Comments can play a significant role in increasing engagement rates. Especially on social media, you will notice that the more comments you receive, the greater the reach of your post becomes.
Despite the fact that comments do not work like that on websites, they will increase the number of returning visitors.
Some visitors prefer to read the comments in order to find a solution rather than the actual blog post. As long as it increases the dwell time on your website, it is acceptable.
Many webmasters are concerned that too many spammy links will adversely affect their sites, but as long as you have an anti-spam monitoring system, they should not have any issues.
In the case of WordPress’ vanilla commenting system, the problem is that it is too old. Users cannot add screenshots or reply in real-time.
Therefore, here is a solution for creating a real-time commenting system using WordPress.
Why You Should Use Real-Time Comments
If you are a blogger, you are aware of the importance of user engagement. Every time you publish new content on your Website, you want your visitors to return. Allowing comments on your website is one way to recall visitors.
Increase Engagement Through Comments: Everyone has their own opinion. If you allow comments on your blog, visitors will be more likely to engage with it.
Increase the dwell time on the site: Google considers dwell time, or the number of time visitors spends on the website, as an important SEO factor.
Allowing comments will enable users to express their opinions or reply to other user’s comments. As your visitors spend more time on your site, you will receive greater SEO benefits.
Comments receive more attention than blog posts: We humans prefer to hear actual stories and experiences rather than just reading one-page articles. There are forums on the Internet where people read about other people’s problems and find solutions to their own.
There may be some of your visitors who comment on something exciting about an article or topic that attracts more attention than your blog itself.
Learning from the comments: No one can claim to be the best at everything. If you write a blog post about a solution to a problem, you may discover that one of your visitors has found a better solution and commented on it. There will be something new that you will not have considered previously.
Getting Feedback From Your Visitors: The feedback you receive from your visitors will motivate you and other users to continue to consume your content. When you write a solution to a problem, a user may send his feedback via a comment.
Let them decide whether they appreciate your efforts or not. Some readers may be interested in learning more about a particular topic, which will help you improve the article with content that is relevant to the blog’s audience.
Content Ideas: Once you write a blog on a particular issue, other people will have similar issues. Some may need a more detailed explanation of how things work.
In your blogs, you may have missed addressing a specific issue that someone might have. By scanning the comments, you can identify potential future content ideas & more.
Building a Community: You will notice that the same group of people is posting comments on web pages. You can interact with these users and add them to your mailing list. Create a community with forums or social media groups to gain loyal followers.
Comments Help with SEO: You can use comments to improve your search engine ranking. Google bots want to see engagement on your website. Engagement includes frequent visits to the site, sharing on social media, and commenting on the blog.
You should consider having a high number of relevant comments on your Website as a good signal for Google.
Note- User-generated content can also benefit from SEO if the keywords are evenly distributed throughout the content. As a major SEO factor, Google places great emphasis on the optimization of on-page keywords. Unless your keywords become spammy through comments, this can help you achieve a higher ranking.
Not So Positive Side of Comments
Comments can be an effective tool for increasing engagement, but they can also be a source of negativity. Some bloggers find that it is more harmful than beneficial to their blogs.
- Spammy Comments: Using anti-spam plugins is a good way to prevent spammy comments such as irrelevant links and comments generated by robots. However, spammy comments may slip past the plugins in some cases. In recent years, Google has become increasingly strict about spamming keywords or links and penalizes any website using tricks to manipulate the SERP results.
- Moderation: This is the most challenging aspect of accepting comments on the Website. People usually leave all sorts of comments in the comment box if you leave it open. If you do not want any links or irrelevant comments on your site, you will need to manually allow comments.
- Negativity: Blogging is a highly competitive field today. Additionally, some bloggers attempt to gain higher rankings by competing with others rather than optimizing their own blogs properly. Others will spread malicious comments on your blog for no reason. Most business websites disable comments on their blogs for this reason.
Making a Real-Time Commenting System In WordPress
WordPress’s default commenting system can handle blog comments, but it is old and unprofessional.
We recommend using a commenting plugin or third-party commenting software if you are interested in making the most of your comments.
You can use these tools to make your comments section a prominent part of your blog. Some sites allow users to upvote, downvote, like, or dislike the comments of others.
With some plugins, you will be able to mark any comment as a pinned comment, so it becomes a separate part of your blog.
Tools to Make a Real-Time Commenting System
If you are a developer or you are using a custom website, you can build your own real-time commenting system.
Additionally, you can use a plugin or software to add a commenting system to your WordPress website so that you do not need to develop a custom commenting system.
While there are many SaaS tools and plugins available, we recommend Disqus as third-party software or wpDisquz as a WordPress comment plugin.
Alternatively, you may use similar tools of your choice, and we will include a list of tools that you may find useful.
Adding Disqus to the Website
The process of adding Disqus is quite straightforward. The first step is to register with Disqus using your email address.
Click on the “Get Started” button to be directed to a page offering two options. You may use Disqus only for commenting or integrating it into your website.
After choosing to install Disqus, you will see a registration form. Add your site name, type on the form, and click Next.
The next step is to select your platform; in our case, it will be WordPress. Then, you will need to configure your site with the Discus plugin.
You need to install the plugins on your WordPress website and then click on “Site Configuration.” To configure the plugins, click to enable the option to make changes from the bottom of the page.
In the Shortname field, enter the name of the site. Copy the “Site Secret Key” and save it. You have now successfully installed Discus on your website.
Now you can use this real-time commenting system to replace your regular boring WordPress commenting.
Alternatives to Discus
Although the free plan of Discus offers a lot, you may find that upgrading to the premium plan is more beneficial. If you wish to compare Discus with similar tools, the following is a list of them.
- IntenseDebate.
- Viafoura.
- Insticator.
- Thrive Comments.
- CommentLuv.
- Metype.
- OpenWeb.
- GraphComment.
- Commento
- Muut
There are numerous similar apps available, but these satisfy what you need in terms of a real-time commenting system.
Adding wpDiscuz on the Website
In order to control your commenting system from your dashboard and save comments on your own server, you may wish to use a dedicated plugin. As an example, we will use wpDiscuz, but you may also use other plugins.
Add the plugin from the WordPress repository. During the installation wizard, you will be able to select the theme and design of the comment box in 3 different steps and then click on the finish installation. This is all you need to do in order to install wpDiscuz.
Although Discus provides a basic commenting feature with its free plan, wpDiscuz provides additional features. You can add an upvote/downvote reaction.
It includes live commenting and reactions, article ratings, the ability to add media to comments, as well as gamification.
Additionally, you can add an inline commenting feature to a selected part of the article. In this way, users will be able to express their opinions directly under the paragraph of content.
By using Google reCaptcha and User Authorization, you can make the comment box more secure.
To prevent bot comments, you should use the login and subscriber features. Furthermore, you can allow your visitors to use their social media accounts to comment.
If you prefer to avoid all these advanced settings, your comment box will have a simpler appearance, as shown in the example below.
wpDiscuz Alternatives
Although wpDiscuz is an excellent featureful plugin, there are also other options you should consider.
- Postmatic
- Replybox
- Replyable
- Jetpack Comments
- Akismet
- Yoast Comment Hacks
- WpDevArt Facebook Comments
- Simple Comment Editing
You can use third-party tools to host your comments on your site. The WP dashboard will not allow you to customize the design and settings of the comment box.
If you wish to keep everything in one place and load your comments from your web hosting, you can use the WP plugins.
Conclusion
As you stick to this guide till now, I hope you understand how to build a real-time commenting system in WordPress. Although commenting has a bad effect if you can’t monitor, I think you should have that for user feedback.
If your blog gets thousands of comments, it might slow the page. In that case, you can use a third-party tool like Discus but sacrifice the easy editing feature from the dashboard.
Yet if you want to use plugins like wpDiscuz, then you should use plugins like Lazy Load for Comments to make your Website faster.
