As you can tell from previous my previous 3 posts there is a ton of custom settings that you can have on WordPress. One of my favorite areas to make sure that I get the most out of my html WordPress blog is the comment section. Being able to change a feature on a site without html, blogs like WordPress become invaluable. Finally, because of nofollow links on other sites, I get to decide whether I want my links to be nofollow. All-in-all there is a lot going on with your comment section behind the scenes that make this an amazing blog post.
First and foremost, I added the ReCaptcha plugin a few days ago to my blog. I had looked for this widget a few months ago and for some reason could not find it. I came back and looked again and it has made all of the difference. Before I was getting 5-10 spam comments a day from auto-spam comments. All of the sudden, it is like a peaceful revolution and I am receiving no spam comments at all, giving me more time to focus on real readers with real questions.
Second, tying in with the idea of being able to add the ReCaptcha plugin I want to express how great it is to have full control over every aspect of my comment sections. From approving new comments to the ability in the Discussion Settings to make sure that certain words are either not allowed for comments or others have to have a moderator to look at them first. This way, my blog does the work of filtering out the bad comments before I step in with a final evaluation.
Third, A hidden, but very relevant ingredient for those interested in SEO is the nofollow links policy. Nofollow links are essentially links that, because of the site choosing not to help your SEO efforts means the search engines will not record your backlink. The reason why this is important is because, sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter do not generate backlinks that can be valuable to your SEO efforts. However, Facebook does.
With WordPress I have the option of doing the same thing to LinkedIn and Twitter that they do to me by giving their links a nofollow. This also works in the comments section as well.
Is it amazing how much can be behind such a small, simple tool? You look at a comments section on someones blog and do not fully realize how they made the site optimized to best work with their readers. From nofollow links to Recaptcha plugins the ability to do what you want without having a great knowledge of html, makes WordPress Blogs amazing when it comes to your comment section. The customized WordPress comment section means that you can spend more time on the people who care about your blog then those who could care less.
Andy, I also use WordPress for my website and blog. I’ve seen the nofollow but didn’t know what it meant. I think I understand it a little more having read your post above, but I am still unclear. Do you have a link to more information on nofollow such as how & when to use it and why not to? Thanks a bunch! — LMB
Lisa,
That is a tricky little tactic used by many different websites to get more attention to their website from the search engines.
Andy
Are you recommending that bloggers use NO follow or that they turn their blog to a DO follow? If so, is there a plugin for making your blog a ‘do follow’ blog? Or do you have to edit php?
Ian,
I appreciate you following up on that, because I did not discuss it in length. Next week i will be talking about SEO more in detail, and that is a topic I would like to address. There is a nofollow reciprocity widget on WordPress. It allows you to give those sites that do nofollow on your links nofollows back to them. That is what I advocate. Follow those who follow you and nofollow those who do not.
Andy
Thanks for the information. I started to use IntenseDebate since it allows to sync my comments back to my wordpress site. Have you considered it?
Kris,
Check out my popular posts on my home page. I go into my experiments with WP comment systems. And yes, I have checked into it.
Andy
Kris,
Check out my popular posts on my home page. I go into my experiments with WP comment systems. And yes, I have checked into it.
Andy