There are hundreds and maybe even thousands of Wordpress plugins available to Wordpress users at no cost scattered around the internet, but there are only a few plugins that all blogs should use.

Subscribe to Comments is one of these important plugins that every blog should offer to their readers. This plugin will place a subscription box in your comments form and allow your readers to receive e-mail notifications each time a follow up comment is left on your site.

Setting up this plugin couldn’t be much easier. Once you’ve gone through the normal process of installing and activating the plugin, you will want to place the following code in your comments.php file where you want the “subscription box” to appear:

<?php if (function_exists('show_subscription_checkbox')) { show_subscription_checkbox(); } ?>

I recommend placing this just above the Submit button (or whatever your button says to submit the comment). This will allow readers to see the “subscribe box” before reading the comment. It’s important to note that you should NOT have this box checked by default (you can control this in your plugin’s Option panel). I’ve noticed a few websites that have it checked by default and there is nothing more frustrating than leaving a comment and finding out you were subscribed to a post you commented on against your will. People will check the subscription box if they want e-mail notification of new comments and you risk losing a lot of readers, or at least a lot of comments, by having this checked by default.  I will sometimes check this box when I want to see any follow up comments, but I generally will not comment on sites that have this checked by default.

Now, if you use the above Wordpress plugin, another plugin you may want to consider is Subscribe to Comments Stats Reporting. This plugin requires you to already have activated the Subscribe to Comments plugin mentioned above. Once installed, this will give you reporting by user or by post on who has subscribed to it.