Howard Harkness (owner of Celtic Fiddler) was the winner of our free Ipod contest and says, “The iPod arrived Wednesday. So now I can not only vouch for the ebook, but I can vouch for the fact that they really did give away a new 8Gb iPod Nano like they said they would. I see that they are indeed practicing exactly what they preach in their ebook (which I went back and read again, this time much more thoroughly, and came away even more impressed than before), and I think that they deserve success in their Internet marketing efforts.”
You can Howard’s full blog post about our free blogging guide (and his Ipod win) here: Freebie Blogging Information

Mike Verdicchio (owner of Confidence and Joy) said, “Particularly helpful is their step-by-step guide, with images, of  ‘must-have’ plugin that you need to install on your blog, plus the necessary tweaks for those plugins.”

You can Mike’s full blog post about our free blogging guide here: Are You Blogging?

Disclaimer: Mike is also a client of mine for my blog solutions.

The Professor (owner of scripts for your website) says, “I’ve seen lots of so-called “blogging guides” that tell you what you should do, but don’t give you any clue as to HOW to go about doing it. There’s a new one out, and I just got a copy for review the other day. So I took a look at it — it’s got all the details. If you’re a newbie, you’ll love this.”

You can read The Professor’s full blog post about our free guide here: Everything You Need To Know About Blogging

Martin Henking (owner of iminternetgeldverdienen) says, “If you are looking for an ebook that explains them in understandable terms , how to make money with a blog , then I can highly recommend blogging income.”
You can Martin’s full blog post about our free guide here: Income Blogging

Scott Moody (owner of Soccer Fit Academy) says, “Over this time our blog has grown from 2-3 readers per day to over 300 readers per day! One of the resources that helped us out during this transition to social media was Andrew and Joel’s Blog Blueprint to Blogging Guide.”

You can Scott’s full blog post about our free guide here: Thinking of Starting a Blog?

Jack Heape (owner of web marketing local) says, “This blogging guide is laid out in an extremely detailed step-by-step fashion. They make it very easy for a neophyte to find their way through the intricacies of setting up a WordPress blog.”
You can Jack’s full blog post about our free guide here: Income Blogging Guide Blueprint Review

Iroko Akinola (owner of 15klaptops) says, “For me, this is like the ultimate blogging blueprint, it takes blogging from the scratch to the height of it…”
You can Iroko’s full blog post about our free blogging guide here: Building A Successful Blog: The Income Blogging Guide Blueprint Approach

Bob McCluskey (owner of Going Strong Seniors) says, “If you don’t understand all of the jargon…don’t worry, they will be completely explained and you will learn some very interesting things about Internet marketing.”
You can Bob’s full blog post about our free blogging guide here: Product Review: How to Make Money from a “Granny Blog”

Read the full post: More Income Blogging Guide Feedback

The Problem

On my Blog page the comment count works fine, as you can see in this picture:

The 44 text is displaying perfectly on the Blog, category and archive pages. However on the single post page by default instead of the comment count it says View Comments and is cut off, as you can see below.

So to fix this (or at least change it to the way I prefer, as some people may prefer it saying View Comments), inside the wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system folder you need to edit the disqus.php file. For those not comfortable doing this, make a backup or you can always re-install a new copy of the plugin if things go wrong. On line 485 you will see this section of code:

It’s the View Comments wording here that is displaying. Luckily we can easily change this to the comment count by simply exchanging View Comments with ‘.$comment_text.’.

So once done, my single post page now looks correct, displaying the number of comments:

There, looks lovely again. This isn’t really a bug as it’s designed to say View Comments there, however in the default WordPress comment system this would show the number of comments here, so we are simply re-creating that functionality.

Read the full post: Fixing View Comments in Disqus Plugin

I was only unable to get version 1.2 working, though I didn’t try very hard to be honest.

A brief summary of the different versions of WordPress are listed below.

[Some info from the WordPress Roadmap]

I’ve also put together a couple of images showing the changes to the WordPress login screen and dashboard. Click on the images to enlarge, and depending on your browser you may have to click again to see it full screen:

To all geeks like me, enjoy!

Read the full post: WordPress Visual History

Blog Comment Systems

These systems essentially take over the whole commenting section of WordPress, replacing it with their own features and style. Often they can be a little tricky to get looking the way you want them but offer features and enhancements that you can’t get through the standard WordPress system.

Disqus

Probably the best known and most widely used (including on this site) blog comments system, Disqus allows your readers to login to your site using Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID or just leave a comment the usual way. If they sign up for a Disqus account, the beauty is that they will be logged in to any website that uses Disqus. So it saves the pain of having to type your name, email and URL each time you comment on a new site, as your login details are carried over.

You can even set it to update the comments list in real-time, though I don’t have that feature at the moment.

I love how you can set it to auto-tweet out your comment with a link back, so people who are not part of the conversation can join in. It can also send to your Facebook updates, and you get email notifications when someone replies. I like how I can manage them like normal inside my WordPress dashboard, without going to another site (though it technically is loading an external site, it saves me going elsewhere). You can also customize it pretty easily if you know CSS.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. Some people have had problems with it loading correctly, often people can be confused by the new system, and I had problems of my own regarding email notifications when there was a system wide problem with Disqus.

Intense Debate

Intense Debate is similar to Disqus but it is run by the folks who created WordPress. I used it for a short time but found that not many other sites used it. As it also allows you to be automatically logged in to other sites using the same system, like Disqus, I only found one other site I commented on that used Intense Debate. This massively negated the benefit of the system, and one Disqus has a big advantage with from the sheer number of sites using it.

It actually works very nicely and is easy-ish to customize and integrates very nicely with WordPress. But it won’t get more users until it has more users to make it worthwhile. If that makes sense.
[Just announced: Intense Debate users will be automatically logged in to comment on WordPress.com blogs. That's one way to suddenly get logged into 10 million blogs...]

Echo

I actually had Echo (formerly called JS Kit Echo) installed for a while. At first I liked it and then I wrote a post about the ways I thought Echo could be improved. The system has many advantages, it pulls in blog comments and mentions from Twitter and Facebook (so do Disqus and Intense Debate), though it does this in real time without refreshing the page. You can include HTML, photos and even video in comments which is very nice, however it has some major flaws.

- Converting your old comments to the system is not quick, easy or perfect.
- You cannot manage them inside WordPress.
- You cannot edit them. Not even your own!
- You cannot separate trackbacks.
- You cannot have more than one level of threading.
- You cannot disable comments on an individual post or page.

These are hardly earth shattering features and most are ones already built into WordPress so it seems odd to take that functionality away. So it’s not recommended for the lack of basic features.

Overall
Disqus is my favorite choice and has some great improvements over the standard WordPress commenting system. However there are ways to “pimp” that system using plugins, that I’ll take a look at below.

Blog Comment Plugins

While the above are also plugins, they take over the whole commenting system of WordPress. If you’re using the in-built WordPress system then there are some plugins that will enhance your commentators experience. Akismet is the default anti-spam plugin that comes with WordPress, but below I’ll concentrate on functionality changes.

Action Comments

The first option in the image above is a great paid-for plugin called Action Comments (affiliate link so be wary of “upsell” offers on the page to try to bundle in other products you may not need). It’s pretty cheap and easy to install and set up. If the box is checked it will sign the person up for your email list (usually AWeber) and, if you have your list autoresponder set up, send them your free guide. This makes it easy for people to be added to your list, and provides a thank you to first time commentators.

Comment Luv

You may have seen the second item in the above image on many sites, where a Comment Luv check box and logo appears. It will automatically display the latest post from the URL you enter in the Website field of the comment form for other readers to see and potentially click on. There are even versions for Intense Debate and Echo (but not Disqus as far as I could tell).

Subscribe to Comments

One of the best plugins ever, Subscribe to Comments adds a checkbox underneath the comment box that allows the commentator to get emails when new comments are added (the bottom box on the above image). Bear in mind that if you’re logged in to your blog as the admin, you will not see this checkbox on your single post pages, more likely a message saying “You are the author of this entry. Manage Subscriptions”. Brilliant and indispensable.

Do Follow

If you want commentators to receive a backlink from your site as a thank you for leaving a comment, then the Sem DoFollow plugin will remove the default NoFollow attribute applied to links in comments. This may increase the number of messages you get, but also possibly increase the number of spam messages you get too as people comment only in order to gain a backlink.

AJAX Comments

If you feel your visitors will benefit from previewing their comment before submitting, then AJAX Comments Preview is a nice way of doing it without reloading the page. There is also AJAX Edit Comments, that goes even further, adding lots of inline editing options, but the latest version is paid-for.

Comment Timeout

One way of preventing spam on older posts is to close comments after a certain amount of time. Comment Timeout allows you to close them on old posts, but keep them open if they have had recently approved comments and are still popular with readers.

Extended Comment Options

If you feel you need more options for comments, such as editing settings for posts in bulk or automating closure of comments (similar to Comment Timeout), then try Extended Comment Options. It may not work on the latest version of WordPress. It did for me when testing but it’s not officially compatible yet.

Comment Rating

If you would like your readers to rate comments and help moderate them by flagging inappropriate messages, then Comment Rating allows you to allow them to do just that.

Simple CAPTCHA

Some people like to add a CAPTCHA verification form to the bottom of their comments form if they’re having trouble with spam that other plugins aren’t catching. The Simple CAPTCHA plugin easily adds one of these to your site, though beware, it could put people off from commenting. Again, it worked for me when testing but is not officially working for the latest WordPress version.

Blog Comment Hacks

Sometimes plugins aren’t enough, and you need to get dirty with the code to make the comments do what you would like. Don’t worry though, some of these are much easier than you would think!

Change Your Blog Comment Wording

Are you sick of seeing “0 Comments” and want to change it to be something more encouraging? Then follow my guide to changing default WordPress comment wording.

Threaded Comments

Previously a plugin, now it is built in to WordPress (check it’s enabled under Settings > Discussion). Some themes still don’t support this, but you can easily add it with some know how. Kim has a great guide for how to add threaded comments to a theme here.

Change Author Comment Appearance

Often bloggers want to change how their own comments appear on their own blog so they stand out and can be noticed easily. This is now very simple in WordPress, just add a new CSS class and color for the author style. See this short guide on highlighting author comments.

Separate Comments and Trackbacks

I don’t like those nice trackbacks appearing as if they were a normal comment. To separate simply follow this guide to separating trackbacks from comments. Not for those who feel faint when viewing code, but it’s very easy.

Should I bother changing my blog comments?

It’s entirely up to you of course. Check our other people’s blogs, see what they do and see if you like it. Read Antti’s great post on how to get more blog comments and discussion, and then decide if you need to do something that makes it better and easier for you and your readers to get to know each other.

Have I missed any systems? Any other great blog plugins you know of? Are there any other useful hacks I haven’t mentioned?

Read the full post: Blog Comment Tools For The Talkative Blogger

JS Kit Echo Comments

You may have noticed that all my blog posts had 0 comments for a few days. This was while the team at JS Kit imported my old comments into their system. Used by sites such as Technorati and Guy Kawasaki it essentially pulls in other places where your blog post is being talked about into your blog posts comments. This keeps your blog as the central hub for your online activity, which appeals to my sense of neatness adn order!

So Twitter tweets that mention your post, Diggs, or Friendfeed updates are added to your post comments. Facebook doesn’t seem to be on there yet but I’m hoping that will be added soon.

Give it a try below in the comments and see what you think. I’m still playing with it but it looks good so far. It costs $12 per year to use, and I was a little disappointed in how long it took for them to import my comments – 6 days. I did provide them with the wrong URL to login (oops), but over 24 hours for each email reply and no reply over a weekend is frustrating for a new customer.

Lijit Search

The second addition is the lijit search. I had a great demo from Perry Quinn at Blog World, their plugin essentially replaces the standard WordPress search sidebar widget. The search results are similar in a way to JS Kit in that they also show results from my extended network. So Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and various other sites are also searched and relevant results displayed in a Content tab on the results page. It’s at the top right of each blog post page so give it a go and see if the results work for you. I’m not 100% it’s all working yet.

Although I would turn them off if I could, the ads that appear on the results page are part of a revenue share, so if you’re looking at earning some money on your blog it may be worth giving lijit a try.

As always, I’m interested in your comments so please let me know what you think below.

Read the full post: Blog Changes On BTG

Currently I have two “products” that you can earn an affiliate commission on. My complete Blog Setup that is listed on the homepage, and of course the WordPress Training Videos. Both earn a $50 commission paid after 30 days (minimum of $100), and I’ve just added some new banners such as the one below that you can get easily from the Banners section of the Marketing Materials.

There is also a 300×250, and 125×125 ads, or of course you can use a text link too. Just let me know if you need any more!

You can sign-up or login here.

Read the full post: Affiliate Program Now Open!

Read the full post: Yes, I Set Up Membership Sites

Weblog Tools Collection has further details and a great list of links to answer more of your questions. You can also check here to see if you host can run Wordpress 2.7.

Read the full post: Are You Scared of Wordpress 2.7?

In addition to the previous excellent 32 minute Conversion Blogging video that takes you inside his Internet business, Yaro Starak has just released two further videos called How I Make Money Blogging (22 minutes) and Show Me The Money (17 minutes).

Even if you’re not planning on joining, the two Conversion Blogging and How To Make Money Blogging free videos are really worth watching to give you insight into how a blog can become a major source of income for you. There is very little that Yaro doesn’t share with you about his journey and how he makes money online, so from just watching these videos you can learn a lot about what might work best for you. The Show Me The Money video is just proof of how Yaro earns his money, so if you need convincing, take a look.

As most of you know, I am a graduate of Blog Mastermind myself, and that is why I have faith in it and why I promote it. It is the only blogging course I promote, so please let me know any questions you have about it and I would be happy to try to answer them for you.

Read the full post: Blog Mastermind Re-Opens Its Doors

The first is the Google Analytics plugin. You will need to install the latest version, then on the Google Analytics option page you will need to click Reset all settings at the bottom, and then re-enter your UA number and select the options you require. If you use the robots meta plugin and RSS Footer plugin from the same author you will need to do a similar thing.

Secondly the Unique Blog Designs Block Ad plugin does not currently work. A fix will be available very shortly so just hang on a few days if you use this plugin and want to upgrade.

Third, another popular plugin, Popularity Contest, has issues. A fix can be found here.

Look here for a further list of plugins that don’t work with Wordpress 2.6.

Please let me know if you would like to upgrade and have any of these plugins installed.

Read the full post: Wordpress 2.6 Plugin Issues