Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin Reviewed

Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

This plugin ‘plugged’ a gaping hole in the ‘Make Money Online Free With Court’ ship. I wasn’t able to properly answer questions that were left in comments. This plugin makes it so that I can reply directly to a comment and have my reply show directly under the question – in the same box, in fact!

I don’t think that there is a better plugin for building a community. Yes, the ‘DoFollow‘ and ‘Top Commentators‘ plugins reward people for commenting, but that definitely doesn’t mean that you are building a sense of community. Helping people is what builds a sense of community, and you can do this by answering their questions! I can’t imagine a better way than using the plugin.

SEO Benefits
I know that usually when I review WordPress plugins I give my view from an SEO standpoint. With this plugin I don’t really see any positives and negatives except that fact that you are building a solid community, which will surely increase the amount of people that link to you. That is the one, although indirect positive.

How To Properly Use The Plugin
This plugin can’t achieve its purpose without added effort on your part. Use the plugin to answer people’s questions and to show them that you care. If you honestly care about helping your readers they will be able to tell. Reply to their comments, answer their questions, instruct, add to the discussion.

Installing The Plugin

Disclaimer: This plugin is fairly difficult and I wouldn’t go past this point if you don’t know how to manipulate HTML. Back everything up beforehand. Honestly, if you don’t back-up your theme’s files, you will wish you did. I obviously can’t take responsibility for you messing your site up and I provide this walk-through as-is and without warranty. I repeat: I will take no responsibility whatsoever if your site gets messed up! That said, this obviously worked for me.

• Go here and download the plugin.
• Extract the plugin. To do this you will right click your mouse and select ‘Extract, Extract All, or Extract Here’. (Any of the 3 will work)
• Upload the ‘briansthreadedcomments’ folder to your wp-content/plugins folder on your site’s server. Here’s a lesson on how to upload using FTP if you need it.
• Open up the folder that your theme is in and open up the comments.php file. Copy all of the contents and save them using notepad. You’re backing the file up in case you make a mistake somewhere! Even though I tell you to do this, some of you will skip this step and regret it.
• The plugin comes with a new comments.php file; you need to paste it into the folder of your theme, replacing the old comments.php. Don’t go messing with the first comments.php file you see! Make sure it’s the one in the folder of your current theme.
• Upload the new comments.php to wp-content/themes/*YourCurrentTheme*/
• Login to your WordPress admin, go to plugins, find ‘Brians Threaded Comments’ and click the ‘Activate’ link that is next to it.
• Voila! That’s it.

My Overall Thoughts On The Plugin
Everyone that hopes to get to the elite level should install it. It adds a lot of value to your site, if used properly. It won’t bring extra visitors to your site, but it will definitely help you to retain them.

Henry Ford: To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.

P.S. – I need to say thanks to Ryan Shamus who nominated me as one of the top 10 emerging, influential blogs of 2007.

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