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If you’ve built your WordPress blog using a free website builder, you’ll end up with a comments box that’s pretty uninspiring.  Yet if you want to increase traffic, create blog loyalty and the potential for high numbers of subscribers, interacting with your visitors using your comments boxes is essential.  What you need are some unique comments plug ins to give your site an interactive edge to encourage your visitors to keep posting, come back to respond to the dialogue and link the blog to their social networking sites.  Here’s a rundown of 15 of the best comments plug ins available, which you can download for free on our Resources and Plug ins page:

1. Twitter Blog:  this plug in is great for increasing your external links, which is vital for search engine ranking.  What it does is tweet your blog post, then check for any replies to your tweet and put them in the comments box under your post.
2. WordPress Thread Comment: a great plug in for creating a dialogue of comments, which motivates people to join in the conversation and keep coming back for more.
3. Top Commentators:  this is actually a widget for your sidebar which motivates people to comment more and more, as they fight for the top spot of Top Commentator.
4. Comment Approved Notifier: this is such a simple plug in that emails a commentator to tell them their post has been approved.  This has a double advantage, not only pinging the author again to encourage them to come back, it may also motivate them to check any replies to their comment.
5. CommentLuv: motivates you as the blogger to comment more and more because it shows the latest blog post at the end of each comment you make.  This fosters a community spirit and makes your blog highly interactive.
6. IntenseDebate Comments: this really gives your WordPress comments area the wow factor, using Ajax to write, reply and rate.  It also includes comments voting and allows users to connect to Twitter and friendfeed, which enhances promotion of your site.
7. Highlight Author Comments: this plug in makes your words stand out from the crowd by automatically displaying author comments in a different and distinctive style.
8. Do Follow: this is great for search engine ranking because it removes the “no follow” attributes in comments links, enabling search engines to follow them.
9. WP Content Filter: nobody wants a blog full of swearwords, so this filters out any unwanted words automatically and replaces them with wild card characters.
10. Custom Smilies: allows users to put in emoticons to comments, adding color and fun to your blog.
11. Whisper Comment: this allows commentators to “whisper” their comment to one or a group of other users.  A great tool for allowing enhanced interactivity and a sense of ownership for subscribers, which could encourage them to revisit and bring more people with them.
12. Live Comment Preview: do you want your commentators to be able to preview their comments before posting?  This plug in enables them to do just that.
13. Comment Rating: a brilliant way to allow subscribers to feel some ownership of the blog, by voting on posted comments.  Time to let your readers decide which comments deserve to be shown!
14. Most Commented: a widget that allows users to quickly access the most popular posts, by displaying those with the most comments in the sidebar.
15. Akismet: finally don’t forget that spam can be an issue with any WordPress blog, with comments boxes constantly being bombarded.  This is an essential add-on to any website builder and this is one of the most popular to kick spam comments out.