Have you ever seen websites that offer voting, badges, social sharing, social logins along with other cool features in their comments area? Do you Want to remodify your WordPress comments to do the same? In this article, we will show you how to improve WordPress comments with De:comments and make them more interactive.
What is De:comments? Why it is needed to make your Comments Engaging?
De:comments is a premium WordPress plugin that offers a range of tools to increase engagement on your site. Here are some things that your users can do with de:comments:
Users can use social login feature and sign in with their existing social accounts.
Users can vote on comments to like or dislike them.
Each single comment can be shared on social networks.
Users can add images, GIFs, videos, Tweets, and status updates in their comments.
You can encourage returning users with badges that they can earn by participating on your site.
Many of these features can be added by using a combination of other plugins, however that comes with it’s own complexities. De:comments provides the complete package that’s easy to use and simple to setup.
How to Setup De:Comments in WordPress
#Step 1: Installing De:comments Plugin
The first thing you need to do is to get the De:comments plugin. It costs about $50 for a single site license with one year of support and updates.
After that, you need to install and activate the De:comments plugin. Once activation, simply visit Comments » de:comments page to configure the plugin.
#Step 2: Removing De:comments Logo and Link
In the comments section of De:comments settings, the first option is to show or hide De:comments logo below the comment form. You can check this box to remove de:comments logo and link from your comment form.
#Step 3: Giving Users Freedom Delete and add Quotes to comments
The next option is to allow users to quote specific comments in their replies which can be a useful feature for conversations.
After that there is ‘time to edit / delete comments’ options. This is a really useful option as it allows users to edit or even delete their comment with in a given time period. Sometimes people comment in a rush and want to edit or take back what they said. There are other ways to add the same feature in WordPress, see our tutorial on how to allow users to edit their comments in WordPress.
By default WordPress comment form usually appears after the comments at the bottom of a page. De:comments settings allows you to put the comment box at top, just like Disqus and Livefyre.
#Step4: Preventing Spammy Content
The next option is really important and requires your special attention. This option allows you to add or remove nofollow from links added by commenters on your WordPress site. By default WordPress adds nofollow to all links in a comment. We strongly recommend you to click on the nofollow button to keep spam comments low.
#Step5: Selecting The Number of Comments to be Displayed
In the next option, you will be able to select the number of comments to display per page or use infinite scroll for loading comments.
Add Social Logins in WordPress Comments with De:comments
#Step6: Enabling Social Media Buttons
The next section in the De:comments settings is labeled social. Here you will configure the social features of the plugin.
To enable social login, you will need to install and setup WordPress Social Login plugin. for more details checkout our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
You can select the social networks you want to display in the share dialog. De:comments supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vkontakte, and Odnoklassniki social networks.
#Step7: Enable Comment Voting
The voting section in the De:comments allows you to enable a comment voting system. You can set a minimum number of likes required for a comment to be displayed on top. This allows you to display comments with higher votes to appear on top and disliked comments at the bottom.
If you are not interested in this feature, then you can just turn off the dislike feature.
#Step8: Adding Comment Subscriptions
A great way to keep users coming back is by allowing them to subscribe to comments. De:comments allow users to subscribe to comments for a post or for replies to selected comments.
#Step9: Adding Badges(Likes and dislikes buttons)
De:comments allows you to add badges for user achievements. Currently there are three kind of achievements that you can assign a badge. For getting a pre-defined number of likes, getting a pre-defined number of dislikes, and for posting a certain number of comments. Hopefully there will be more achievements added in the future versions of the plugin. For example, users with X number of social shares or users giving away most likes or dislikes and so on.
#Step10: Customizing Comment Subscription Email Notifications
Another settings in De:comments you should consider is notifications. This is where you can customize the emails sent out by the plugin for comment subscriptions. The default comment notifications work fine, but feel free to customize it to your liking.
If your users are not receiving comment notifications in their inbox, then check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending emails issue.
Once you have followed all the steps you might get a result in the image below
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Additional Reads
- How to moderate comments in WordPress
- How to allow users to subscribe to comments on WordPress
- How to paginate comments in WordPress to boost SEO
- How to notify users to replies on their comments in WordPress
- How To export email addresses From WordPress Comments
That’s all we hope this article helped you improve WordPress comments with De:comments. You may also want to check out our guide on how to export email addresses from WordPress comments.
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