Comments, Contact & Concerns

Part of blogging means that you have the option of allowing comments from visitors to your site. You can do this by going to Settings/Discussion and you can also over ride this option on a post by post basis.

Comments help you to get feedback from your visitors about your post and allow for interaction and the building of a micro community. Comments are also great for search engine fodder.

Decisions, Decisions ….

People build sites for many different reasons. If you are building niche sites you might want to make your site look like a “traditional website- cms” set up. In that case, you normally would not allow comments on your site.

If you want to build up a micro community and have people returning and adding to the discussion then you would allow comments. If you don’t want people to comment on a particular post or page then you would just close comments on that page.

Configuring Your Comments Options

You can configure the options for comments in Settings/Discussion by checking the boxes you wish to apply to your blog.

You can also allow or disallow comments on a post by post basis using the built in options.

Good Comments

If you choose to allow comments you might want to moderate them for a while at least until you can ascertain the types of comments that your blog is attracting.

Although I allow comments on this blog they must be approved by me. I do not approve a lot of comments.

Here’s the short list of why your comment won’t get approved. The comment:

is irrelevant to the post
cannot be understood
does not add anything to the discussion

If you want to get your comments approved by people here’s some things to consider.

You are visiting their blog. They make the rules. If you have a conversation with someone and talk about things that are irrelevant, or just me, me, me then it’s likely that you won’t be asked around for dinner that night – same with a blog

Read the post that you want to make a comment on. Add something of value or interest to the discussion. A link to your ratty website on viagra is not valuable (on this blog anyway).

Show the blog owner that you have actually read and understood the post. Asking a question that has already been answered shows that you are not paying attention. Better yet, read the post twice

Try and add something of value, a tip, helpful advice, additional information, your results – this all contributes to the discussion.

The bad comments

If you have a blog you know that not all comments will be “good” some will be plain bad. Here’s some examples:

“hey take a look at my website”

um why? You haven’t given me any reason to waste my time going to your website. Your comment is irrelevant to the post and adds nothing of value

“hey wanna be partners”

um why? You think I’m going to partner up with some stranger that hasn’t given me any reason or any idea what I would be partnering in. Did I lose my mind? No

Of course, some of us shortcut the process of leaving comments by paying a virtual assistant or outsourcer to leave comments on blogs for us for link love. If you are doing that make sure that you check the urls so you can ascertain the quality of the comment. If the comment is good – sit back and relax. If the comment is bad you either need to do more training or hire better people that understand that the goal is actually for the comment to be approved not deleted.

The ugly

Of course, where there are comments there are spammers. There are a lot of anti spam wordpress plugins that you can use for protection. I’ll give you a run down on these in the next post

Contact

I’ve just been driving for 12 hours so maybe I’m tired. But, I’m also frustrated. After being away from my computer for 2 days I come home to the usual assortment of marketing emails, work emails, blog emails, customer emails and my bug bear the contact form email.

A contact form is included on this site for customers to contact me about a) a product that might not have its own section in the forum area or b) where they might have lost a download link or c) affiliate opportunities d) reviews

This site receives a lot of email contact. So much so that I’m seriously considering removing the contact form completely.

Some of the contact emails are:

customers for download links
customers wanting to report bugs or request features for products
people wanting me to build them a site
people wanting to me to create them a theme
people wanting me to create a plugin for them
people wanting me to review a plugin
people who can’t configure/work a plugin/theme
people that want me to solve their problems for them

Good Contact

If a customer wants to request a download link etc they are welcome to do so via the contact form or use the email address on their receipt. That’s fine.

Wrong Contact

If you want to report a bug or feature request for a product there is a forum that is linked to on any email for that product. Programmers look at the forum for bugs/feature requests not in my email account. This is the way that gets solutions and results faster.

Annoying Contact

The emails that come under the annoying category are ones that, should have been left as a comment on the relevant post and want me do someone elses work for them.

Put yourself in my shoes

If I answer every request for assistance in fixing someone elses wordpress plugin or theme how:

a) will I ever get any work done; and
b) how will the plugin developer/theme developer know there is a problem

If you have problems with plugins or themes the place to go is the developer of that theme or plugins site. If it is in the WordPress repository you might also find that there has been forum discussion on it. This means that the developer is alerted to the problem and they may already know the fix. Bottom line – things can get fixed faster if they are sent to the right place.

For the record, because I get asked this so many times …. I’m flattered that you would like me to make you a theme, plugin or your site for you but I don’t have time to do any of these things to the quality that I would want – so I don’t. I recommend that if you don’t have those skills already check the forums that you are a member of you might already know someone who does. If not, check out Freelancer or RAC for some great people to outsource the work to.

If You Use A Contact Form

Consider if you really, really need it. My contact form is turning into a headache for me. Is it possible that yours might do the same? If you are currently using a contact form, check how many emails you are receiving – it might be more than you think! If there are common themes write a post addressing that concern. If there is a lot of emails it might indicate that a product is in order! Most importantly, consider what would happen to your blog if you remove the contact form. Would you have irate visitors/customers/readers? Or just more time?

If you really do need the contact form for customers or your visitors then depending on the volume of email you might want to consider a Help Desk with canned responses, a live Help Desk or a virtual assistant that eases some of the contact load.

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Have fun with WP :)

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