Tracking WordPress comments

Par­tic­i­pat­ing on a blog is infi­nitely more worth­while if you’re able to find out about new com­ments to any inter­est­ing posts.

To that end, here is my favorite tip for keep­ing up on com­ments: Co​.mments​.com, a great site to sub­scribe to com­ments on any blog. You sim­ply track a page and it will update you via email or RSS (your choice). It works on a major­ity of sites/blogs/forums, and there’s a handy book­marklet you can use in your browser that works on any page. Check it out and see what you think.

I pre­fer using this to other meth­ods because it doesn’t require any­thing on the part of the blog author (and many don’t opt in to this kind of func­tion­al­ity). Also, I pre­fer see­ing com­ments in RSS to email, and co.mments gives me one RSS feed, so I don’t have to keep sub­scrib­ing to a new feed for every post — I sim­ply track new con­ver­sa­tions and the feed is updated automatically.

Also, putting my prover­bial money where my prover­bial mouth is, here are a few things I’ve done on my blog to offer you some choices:

• You’ll see the abil­ity to sub­scribe to com­ments via RSS below. (OK, I didn’t actu­ally do this; it’s a Word­Press feature.)
• Since I like co​.mments​.com so much, I’ve also added the abil­ity to track a post’s com­ments via co​.mments​.com. (See under­neath the com­ment form.) The link is kludgy, but using Javascript in Word­Press is an obsta­cle I haven’t tack­led (yet).
• Lastly, you can also track com­ments via email, as per the Sub­scribe to Com­ments plu­gin. (Also under­neath the com­ment form.)
• If you’re some­one who wants all com­ments on all posts, you can sub­scribe to my blog’s com­ments feed. Word­Press doesn’t offer that to the browser as an avail­able feed, and I’m dis­in­clined to add it given the other choices above. (How­ever, if you want this, make the case; I’ll be pretty eas­ily convinced.)

Sorry I hadn’t done these sooner. “Com­ment man­age­ment” is def­i­nitely a fea­ture I have wanted to offer on my blog, I just hadn’t put in the time yet to imple­ment them. (Thanks for the kick in the pants, Steve!)