WordPress has revamped the WordPress.com Comments panel in Site Stats to give blog authors better insight into their most responsive readers. In addition to a summary of recent comments, the panel now displays leader boards for top commenters and most commented posts. For quieter blogs, the leader boards show all-time stats, but for active blogs, they cover the last three months of activity.
The blog provider has also announced two new third-party apps for WordPress.com blogs to make them more social and shareable. Feedfabrik now allows WordPress.com users to turn their blogs into books, both in PDF and physical formats (and there’s currently a 10% discount offer). Empire Avenue, the free “Social Stock Market” game, has also announced WordPress integration, allowing WordPress bloggers to incorporate their blogging influence into their share price.
Earlier this summer, WordPress announced support for OAuth2, which allows easy and secure access to the WordPress API, facilitating development of third-party apps like Feedfabrik and Empire Avenue. These are the first new app integrations announced by WordPress since moving to OAuth2. To complement the new technology, WordPress also launched develop.wordpress.com to provide developer resources.
The new apps can make WordPress blogs more shareable, but the updated Comments panel adds better social dynamics at a more basic level. Comments are the lifeblood of engagement on a blog, and the new tools will help WordPress authors keep better track of their most engaged readers. Last month, WordPress enabled automated sharing of posts to Facebook pages, which is another way to increase engagement, but as we’ve found at ReadWriteWeb, automated posting doesn’t produce great results. Better comment management could help blog authors keep up conversations with a more authentic voice.
WordPress has reported major growth recently. It currently powers nearly 15% of the world’s websites and sustains a thriving community of self-employed developers.
Have you used WordPress? Are you a WordPress developer? Tell us about it in the comments.
