Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Blogging ~ Adding Threaded Comments

One of the most frustrating things about the Blogger platform is the lack of ability to reply to a comment and not having those replies show up as "threaded" similar to a forum.  I am sure that many of you who use  blogger know what I am talking about!  The standard comment feature that Blogger supplies basically only gives you two options to reply to comments:
  1. The first option is to reply to a comment by sending an email.  This option works great by letting the reader know that you got their comment and you can answer any questions or let them know what your next action is.  The problem is that when you respond via email other readers do not get to see your response.
  2. The second option is to place your reply as a comment.  By using this option you will let all your readers know that you have responded and you can answer questions or state your next action, again this also has problems because your comment is just placed in the order it is received along with all of the other comments.  You may have nine comments total and you want to respond to the fourth comment, but the problem is that your response will only show up in "real time", so in this case it would go into the #10 spot, there is no way to get your reply to show up right under the #4 comment.

 Now that my blog is growing I am seeing more and more comments  from my readers (YEAH), but I am at a loss of how to respond so that each reader gets the attention they deserve!  I have so many new comments posted now, that I am not sure how I am going to respond to all of these!  I spent a few hours last night researching my options, trying to come up with an alternative to the standard comment feature and I think I may have found a solution in the form of Disqus.

Disqus allows me to reply to individual comments and my replies are shown directly under the comment I am replying to.  Disqus basically installs a "forum" on your blog in place of the standard comment feature, therefore allowing threaded comments.  In the scheme of things I think I would rate myself at a knowledge level around 6 or 7 out of 10 in regards to computers, programs and formatting.  Disqus is not necessarily for the novice, but I was able to install it and set up the features that I wanted with relative ease and as a bonus Disqus did not require modification of my .html coding.  Disqus also gives the reader a chance to subscribe to comments on individual posts!  Readers can now be notified when they get a replies or new comments are posted. 

I think that this will be a helpful tool for my blog and I look forward to putting Disqus to the test!  As always I appreciate any comments, especially if you find something about my new comment/reply feature that you do or do not like!
~Keeping Life Simple by Mixing It Up!
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