A few months ago, I quietly changed my blog comment settings to automatically close comments after 30 days. After this worked so well, I decided to reduce the “comment window” to only 14 days.
Here’s why I decided to do this.
Reason #1 – I’ve had quite a lot of work to do this year, and I don’t always have time to reply to comments. This is especially true for comments that are added to old posts. Once a post is more than a month old, the discussion has moved elsewhere and a new comment can be a hassle to deal with.
Reason #2 – In spite of sophisticated spam filters like Akismet, every blog is still susceptible to comment spam. What’s more, the older the post, the more spam it’s likely to attract. So by automatically closing comments in 14 days, I’ve literally eliminated my blog comment spam problem altogether.
Reason #3 – A 14-day comment window encourages people to comment now instead of later. Furthermore, those who decide to comment before the window closes are rewarded with a link back to their blog or web site. People who come along later do not get that privilege.
I know a number of bloggers who’ve decide to turn off comments altogether. While I’ve considered it, I actually like to get comments and respond to them.
So, for me, a 14-day comment policy is the perfect compromise. It allows me to keep comments open, but also: prevents old discussions from being reopened; eliminates blog comment spam; and encourages readers to comment before the 14 days is up.
-Ryan M. Healy
P.S. As of November 2010, I’m experimenting with a 90-day comment policy because my readers told me they wanted more than 14 days to comment.
About Ryan M. Healy
Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including BoostCTR, Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising, and business growth, has been featured in publications like Feed Front magazine, and is a regular contributor to WordStream.com, BoostCTR.com, and MarketingForSuccess.com.
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{ 11 comments }
I think this makes sense Ryan. It's less true now you're using DISQUS which doesn't dofollow comments anyway – but it's a known SEO strategy to search blogs for posts with decent pagerank and comment on those.
For the pagerank to show up in the toolbar (or via whatever tool they're using) there has to have been a toolbar pagerank export which only happens quarterly at most. So the posts that get commented on in this way are almost always old. That doesn't help the blogger to get a discussion rolling on his/her most recent post.
Cheers,
Ian
I actually have a post I wrote yesterday about commenting as a traffic strategy. :-)
I'm torn about whether or not to keep using Disqus. I like the system, but have thought about going back to the standard WP system. The only downside is that the nested comment structure won't be preserved, so it will make a total mess of old comments.
What do you think is best: Disqus or the standard Wordpress comments?
Ryan, How is disqus workin out for you? i had and then heard about more peoples problems recently with blog and page performance and i disabled the plugin. weird page load errors, about a month ago.
Did you have to fix anything recently?
Im open to comments indefinitely but i dont have the spam issues you do. I bet having an expiring window of opportunity to comment in helps spur engagement.
Ryan, Id consider this plugin for moderation and threading. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thoughtful-…
Disqus has worked out okay. It certainly helped reduce comment spam before I began closing comments. I particularly like the threaded comments. (BTW – Thanks for that link, I'll check it out.)
I have had situations where Disqus didn't load properly or slowed down the page — so that's a drawback. And as I mentioned to Ian, it's my understanding that the threaded comments won't be preserved if I revert to WP's standard comments system. Still thinking about it though.
Ryan, great idea. I know that'd be an incentive for me to comment. Hey look, I'm commenting now. Best, Lawrence
I've had comments show up on posts that are 2-3 years old, and I sometimes have to go back and read my post to even remember what I was talking about, so I know exactly where you're coming from.
I've also seen a couple of people who limit the number of comments and close them after x comments are posted. That seems to get people to post too, since they don't know how long it will take to fill up.
I like Disqus, but I've heard that it has a performance hit when you get to a certain level of traffic. I haven't seen it personally, but a couple of people I follow with a lot of traffic have had to ditch it.
Wordpress does support threaded comments directly, but you have to have a theme that supports it (or do some coding to make it work in your theme) and I don't know if it will preserve the nesting from Disqus.
You do make some good points but wow! 14 days isn't a lot of time. I find it a bit frustrating when I get to a post that I really feel I need to comment on only to find that comments have closed. That's my 2 cents.
Hi Gerri – How many days do you think would be reasonable to leave comments open?
Hey Ryan, I personally dislike Disqus. It's really slow compared to standard WordPress, and the limited login options it gives you are irritating.
WordPress has had nested comment capabilities for quite a while now, but your theme has to support it as I recall.
If you're having trouble with spam, here's a trick I learned accidentally when I first got into WordPress: forget Akismet. Forget spam filtering at all. Just install a preview plugin like http://austinmatzko.com/wordpress-plugins/comme… and set it to mandatory post previews. You'll instantly cut your spam to zero because bots just hit the submit button, which only previews the comment; and you'll improve the quality of comments by requiring your commenters to check what they've written (:
Closing comments was the only way I could stop the spammers…
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