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Top Commentators plugin shows a list of visitors who give most comments on your blog during certain duration.
There are a few top commentators plugin for Wordpress. Currently, i am using Top Commentators Widget v.0.999 from webgrrrl.net. It works with Wordpress 2.3. As shown in the scrrenshot, it will list out top commentator’s name and the number of comments that he/she posts on my blog.
Why i use Top Commentators plugin? For my readers, if they post comment frequently, their name will appear in the top commentators list, and will bring incoming links and traffic to their website. So, this actually act as a free link exchange program for the top commentators. For me, Top Commentators plugin encourage more readers to join the discussion, as more contribution they make, their link will get higher chance to appear in the list.
The reason why i choose Top Commentators Widget v.0.999 from webgrrrl.net is it provide a good configuration menu. The screenshot below show the configuration menu under Presentation -> Widgets:
The most important part of this configuration menu is the “Exclude these user” part. Why i say so? If you don’t exclude yourself, then your name will always appear in the list, probably always in the 1st place! Let say you organize a contest and giving some prizes for top commentator, but if you not exclude yourself in the list, then you might always be the winner of this contest!
The second configuration that you must do is reset the list after certain duration. Here, i will reset my list every month. I may consider to reset my list every week in future if the number of comments increase. You may also set the numbers of name appear in the list. I set this to 7. The best number to set is between 5 to 10, depends on your usage. You can refer the details of each configuration in the author’s website.
The best position to put this widget is at the top of the sidebar, as top position will have more exposure to the visitors. Remember to turn on comment moderation after you activate this plugin. It is because some readers will try to spam your blog so that they get higher ranking in the list. You can also install Akismet to fight comment spamming.
If you want to know why comments is so important, you can read my previous post “Comments bring traffic?” or you can download the plugin here.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Nice plugin to add to ones blog to encourage comments, I will try this out on my blog too. Commentluv would also be nice plugin to add to ones blog.
I am using this plugin for 2 months. It a cool plugin,
Nice information will use this plugin
expect me as your top commentator soon! )
@jason: I hope you will be my top commentator!
I’m in a list now!
nice plugins. u must have purposed to use this plugins.
recently i wrote about complete wordpress upgrading a-to-z with snap shot
I also love top commentator plugin. It helps blog to get good comments, also backlink to commentator.
I like this plugin. Its nice to see who is commenting on your blog most regularly, and also to give them a link for their benefit.
We’re also using this plugin, it encourages visitors to build a history of posts. Some of our visitors now submit over 10 posts per day!
Nice plugin, how I missed it for so long I don’t know. Always winning your own contests doesn’t sound too bad though
Nice plugin. it helps to get more comments to your website thereby getting more returning visitors.
[...] which blogs use search engine friendly plugins, such as the do-follow plugin, as well as the top commentator plugin. While you can use these widgets on your site to monitor your most frequent visitors via the [...]
I will be adding this. Thanks for the info.
Really its a cool plugin. I like it.
It is always good to reward our top commentators with this widget.
yeah great plugin to increase post feedback, looks like your widget isn’t funcitoning though, “No commentators”
Can you provide more information on this? I am doing some extra research on online business and this post is really what I want to see.
Have just installed this plugin, so expect it would bring some discussion at http://www.wpdaddy.com/blog/ since it is still a ‘brand new’ blog
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. And as a designer, I think you have a pretty nice layout
I really liked your blog!
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you
Just a tip… Thanks to these plugins many blogs are being spammed. These plugins, unlike comments, may link to the websites without rel=”nofollow” attribute, and thus such blogs are more attractive to spammers.
It’s just advice for bloggers who come to read this post and comments
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Oh, I am soooo glad you left this info. I have been wanting to install this plugin for a while and now I know how!
You can drop very nice information, about top commentators plugin