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23/05: SezWho Blog Comment Plugin

After first encountering the SezWho comment plugin on Andy Beard's blog some time ago I finally got around to looking at it more closely.

It's a simple and clever idea that basically allows you to display the commenting activity of visitors and by hovering over a commenters avatar or a link that says "check me out" you can see what else they have been reading and discussing, thus making your blog's comments far more interactive and also rewarding participants with more than just a backlink. It also adds voting options to your comments.

The other great side effect, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that it weeds out comment spam too. Many people are now using software to track down DoFollow blogs and abuse the generosity of the blog owner by attempting to use commenting purely to gain free links. If it's done correctly there's nothing wrong with that, but blatant comment spammers now have a new enemy in SezWho.

I noticed a couple of old comments today that originally looked perfectly legit on face value, but checking out the SezWho links showed that the individuals in question were posting identical comments across a large range of other "do follow" blogs. BUSTED! These were immediately marked as spam for Akismet to chew on.

So, if you are thinking of spamming blog comments, don't think it's smart to get your commenting software to search for a keyword and then cut and paste the same comment to all the blog posts that it finds. It's not big and it's not clever - comment wisely, contribute something and avoid upsetting blog owners, because ultimately, you will only damage yourself.

I can't install the plugin on this blog - but if you're on Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type, Drupal or use BlogCatalog you can use the service. It's also available for PHPbb bulletin boards - recommended. And if any clever coder wants to develop a NucleusCMS version.......

TCH



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Comments

Maurice,

Tedd from SezWho here.
Thanks for the review. The spam comment discovery mechanism is an interesting side effect that others have mentioned and benefited from as well.

We don't (yet) support NucleusCMS, however we do have a plugin developers kit - http://www.sezwho.com/szpdk... which can be used to develop sezwho support for pretty much any platform. If you'd like to discuss support for NucleusCMS please feel free to contact our support team at support[at]sezwho[dot]com

- tedd
27/05 11:00:00
Hi Tedd,

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a few words - SezWho is about the best and easiest comment add-on I've come across and was very simple to get up and running on Wordpress in a matter of minutes.

If I had the knowledge I'd love to get a Nucleus version up and running and I'll post about it on the Nucleus forums first to see of anyone will take it on :-)
27/05 14:35:07
I defintintely got to check this out. I am fairly new to this internet marketing game and look to soak up more info.

if you get a chance check out my site. http://www.gottaguyli.com

Thanks for your time keep up the work.

good to hear good reviews of sezwho from tedd and everyone above
10/06 14:58:17
Hey Mo,

Brian J here, new to your blog. I have been an avid wordpress user for about three years now (I am actually writing a course right now on wordpress) . Once I got started with wordpress I never looked back! This plugin looks fantastic, like you I see nothing wrong with comments ... when they are real comments and offer some value. However the typical "hey ... great post" comment does nothing for the blog owner or other visitors.

Thanks for the tip ...
06/07 08:41:31
Hi Brian

Hope you enjoy the plugin and thanks for dropping by and taking the time to comment.

Mo (TheCaymanHost)
07/07 13:00:38

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