Continuing Blog conversations…the subscribe to comments plugin

July 23, 2007

I’m kind of a widget nut. A widget, if you don’t know, is a third party item that can be embedded in a web page. So on this blog, the pictures of all the gorgeous people on the right (you know who you are) is an Explode social networking widget where I’ve met many education bloggers (and keep it there so you can meet some too) and the Facebook logo is a widget (actually called a ‘blog badge’ on Facebook) where you can link to my profile and befriend me or others if you choose. I’m sure there are some widgets and plugins that drive people nuts. For instance I recently disabled the Snap plugin because I didn’t think it provided value to readers of this blog (it created little clouds next to links).

Anyway, I ran across Clive’s post this morning about “unresolved communication” on blogs. This is when you leave a comment but don’t receive follow-up…you have to remember to go back and read the post to see if there are additional comments and who the heck has time (or memory) to do that? One alternative is to respond to someone via email if you’re notified of posts via email. I’ve done that but it’s not ideal if you wish to keep the conversation going within your blog and perhaps entice others to contribute.

Another alternative is the Subscribe to Comments plugin. Although plugins are not widgets I think they provide a function that is similar and useful. It allows you to subscribe to subsequent comments on a blog entry you’ve made. Here’s a link for the WordPress plugin. I don’t know about other platforms but welcome input and other comments on how you keep track of further comments on a blog.

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  • http://karynromeis.blogspot.com Karyn Romeis

    Hi Janet. I use CoComment, but it isn’t always reliable. Nevertheless, it’s the thing I do straight after checking my Bloglines aggregator each morning.

  • http://christytucker.wordpress.com/ Christy Tucker

    I used to use CoComment, but I’ve been having too many problems with it and Firefox lately. Currently I’m using Commentful. I don’t like Commentful as much. For starters, I have to actually remember to add a page to my list of posts to track, and I often forget. Second, the RSS feed for the comments just tells me the number of comments, not the text of them. But, it’s at least enough to remind me to go check places I’ve commented to keep following the replies.

    If someone has something better (specifically something that works with Firefox), I’d love to know about it!

  • http://christytucker.wordpress.com Christy Tucker

    I used to use CoComment, but I’ve been having too many problems with it and Firefox lately. Currently I’m using Commentful. I don’t like Commentful as much. For starters, I have to actually remember to add a page to my list of posts to track, and I often forget. Second, the RSS feed for the comments just tells me the number of comments, not the text of them. But, it’s at least enough to remind me to go check places I’ve commented to keep following the replies.

    If someone has something better (specifically something that works with Firefox), I’d love to know about it!

  • http://karynromeis.blogspot.com/ Karyn Romeis

    Hi Janet. I use CoComment, but it isn't always reliable. Nevertheless, it's the thing I do straight after checking my Bloglines aggregator each morning.

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