Getting the Most Out of Your Comment Replies with Thesis

Comments are awe­some. For many blog­gers, it is the read­ers’ feed­back which makes blog­ging all the more worthwhile.

I could not agree more — it’s a good deal of fun when blog entries become full-​​blown conversations!

When that hap­pens, though, you’re going to find your­self reply­ing to com­ments… a lot. And while that’s def­i­nitely not a bad thing, what hap­pens when there are more than one com­ment to reply to? What hap­pens when you revisit your blog after a day and your most recent block­buster post has dozens of responses to which you want to reply?

How do you go about doing that? Do you take the Twitter approach, pref­ac­ing the name of each per­son you’re reply­ing to with an “@”?

@Aldrin — Quite right!

Or maybe your approach is sim­pler, more elegant:

Armstrong: Thanks for your com­ment, and thanks for visiting!

Whatever you use, you want some­thing that’s going to look good and set your responses apart from the pack. Addressing your com­menters by name is a great way to let them know that you’re pay­ing atten­tion to them; shouldn’t you let them know with style?

Using the Thesis theme frame­work for WordPress, you can!

Thesis, the mag­num opus of WordPress theme designer Chris Pearson, pro­vides a very sim­ple (sim­pler with a plu­gin, as explained later) way to address your com­menters by name with style, all the while pro­vid­ing a link ref­er­ence back to the com­ment you’re reply­ing to.

Increase acces­si­bil­ity?

Increase style?

Can be used by blog author and in-​​the-​​know commenters?

Thesis for the Win!

So what’s the method?

See for yourself:

[pre][code]<a class=“comment_link” href=”#comment-1969″>Conrad</a>: Thanks for vis­it­ing, Captain![/code][/pre]

The result?

Conrad: Thanks for vis­it­ing, Captain!

Beautiful. Elegant. And a link to instantly refer back to the orig­i­nal comment!

But… that’s a lot to remem­ber, isn’t it? And typ­ing all that in every time? Yeah, I know, it can be a bit of a chore. So I com­mend to you Ozh’ Absolute Comments.

Absolute Comments is a handy plu­gin which allows blog admin­is­tra­tors to reply to com­ments directly from the admin­is­tra­tion panel. That’s a huge time-​​saver on its own, but the plu­gin also allows you to setup a tem­plate with which all of your quick replies will be populated.

In the Settings -> Absolute Comments panel of your admin­is­tra­tion area — assum­ing, of course, the Absolute Comments plu­gin is active — use this bit of code in the “Reply Prefill” field to make tak­ing advan­tage of rockin’ Thesis-​​powered replies both quicker and easier:

<a href='%%link%%' class='comment_link'>%%name%%</a>: 

Take your replies to the next level! If you’ve found this use­ful, sub­scribe to my syn­di­ca­tion feed or fol­low me on Twitter!

Disclaimer: I work for Chris Pearson & DIYthemes, pro­vid­ing sup­port in var­i­ous ways for the Thesis theme framework.