Disable third-party comment plugins. Simplicity is key and often more than meets the eye. Providing a simple option for WordPress posts commentary stands of significant importance for your website visitors. Especially if it is a controversial topic where your intent is to generate dynamic content through conversation. Over the last six years, I have learned (the hard way) that in a lot of situations simplicity is key for web users.

Complexities are in fact challenges for majority of web users. For example, take a look at companies like Google or Apple. Their products are designed with simplicity in mind. Simple yet functional. Less is more. That is actually quite hard to believe especially with a CMS platform such as WordPress. In a WordPress posts commentary sense type of way. Meaning that it is completely unnecessary to utilize any third-party additions in order to achieve more comments on articles.

Blogging has definitely come a long way. Especially since 2009 when I first introduced my own blog under www.ivantemelkov.com. A domain that to this day I still own for the sake of branding purposes. In those early days the blogging world was a bit different. Perhaps far less saturated than it is today. During that period it seemed as if commenting plugins such as Disqus Commenting System were their prime. So, naturally you have everyone from early adopters to experienced bloggers seeking to enhance their WordPress posts commentary functionality. Including myself.

During the last six years I’ve seen few and between comments appear on my blog. For some time I began to wonder if it was the content that difficult or even uninformative to my users. These various speculations were proved wrong in a variety of different ways. For instance, I was able to discover new content ideas through deeper involvement with Google Analytics. Secondly, my blog articles were being shared frequently so that wasn’t a potential cause to worry about. In the essence of things, neither content or social interaction were deemed as rulable causes that may have impacted WordPress posts commentary.

So, this time around during a problem solving exercise I decided to try something a bit different. That consisted of disabling any third-party commenting system  plugin I currently had in place including Disqus. This seemed quite unusual from me but in actuality provided to be one of the best functionality decisions I’ve made on my blog in quite some time.

Takeaways for Improving Your WordPress Post Commentary

Think twice before using any third-party plugin to administer WordPress posts commentary features. Below is a multi-part screenshot displaying the existing settings within my blog. You can locate these under Settings -> Discussion section of the left-hand sidebar.

These settings can be fine-tuned further if necessary. There are several key elements under the Discussion Settings  section imperative for proper functionality. One of the most important ones that I believe should be enabled is under the E-mail me whenever section (Screenshot 1) and ensuring that each comment is held for moderation. Enabling this setting will help prevent any unwanted WordPress posts commentary giving you the ability to administer the comment first prior to publication. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.