Over the last few weeks, I’ve received a number of messages from other bloggers who have been having problems leaving a comment on my blog.  There seemed to be no pattern to it.  Some bloggers comment and then others would see error messages or be unable to see what they were typing.

Then in a blogging community I’m part of, other bloggers were sharing that they were unable to comment on other blogs.  Something just wasn’t quite right.  I started to check my plugins, look at my theme.  Making sure my version of WordPress was up to date but I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

Until I disabled Commentluv!!

Noooo

Please don’t let it be Commentluv!

I’ve been using Commentluv since about 2009 and have been an affiliate for Commentluv in all that time as well.  It has been one of those plugins that I have always recommended.  Other commenting platforms were never as good.  Plus it formed part of a blog commenting strategy and always generated new traffic for my site.

Premium Commentluv also came with some really great extra features like the GASP – spam filter and the Replyme function, that sends an email to your commentators when ever you reply to their comments.

Unfortunately, the creator Andy Bailey who has always been open about his health, has been unable to maintain the needed updates to make it continue to function properly.  As a result, the plugin has become unstable and as we are now starting to see,  its causing various problems for blogs.

So as much as it breaks my blogging heart, I have decided to remove Commenluv and look for work-arounds that can do the same things.

This is by no means the end of my search and as I find great plugins I’ll update this page but if you have been having similar problems, here are some alternatives.  But, I haven’t found anything that lets you leave a blog link in the comments section yet!

GASP Alternatives – Askimet

I have to say, I was dubious about reinstalling Askimet.  This was the first spam filter I used back in 2009 and whilst it was stable in the beginning after about a year it wasn’t working as well and wasn’t capturing all my spam.  However that was 8 years ago and it seems they’ve sorted things out.

I reinstalled Akismet about 2 weeks ago and so far it’s captured over 12k spam comments, which in their own words has saved me 4 days of work!  Whether this is strictly true or not is another thing.  But it has worked great so far.  It’s only made 3 false positives and stopped a lot of spammers.

Reply me Alternatives – Comment Reply Email Notification

Not a very catchy name, but it does what it says.  I was a bit unsure, because there was nothing to configure and there was nowhere to tell me that a reply email had actually been sent.  But I sent a few test comments/emails to my fellow bloggers and they have all received the replies so far.  I’d love to see a similar plugin with a better peace of mind but for now it’s working.  If you reply to all your comments (which you should) you really need a plugin like this.

Reply Button Alternatives – Infinite Comment Reply

So this wasn’t really a feature, but once I had disabled Commentluv I noticed that the ability to reply to individual comments had disappeared.  The infinite comment reply plugin, simply added in a nice looking reply button on my blog so that I could reply to individual comments, it also means other bloggers can reply to one another as well.

There are a few more features that Commentluv premium such as trackback validation, keyword name and twitter keywords that were all nice to haves but I never really used them heavily so for now I’m happy with my fixes.  However, I’m always looking for the best plugins so if you find better alternatives please let me know in the comments below.

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