A visitor to my blog recently asked me about subscribing to comments in blogger. In this post not only will I cover how to subscribe to comments, but I will show you how to add your most recent comments to your sidebar.
You can subscribe to comments on any post on blogspot by subscribing to the comment feed.
- To enable the comment site feed for your blog, first go to settings – site feed tab.
- Click on the “advanced mode” link.
- In advanced mode you will see the options for comment feed.
- Once you’ve enabled your comment feed, you may want to provide a way for your readers to subscribe to comments by adding a subscribe button to your blog.
- The comment feed resides at: http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default
- By default, Blogger publishes these feeds in Atom format.
- If you want it in RSS format it is http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss
- Subscribe to comments supports automatic subscriptions with Bloglines, My Yahoo!, Newsgator, My MSN and Google Reader.
When people subscribe to your comment site feed in their newsreaders, they’re very likely going to return to your blog to follow up with comments.
How to add your recent comments to your sidebar
- Go to settings and click on site feed.
- Switch to advanced mode.
- Set ‘blog comment feed’ to full or short.
- Click on the template tab.
- Click on ‘add a page element’ and choose feed then add to blog.
- Copy the url to your comment feed, which is http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default
- Paste your feed in the box and hit continue. Blogger will retrieve your feed.
- Give your feed a title something like “Recent Comments.” Click on save changes.
Your recent comments should now be in your sidebar. The problem with this is that it only shows five of your recent comments. If you want to add more comments to your sidebar Hans from Beautiful Beta has a “Recent Comment” hack and Ramani from Hackosphere had a recent comment widget that you might want to check out.
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13 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Oct 10, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Thank you, Rose!
Your idea does help comment subscribers know when anyone posts a comment or responds to a comment.
Wrote: Oct 11, 2007 at 9:11 am
Thanks Rose. This has been on my to-do list for a while now!
Wrote: Oct 12, 2007 at 6:55 pm
My pleasure Seamus & Debbie.
Wrote: Oct 12, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Hope you don’t mind, I’m sharing this in my sidebar ‘Highlights’ links.
Wrote: Oct 17, 2007 at 8:39 am
Thank you so much – I bought you some Starbucks – hope you like it – i can’t find out how to get the name of the poster to come up – only part of the comment is this normal? I am too afraid to try any other comment widget as I know nothing about blogger and am afraid of losing everything….
Wrote: Oct 24, 2007 at 1:20 am
Thanks Rose. It’s more useful even there are Blogger Recent Comments Widgets.
Wrote: Nov 2, 2007 at 7:14 am
Thanks for the help! I’ve been trying various hacks for recent comments and there wasn’t any that was ‘neatly composed’…..until I found your hints!! Much, much better.
)
Wrote: Nov 15, 2007 at 12:36 am
Rose, whenever I am trying to figure something out I have the hardest time understanding the directions, until I come here that is. You’re posts are so easy to follow. Thank you.
Wrote: May 19, 2008 at 3:17 pm
When I enter my feed url http://pinkdesignevents.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default , it tells me I have an ‘Invalid Feed URL”. I have all my Feed settings set to Full and Yes. Why isn’t this working for me?
Wrote: May 19, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I was getting an error, but it appears to be working now.
Wrote: Aug 1, 2008 at 2:53 am
Great post Rose and informative, I have a recent comments gadget but I will have to try your idea out on the recent comments.
Wrote: Aug 13, 2008 at 1:33 am
Rose,
I read a lot of blogs and I comment on almost all of them. What should I do to make sure that I don’t miss out on follow-up comments to these. What I’m looking for is to subscribe to the comments feed of a lot of blogs, not just individual posts.
Cheers,
Kris
Wrote: Sep 9, 2008 at 6:40 am
IT WORKS!
Thank you, Rose! You’re an angel.