Posted on April 29, 2008 by Katy

By accident, I ran into a nice little script called Commented On. And after about a week’s worth of use, or so, I’ve decided that I simply must post about it!

Many blogs give the option to “subscribe to follow-up comments” when you’re posting a comment to their blog. This is a great option because it allows visitors to create a comment community, have discussions, and interact with the blogger themselves.

The problem with this strategy is that after awhile, you get sick of the eMail about new comments. Sometimes you’re done with the conversation, you have nothing further to say, or the comments just didn’t become interesting. For whatever reason, you’re done. Now to stop receiving comment updates you have to go back and unsubscribe from the post.

Let me be honest, rarely do I do it. I just keep deleting annoyed that I’m still getting the email. I’ve got little time to click, unsubscribe, and keep moving on. Moving away from my eMail by simply unsubscribing someplace distracts me from my focus and often times I lose train of thought.

It may sound crazy but remember, I’m the girl that keeps a schedule of my tasks and only allots a specific amount of time for each thing. I don’t want comments to be yet another thing that’s taking up my time.

The result, I no longer subscribe to comments. And then, after leaving my comment I attempt to remember where that thought provoking post was, hunt it down, and check out follow up comments.

With Commented On, I no longer have to do deal with the eMails or remembering where that great post was written.

Now, let’s get to why, after explaining my commenting problem, Commented On is great for me!

The function of Commented On is simple: bookmark to one place comments you have left on a blog. By keeping track of where I have left a comment, I’m able to go back on my own time to review more comments left on a post, continue the conversation, or simply just ignore the post. My choice.

Often times I don’t comment more than once on a post, but 9 times out of 10, I’m interested in reading how others reacted to the post. This means that I can do comment checking 100% on my own time.

Probably the best thing about Commented On is that it’s self-hosted. Yes, it’s a script that I have installed right here on I’m Blogging That. I’ve got a quick link to both the Java bookmarklet that caches my comments as well as the link to the comments themselves.

Because this script is on I’m Blogging That, I also confident that the only one that knows I’m following up on comments with different posts is me. And, I don’t have to actually comment on any posts just to keep track of the comments for that post. My information is secure, I can brand the design of Commented On to match I’m Blogging That and I choose when I receive information about new comments.

This has become one of my top 10 blogger must-haves. Comments are a great way to build traffic to your blog, especially if you’re going to leave thought worthy, insightful comments. I make attempts to do that every time I comment. And now, I have an easy way to catch up, on my own time.

Here’s the catch, in plain English. Self-Hosted means that you have to install it and you have to have a place to install it to. This means your own domain name and hosting. And you all know that I’m a huge advocate for owning your own domain and yet here’s another reason why.

Installation is incredibly simple! If you can manually (without Fantastico) install WordPress, you can install Commented On. Simple snap, done it just 5 minutes and you’re up and going.

So, what do you think? Will you be checking out Commented On and do you comment on enough blogs that having a comment bookmark application will help you keep track?

If you install or are thinking about install it, let me know what you think!