From time to time, I like to post blogging tips. Today is one of those times 🙂 .
If you are like me, every once in a while you put your toe into the discussion area beneath a blog post. And yes, at times I jump in with both feet. Now commenting can be fun—and with fundamentalists, sometimes it’s outright scary! Hey I’m a Calvinist so debating shouldn’t scare me, but it can and does zap me of energy and will power, every once in a while.
So if I happen to forget about some discussion I was having, a day or two could go by without me responding to a response to my comment. Or I may have enjoyed reading the discussion and wanted to follow it, but with the hustle and bustle of life, I’ve just simply forgot about it. Or worse, I can’t remember where I said that, or what it was that I was reading.
I’ve been looking for a tool to help with this problem for some time. I know with certain blog types, I can subscribe to the comments of a particular post. but I wanted all my current conversations in one place.
Well recently, I stumbled across Co.mments. And I found my solution!
Co.mments lets you easily track conversations on just about any blog. You can add a button to your browser toolbar, and just click “Track co.mments” when you are on a post you want to track. It doesn’t seem to work with forums as well, but it works great with blogs.
You receive email updates with the comment(s) already in the email. Plus there is an option from within the email to remove the conversation from your tracking page. The only drawback is that you will always get an email with all the comments that were there before you started tracking new comments. Perhaps they’ll fix that ultimately. It’s still a great tool, regardless.
So check it out. Start tracking co.mments today!
I’ll have to check that out.
More than once, I’ve lost track of my comments off of WordPress (which at least has the My Comments feature).
Thanks for the tip. I don’t have enough buttons and such on my sidebars, after all.
Wickle,
With WordPress, you can’t easily add a “track with co.mments” link to your posts. You have to create the HTML code, and modify it for each separate post.
It’s more a tool for you to use when you are blogging elsewhere. It doesn’t go in your blog sidebar, but can go on your browser toolbar where you can easily click it when you want to track the current page. Then a little box pops up (if you use Firefox), letting you know the conversation is now being tracked.
Bob
I’ve used co.mments for a long time. I don’t get email notifications, though. I just go to the website periodically if I’m tracking a conversation, and I only see new comments.
I’ve found there are some sites it won’t work on at all, and some that require a special approach. Some Blogger sites won’t track from the post page, but will from the Blogger commenting page. With Haloscan, if you right-click on the commenting link and open in a new window or tab, then you can use your “track co.mments” link.
Fantastic! Thanks for the tip. I’ve been needing something like this. : )
Good tip, Dave. That would work too. You can opt in to the emails if you want.
I haven’t really checked out Haloscan. But I like WordPress’ comment system (and I really couldn’t change it as a freebie WP blogger, anyway).
Glad to help Ann. I was searching for the same thing for a long time.
Where was your helpful post on this topic Dave? You could do a great blogging series yourself. Then again, you probably have and I’ve just missed it!
Nope, I din’t post on this. I was going to once, but it slipped my mind.
Here’s another tip, though. When you go to your co.mments page, it often won’t show all the latest comments unless you click the “recheck” button on each thread. It’s kind of irritating.
That is, I didn’t . . .