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? Check.

Increase style? Check.

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

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.

2 thoughts on “Getting the Most Out of Your Comment Replies with Thesis”

  1. Hey dude,
    I got to your site via a post of yours from DIYTHEMES. Awesome theme isnt it? Hey your fonts are kinda distorting and withing the posts they are all in bold. (maybe thats what you wanted in the first place?)

    I had the same problem earlier, and after i redesigned my site i noticed some formatting on older posts was the problem.

    Well good luck!

  2. It is indeed an awesome theme — a theme I’m definitely not using to its full potential here, but I hope to rectify that with a major site reboot I’m working on — structural & design changes, plus hopefully tons of new content to go along with it.

    I’m not seeing the issue you describe, though; what browser are you using, and which specific page is it occurring on? Thanks.

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