Why you should use and update CommentLuv

Just to let you know this is my (Christopher Roberts’s) 50th post on Technology Bloggers!

CommentLuv is a fantastic plugin which helps commenters get more out of their commenting experience.

Technology Bloggers has the CommentLuv plugin installed and enabled. This means that when you comment here, you get to ‘show off’ one of your recent articles by ticking the CommentLuv box, and because we are a dofollow blog, that also gives you a dofollow link back to your article.

I believe that using CommentLuv makes your commenting system more fair, and therefore increases your commenters, good PR and subsequently traffic.


As a commenter, to use it all you need to do is input your URL in the normal URL field, and then tick the CommetLuv box. If you are a registered CommentLuv member then the plugin will go to your feed and bring up your latest posts. If you are not registered, it will spider your site for an RSS feed and then return the posts from that.

So CommentLuv is great for commenters and blogger. But what’s the customer service like? Well the reply to that is fantastic!

Earlier in the week there was a CommentLuv update (2.90.8) but all wasn’t good. On Wednesday I realised that all comments were showing the CommentLuv text, even if the CommentLuv box was not ticked, or a URL present.

I fiddled with the settings, but it didn’t seem to work. So I contacted the CommentLuv team for support. Now in the past I have contacted plugin owners and it has been weeks until I got a response. However it took Andy Bailey (the plugin author) just 11 minutes!

He left a comment and saw the problem.

Andy Bailey's comment showing the CommentLuv faultHe then quickly updated the plugin and sent me it via email, asking me to beta test it, to check the issue was resolved. His second comment (below) shows that it was 🙂

Andy Bailey's comment showing that CommentLuv was fixedNow unfortunately this means that you now need to update to CommentLuv 2.90.9. Okay, Technology Bloggers is to blame for the update, sorry folks, but hey, it works great here now 🙂

Going to comment? Give CommentLuv a try.
Got a blog? Why not install CommentLuv on it?
Already using CommentLuv? Please update to 2.90.9 🙂

What are your thoughts on CommentLuv?

Thank you Andy Bailey from all of us here at Technology Bloggers 🙂

A review of our progress four months in

Today Technology Blogger has been live for 4 months – or 17 weeks and 3 days if you want to look at it like that.

Now after the first two weeks of being on the net, I wrote an article about what we had achieved as a community. Today I am going to do the same, but 17 (and a bit) weeks in, just so you can get a sense of scale as to the amazing feats that we have achieved.

Technology Bloggers LogoAs of today, the 13th of August 2011:

  • Our 15 writers have posted 65 articles
  • Our 120 commenters have posted 788 comments
  • We have tweeted 68 tweets to our 24 Twitter followers
  • We have posted 45 status updates to the 11 people who like us on Facebook
  • Our homepage has been awarded a Google PageRank of 3
  • Our Alexa traffic rank is 165,351
  • A fantastic community blog, which everyone should be proud to be a part of!

Take a look at our Google Analytics, (below) to see the true scale of the growth our blog traffic has had!

Technology Bloggers Google Analytics Graph (13/04/11-13/08/11)

Technology Bloggers traffic stats from the 13th of April 2011 to the 13th of August 2011

How have we achieved all this?

I have written a series on how to be a successful blogger, telling you what I have done that has helped the blog be a success, but I couldn’t have done this on my own.

The real answer is you guys! If you have written for us, commented on our content or even just read some of our stuff, it’s thanks to you that we have achieved what we have.

The best bit!

Great, we have achieved all this, but so what? Well I feel like I have gained a lot from the blog in this short amount of time, so I hope you have to, but remember we are a dofollow blog with great content, so everyone benefits! Read | Contribute | Benefit – it’s there for a reason 🙂

Readers gain knowledge and know-how from our content and others comments comments. Readers who also choose to comment benefit from the fantastic community we have and dofollow links. Writers benefit so much too: experience; exposure to a massive audience; dofollow links to their site; highly valuable, quality comments on their work; potentially AdSense earnings, etc.

The future…

Well done to all, we should be very pleased with our achievements, but I see this as just the beginning.

We have grown at such a rate in such a short space of time, I can’t see any reason why in a year or two we could have the likes of TechCrunch, Engadget and Mashable quaking in their boots!

Keep up the great work everyone 🙂

Christopher.

How to be a successful blogger

This is the conclusion to a series of articles in which I shared with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

So there we have it, the first Technology Bloggers series has been brought to a close.

For the last six weeks, every Monday I have released an article as part of a series, explaining how and why Technology Bloggers has become such a successful blog in such a short space of time. This is the last article in that series.

So what have we learned over the series?Learning is a crucual part of bloggingFirst off we learned the importance of a reputation in blogging. If you have a positive one already, great, if you don’t have one, you need to start to build one to become known on the blogosphere, and to run a successful blog. A reputation can give you authority and respect in your niche.

Second we learned how promotion is a key factor in blogging, and how you need good promotion from the start to have sustainable success. Utilise social media and your online connections. Also, make sure you comment on friends blogs and if you have a blog or website already, plug your new site there too!

Then we learned about how respect is a key part of blogging. To conclude an entire article in just one sentence: basically, if you respect your readers, they will respect you, hence why we are a dofollow technology blog 🙂

The fourth in the series taught us why competition in blogging is important. Competition in blogging helps you to gain readers, especially commenting readers. Competitions contests themselves can also attract many people to your blog, from others on the net.

In the penultimate article in the series (excluding this article), we were shown why it is very important to give your readers lots of ways to subscribe to your blog. Email Subscriptions, Facebook and Twitter are what we use, although no-doubt that list will change in the future 🙂

The final article in the series taught us to follow the experts in blogging to succeed. You can either learn what works and what doesn’t work for yourself, – the hard way – or you can look at the experts, and see what works for them. Learning form your own experience is good, learning from others is more productive and wise.


The end of this series has got me buzzing to write another, but what about? Is there anything technology, blogging or science or related that you would like me to either teach you or research for you?

Any suggestions? Throw them at me below 🙂

Thanks for following the series and all also thanks for all the comments along the way. I hope you have learned something useful, which you can hopefully apply to yourself and your site 🙂