thread Delete and…
Postmatic is currently offering free concierge installation, configuration, and user migration for its new comments subscription plugin which is now in beta. The plugin allows users to subscribe to new posts/comments via email and leave a comment by simply hitting reply. Postmatic beta 6 introduced 1-click migration of subscribers from Jetpack, in order to make…