One of the major concerns of WordPress administrators is proper management and moderation of comments on their blogs. It can be a time consuming and challenging task especially if you receive loads of comments accompanied by tons of spam. Almost every blogger formulates a comment policy for his blog that must be followed and adhered by all the visitors leaving their views on different posts. But, the comment moderation policy alone doesn't save you from hours of comment editing and moderation tasks. That's where various comments handling plugins comes handy. They assist you in locating and identifying valid comments and also give you handy links at prime locations to quickly edit or approve pending replies. Some of these plugins also extend the native WordPress comments adding more user-friendly features. Here're some of the best comment plugins for professional WordPress bloggers.
Admin Comments Count -This handy plugin displays the comment count for each commenter in the comment listings in your dashboard. This applies to default listing as well as any custom search listing of all the published comments. This helps in identifying regular commenters as well as new visitors who're leaving comments for the first time. You can also see other details about each commenter like when they left a comment for the first time and their latest comment date. You can also see this comment counts on various other important places within the dashboard.
One Click Close Comments - It is often seen that WordPress administrators decide to close or reopen comments on selective posts or pages. Generally, they do this by opening the post editing page and then by deselecting comments option from the discussion box. But this handy plugin lets you open and close comments on any post with a single click directly from within post listings in the dashboard. Disabled comments are shown by red dots, while posts with open comments include green dots. This plugin is very handy for novice bloggers who frequently open and close comments on various posts.
Pending Comments Count - This useful plugin is ideal for blogs receiving large number of comments throughout the day. It displays the number of approved as well as pending comments in the form of a comment bubble in the post listings. This way administrator can easily visualize the status of comments on any post. This speeds up moderation process giving more flexibility in approving the pending comments. You can see this useful data on pages listing as well as on the default comments listing too.
Twitter Mentions As Comments - If you receive lot of Twitter mentions about your content and plan to integrate these mentions in the form of comments on your blog, you can use this intuitive plugin for the same. It smartly fetches the Twitter user's photo, real name and the tweet mentioning your blog post and integrates it seamlessly with the existing comments. You can also configure exclusion of retweets to avoid duplicate entries. It also supports exclusion of tweets associated with selective posts or pages.
Moderation Email To Author - If you're running a multi-author blog, then this plugin should be on your list. Administrators of multi-author blogs often get overwhelmed with tons of comment moderation notifications. This useful plugin diverts these moderation emails to the respective post authors giving the administrator some space to breathe easily. As an administrator, you must ensure that each author has the moderation rights so that they can receive these emails sent via this plugin.
Sitewide Comment Control - It's an extremely useful plugin for bloggers running multi-site WordPress network. Generally, comment management is done on per-site basis throughout the entire network. But this excellent plugin lets administrators manage, moderate and monitor comments on the entire multi-site network from one place. You can create blacklists through this plugin to block and control known trolls that regularly drop on different sites within your network. It's a must-have plugin for multi-site WP installations.
Subscribe to Double-Opt-In Comments - This plugin lets commenters to subscribe to post comments with a double opt-in option. This essentially means that each commenter will receive two emails while subscribing to comments. The first email will have the confirmation link to assure willingness of the reader to receive post comments. Once the reader has confirmed his subscription, he will receive all comment notifications for the subscribed post. Using this plugin ensures that your readers are not annoyed with comment notifications received without their explicit approval.
AJAX Comment Loading - If you receive massive number of comments on a single post page setting, you must consider using this plugin. Generally, a large number of comments on a post page slows down the loading of the entire page. Through this plugin, you can defer comments loading until the rest of the page is fully rendered on the visitor's browser. After that, an AJAX request is sent to the server to fetch the comments. This gives smooth browsing experience to the readers' on slow internet connections.
Floating Comments Form - This plugin is ideal for blogs having wider layout or themes having horizontal scrolling. Through this unique plugin, you can make your comment form float beside the post along with the scrolling position of the visitor in a fixed column. You can compare it with Digg Digg plugin floating social bookmarking bar. The only difference is that this one uses comment form instead of social bookmarking buttons. You can configure the placement and alignment of the floating comment form so that it gels seamlessly with your existing blog theme.
Akismet - No comment plugins list is complete without including Akismet. It's the most popular anti-spam plugin that is used by almost every WordPress blogger. Comments bring trolls and spammers along with them. Fortunately, this handy plugin effectively blocks most of the spam heading towards your blog. You must obtain an API key for this plugin so that it can function normally. It quietly works in the background without putting any adverse effect on your blog. You can easily trash the blocked spam trapped through this plugin.
