Housekeeping & Rewarding Top Commentators

It is a good thing to do some housekeeping from time to time, particularly when that work involves a blog. I must admit that I’m constantly being peppered by spam, so my daily work never seems quite done even on days when I choose not to write and post an article.

Are You Part Of My Top Ten?

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to include a “Top Commentators” widget for this site, which takes a look at everyone who has posted here since December 2005 when the original blog was launched by rewarding them with their name in “lights” so to speak.

Because I’m a firm believer in sharing linky love, each name is hyperlinked to the site you’ve been listing in your URL comments and that link is “nofollow” as well. That way, you get rewarded for leaving your wonderful comment and with more than 750 posts and pages associated with this site, that reward should certainly come in handy.

Right now I am featuring the “Top 10″ commentators, but I may expand that list eventually. I removed references to my name and dropped two individuals whose blogs were either dormant or their links dead.

Musing About A Variety Of Topics

This blog has a different theme than the original The Article Writer blog although that defunct blog’s posts are now part of Matt’s Musings.  Lately, I’ve been covering more SEO and technology topics, fewer political (civic) stories, but I plan on sharing additional writing tips and ideas going forward.

Thanks to everyone who stops by and leaves a comment except for you spammers who oddly believe that my readers are interested in your druggie site (your stuff gets promptly vaporized).  Special thanks to Lillie Ammann whose example gave me the idea to reward my commentators. Though I probably won’t do a monthly round up, my next best thing is to have your name prominently featured in this blog’s sidebar.

Related Reading: Commenting? You Can Do Better Than That!

CommentLuv Is In ‘Da House

I finally installed and activated the CommentLuv plugin today on three of my blogs, heeding the advice of several people who urged me to consider this method of sharing link love. As mostly everyone knows, good SEO strategy is to make your blog as inviting as possible, encouraging people to leave comments while linking back to their most recent post.

So, why are you still reading this? Leave your comment now!

Moments after installing I got this nifty little note on the WP administrative panel asking me if I wanted to upgrade to CommentLuv 1.2. It so happens that the latest release was made available today, so if you have CL you can obtain the newest copy right through your Plugin panel. No need to leave the blog and look for the upgrade — one click and WP does that for you. So, why couldn’t WP do my taxes for me this year?!?! Hmmm???

As far as changes with this release, it is now fully compatible with WP 2.5 and it now uses a remote script to do the parsing if your hosting cannot do it and has it’s own options page.

Of course, I can’t really know that it works until someone leaves the very first comment….