Plugin
Better Comments Manager
Description
Better Comments Manager is an extension of the default WordPress comments manager with two features.
Features
– Reply to comment from within WordPress Admin Panel.
– View All Comments based by posts.
Review
IMO, this plugin should not exist. Infact the two features that this plugin adds need to be within the WordPress core itself.
Anyway, for those who haven’t started using this plugin yet, let me explain.
By default, whenever you want to reply to a comment on your blog post, you need to visit the post page, get to the comments form and reply there.
This means additional bandwidth drawn from your site as well from your internet connection, not to mention the time that you need to wait for the post page to load and then for the page to load with your new comment added.
BCM (can I call it BCM?) adds a new subpage under Comments in WP-Admin, that adds two links: Reply and View All.
Reply allows you to quickly reply to the comment. Currently the plugin loads a new page for this, but the author plans on adding AJAX support to this which would make it even faster to reply.
The second one will list all the comments of that particular post only. This can be done today too, but this makes the process a lot easier.
These are indeed two good feature additions. One additional feature that I would like to see is the ability to move comments from one post to another. I believe there is another plugin that does this, but BCM can easily have this integrated.
Are you like me and immediately added BCM to your blog? Can you think of any other features that you would like to see in this plugin?
Added it the very minute I found it. And, from what I’ve seen, it’s close to perfect (and God knows I am very very picky)
I didn’t rush to install this plugin because I really enjoy my “threaded comments” plugin. Does anyone know whether this plugin works together with that type of customization, or would my comments simply be added onto the bottom of the list of comments?
I don’t have Threaded Comments, but to answer your question, the comments are added to the bottom of the list.
Added it straight away, it sure makes my life easier !
For the sack of “Reply to comment from within WordPress Admin Panel”, I am installing the plugin now. thanks! 🙂
Absolutely brilliant plugin! It’s one of those really obvious ideas, that yet are so hard to discover. I love it 🙂
I’m among the early adopters. As soon as I saw it in your pluggins list, I own’d it.
I too have already installed the plugin and use it.
One feature I’d like to see, is when you are viewing all of the comments on a single post, that you be able to see them while you are replying. I like to write responses to several commenters at once to avoid extra emails being sent to people who subscribe to the post.
Currently when you hit ‘reply’ you can only see one comment.
I agree that this should be part of the WP core and not relegated to a plugin.
I also agree with Jester’s request. Since there’s talk of AJAX’ifying this thing, what about some kind of toggle on the reply page that would load up the rest of the comments for that post?
Just curious, what is the value of adding Sphere Related Content on your blog? I clicked it, and it shows an report about fraudulent Visa traveler checks as a related article to this blog post. How is that related to better comment management?
Jack,
The related articles do leave a lot to be desired in this case. To make a long story short, Sphere might be removed from this blog in the near future.
Mark, thanks for the quick reply. But even if it gives good related articles, what is the benefit a blogger get from including the Sphere widget? All it does is to send readers away to other sites. I don’t get it.
Actually Jack, that is one of the same things thats been running through my mind since I installed it on my blogs… well to put it, it may be one of the plugins that I remove in my cutdown on plugins
Jack, Ajay: That is not necessarily a bad thing, let us think about it. If weblogtoolscollection were to be scared of “sending traffic away”, we would cease to exist. Spreading traffic around is a good thing and any way you can help someone else will only help you in the long run.
Also, it is better to try and get people to come back with good content that to try and keep them on your site with lack of content.
I’m getting a 404 Not Found when I click the link you gave to this plugin.
This is a great plugin. Thanks for sharing!