What can I say about WordPress plugins? I love them and I am sucker for any plugin that can truly help in any form. In addition, I am all in for free plugins and the WordPress directory is full of them. Obviously, there are good ones and well, the not so good ones. While I am a strong advocate for “useful and reliable” free stuff, I have to admit that for every rule, there is an exception and CommentLuv is one of those that fit in that category.
Andy Bailey, the mastermind behind CommentLuv Premium (aff link) is set to make his plugin better every day. Since its inception, the number of updates that has been made is tremendous and mind you, most of these updates were not bug fixes (although it had its share), but rather, adding more features. I won’t even go down the route of support, its simply A+. This is the type of commitment that you don’t see often and if you happen to have CommentLuv Premium already, you are lucky, because all future updates are yours for free. And that’s a fact.
Anyway, I won’t get into much details as to what the core of this 7 in 1 plugin offers, because you can find out about CommentLuv here. Recently, Andy sent an updated version to his beta testers to test drive some of the new features he is adding to the already great plugin. I think that he is doing the “Penguin Stuff” of his own, as the changes are focused towards more control over SPAM. Comment spammers are all over the place and they are not going anywhere. And that can be a problem, as some “bad stuff” may find its way in your blog and when that happens, there is a chance that you may be flagged inadvertently on being a “bad neighborhood”. You really don’t want that. More over, spammers are getting better too. Aside from automated software, some are now doing their “copy and paste” schemes. You know, they write a standard comment and hops to every single blog they can find (specially dofollow and commentluv enabled), and paste that text of useless comment. All for the sake of getting links for SEO purposes.
Well, and as I said, Andy hates SPAM as much as search engines. He understands that moderating comments can be a chore. He also understands that commenting is a form to interact and create lively discussions. Finally he understands that as bots and manual spammers get more sophisticated, so is the need for making CommentLuv Premium an all around plugin that should be part of every bloggers arsenal.
Aside from the tons of features to help you improve your social engagements, increase traffic, get some backlinks, give some luv to awesome commenters, and of course, the countless defenses to combat SPAM, the latest version is further enhanced with:
- The ability to remove Twitter profile links
- Keyup count – You define the number of times a user use the keyboard. A copy and paste will count as two, so defining it to 10 for example will eliminate that problem.
- Ban specific keywords that come via search engines. Eliminates those users that”hunt” for specific keywords.
- etc.,
I am quite lazy today, so here’s Andy’s video giving you a detailed tour about what is coming next 🙂
And finally, and if you for some reason don’t know about it, did you know that having CommentLuv installed in your WordPress blog automatically entitles you to being an affiliate? Yep, you can make money too! Just a couple of sales and your investment breaks even in no time. Now how cool is that? If there is ever a premium plugin you want to consider using, let this be one of them. That’s for sure.
Are you a happy CommentLuv Premium user? What do like/hate about the plugin? Any other features you think should be there and currently not available. Shout out, Andy may be listening, lol.
Related Posts
The Best Related Post Plugin For WordPress, So Far
Landing Pages: What, Why and How?
SEO Industry Survey, Video SEO, CLP, Speedlink 33:2012
Best Free WordPress eCommerce Plugins
Speedlink V36/2011, FaceBook, CommentLuv Premium, SEO and Blogging
How to Harness Social Proof
Speedlink V34/2011, CommentLuv Premium, SEO, Blogging And Branding
How To Capture Your Visitors Information, While Undergoing Site Maintenance
Andy Bailey
thanks Francisco! nice to see you using the new version here, it has even better fetching routines so blogs that used to report ‘no posts found’ before can now get some luv too!
The anti spam part I think might have to get more advanced. I’d like to keep bloggers comments as part of their blog without requiring a 3rd party system which I think is a step too far just to control spam.
as feedback comes in and as spammers get more advanced, I am committed to continuing the fight against spammers and help the normal blogger keep their own comments in house and make their moderation tasks a lot easier.
thanks for the great write up!
Hi Andy. Never doubted your commitment to make CL a great plugin. SPAM will always be there, in one way or another, but as I mentioned to John, I think that the harder we make it for spammers to find its ways through, the better. Keep up the good work mate 🙂
Ivin
We have to simply become better commenters, that’s all. I know they’re getting better, but I was just saying on another blog:
‘If the person leaves a valuable comment, and follows the comment guidelines, I really don’t see a problem with him selling toilets. He’s wasting his efforts commenting’.
Francisco, I’ll tell you though, I ROFL’d when you said ‘I’m lazy today. You’re honesty and transparency is really refreshing. If I can do video I’d rather do that too.
Devesh
Hi Fransico,
You’re so right about the commentluv plugin. It’s just keeps getting better and better. I’m happy with the free version of commentluv plugin, it works perfectly and I never had any issues.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Fransico.
-Dev
Hi Dev. Good to see you here. Free CL is actually great and works very well. The only reason I opted for the Premium version is because it integrates several plugins into one and that is something else. The new features, plus the existing ones are simply too good to let go 🙂
John
I’ve added comment luv recently (testing out the freebie version!) and I’m loving it so far. I’m also really impressed with GASP – I know it is a standalone plugin in its own right but I never realized that 99% of the spam Akismet wanted me to sort through was completely automated and could be eliminated outright with a tiny little checkbox. Between that and the new keyup count, copy paste & automated spam is dead meat and I think Akismet might need a new game plan if it wants to stay relevant… There’s no surefire way to eliminate all the manual spam, but it is a drop in the bucket and you don’t have to deal with the false positive flags that seem to keep tripping up some of my favorite commenters.
I agree with you. I actually gave up on using Akismet some time ago on my newer sites. The free CL version and the stand alone GASP are great plugins (well, they too are from Andy, lol), but hands down, the premium version much, much better. Like you said, there is no surefire way to eliminate SPAM, but the more defenses you have, the better 🙂
I really like the keyups feature and the twitter removal feature. The first one is likely to be very helpful in eliminating even more spam.
But I feel like the G.A.S.P. system works really well right now too.
Rizwan Sultan
Hey DieTesco
Very Good explanation for Comment luv Premium Plugin bit risk of Spam comments enable if you give dofollow links but it’s not big risk GASP will work good to control spam comments.
Becca
I like the new features of Commentluv. It makes more helpful to filter
comment spam. It sounds like it is re-energizing the blogging community and rewarding readers who help add value to blogs. I couldn’t be happier to see it really catching on. Thanks for all the great information
Chris @ NPI
Hi Francisco, I’m using free version of CommentLuv with GASP – it’s really good. But I see, that paid version of CL is even greater, but it’s also no cheap…
BR, Chris
Hi Chris. I understand what you mean, but if you consider that there are 7 plugins in there, +life time upgrades, superb support, etc., it may be just a worthwhile investment 🙂
Paul Schlegel
The spam defense from CommentLuv is incredible. I saw a huge decrease in spam comments after installing it.
Anton Koekemoer
YEs – Even though I don’t use Comment luv plugin on my website I do use Comment luv to have comments approved on various sites and helps to show that you are human and not a Bot busy spamming and leaving irrelevant comments.
James Pruitt
hey Fransisco, great run down on CL premium. its one of my favorite plugins. I know a lot of people balk at paying for stuff, but the premium version is by far one of the best investments you can make in your blog.
I am now using it on all my blogs and it has helped increase comments and decrease the spam tremendously.
reeha smith
Great info about CommentLuv and few days ago i also buy a premium package for my blogs and install it. It really works well for me. thanks for sharing this valuable tutorial.
after reading that post now i am sure my money is not going to hell….lolz