WordPress Plugin Offer: Read Comments with Posts in Feed Readers
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A quickie: A couple weeks ago, I posted about the fatal weakness of RSS readers - their exclusion of a feed’s comments. Derrick Kwa replied with an offer to send me a no longer available WordPress plugin that shows a post’s comments underneath it. Derrick was kind enough to follow through (and by the way, check this post for an amazing example of how hyper-linking saved Derrick from the Singaporean Army and got him an internship with Seth Godin, if I understand it correctly - a literal case of how life-changing writing online can be).
I’ve installed the plugin, and noticed that it works in Google Reader, but not in and Bloglines. I don’t know about other readers.
Here’s how it looks on one of my posts in Google Reader:
–I’m ambivalent about the plugin right now. Is it too inconvenient for readers when the rare post generates 50 or 75 comments? Or is that a price worth paying for elevating the conversations to the higher status they deserve? I lean toward the latter right now.
If you want me to send you the php file, just comment below, and I’ll shoot you the plugin file in an email.
Another option is AideRSS, a Firefox extension that modifies Google Reader in a number of ways. John Larkin was kind enough to share it in the same comment thread. It’s invitation-only, beta, right now, and I haven’t looked into it. But I share the link anyway.
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Yeah, that is one thing about the plugin that I’m unsure about as well - the scalability as comments increase. That said, my posts tend to not get any more than 5-10 comments per post, so it’s generally okay for me.
Oh, on another note, the virtual internship didn’t really save me from the army (the army’s a compulsory thing that all guys have to go through), but it did give me something to do while I wait to go into the army. And it’s an awesome experience so far. =).
Derrick Kwa
26 May 08 at 12:52 pm
Another alternative is the superb Better Greader plugin from Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/trick-out-google-reader-with-better-greader-262020.php
Beyond offering some awesome restyling of the Google Reader admin (http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthuserea/2516505671/), it can embed the full (original) page into the reader. You can turn the setting on selectively, or have it automatic. The great part of this is you see the original article, complete with comments, and the comment form. That way, you can comment without leaving the comfort of your feed reader!
There are some alternative methods, but the great thing about this is it combines the efficiency of Google Reader (the only reader capable of easily processing thousands of items in a short amount of time) with the ability to comment and view conversations selectively.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
Arthus Erea
26 May 08 at 1:58 pm
By the way, I posted the above comment from within Google Reader!
Screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthuserea/2522830639/
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
Arthus Erea
26 May 08 at 1:59 pm
AideRSS actually doesn’t do anything with comments. Instead, it assigns a sort of “ranking” to posts based upon comments, bookmarks, popularity, views, etc. Then, you can sort Google Reader or create a custom feed based upon those ratings.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
Arthus Erea
26 May 08 at 2:19 pm
Arthus: the difference between the likes of the Google Reader plugin and this plugin is that this is done on the blogger’s end. Which means that your readers don’t have to do anything to see the comments in the feed. The Google Reader plugin is good, but it requires more work from the reader - to install the plugin. And not all your blog readers will be using Firefox, for example. This is a way to make it easy for all your readers to follow the conversation - no matter what reader/browser they use.
Derrick Kwas last blog post..What I want Social Media Breakfast: Singapore to be
Derrick Kwa
26 May 08 at 2:45 pm
Derrick: I get that. I was just giving it as an alternative for us to use on the vast majority of blogs which do not (and probably never will) include comments in posts.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
Arthus Erea
26 May 08 at 2:47 pm
Clay, the plugin is an interesting idea, but the one technical problem with it would be due to content caching by Google Reader, or any other reader for that matter. (i.e. it will cache your post, with let’s say 1 comment, and display that to all readers, even though you may have many more comments on it now).
The FF plugin we developed at AideRSS does not address this problem directly, but we do provide the most up-to-date count of the number of comments in your blog when you have the extension installed. If anyone is interested in trying it out, use the following URL to get an immediate invite: http://gr.aiderss.com/?techcrunch
Ilya Grigoriks last blog post..Now with 100% more Twitter & OpenID!
Ilya Grigorik
26 May 08 at 11:42 pm
@Clay
Like you, I am more apt to think that the comments deserve to be included. That’s probably because I enjoy the level of conversation that comments bring about — this is the social aspect of blogging that can go unnoticed without seeing them.
Interestingly, this post and Arthus’s first comment appeared in my reader, too — and I am using Outlook 2007 to view your blog (don’t ask me why — somehow your blog feed got mixed up in all my school portal RSS feeds and I got lazy and just left it there. Curiously, what this means is that your blog, unlike others in my Google Reader, is one I actually read every day b/c I see the feed with all my boring, schooly e-mail. I know you will enjoy the irony in that!). Obviously, at the time the feed was checked by Outlook, Arthus’s comment was there, but by the time I clicked to go read the full post, 5 more comments had been made.
This is all helping my case as to which blog reader to “consolidate” all my feeds in, as I’m a bit of a mess right now when it comes to my feeds — I have them all over the place. Looks like Google Reader is it. Bloglines, although it works for this Plugin, just isn’t slick enough for me. However, considering the snail-like pace I am moving at, by the time I get everything consolidated, who knows what newfangled plugin will be working and where…
Adrienne
27 May 08 at 10:37 am