Beans, Blogging, Category_Other, Comments, Google, Wordpress - August 2, 2014

How to Add Google+ Comments to Your WordPress Blog

How to Add Google+ Comments to Your WordPress Blog Not too long ago Google announced Google+ comments for their blogging platform, Blogger. Even though it was only for blogger, there were a lot of WordPress bloggers out there who would have liked to have Google+ comments too. A bunch of WordPress developers saw a demand and created a nice amount of plugins that make it easy to have Google Plus comments on your blog. So, today I'm going to recommend my favorite "Google+ Comments for WordPress," by Brandon Holtsclaw.

What are the benefits?

Increased Activity: Users have the choice of selecting if they want their comment to be shared publicly, most users do.
Convenience: A lot of people stay signed into their Google+ account. Staying logged in results in not having to enter a few fields nor a captcha, which is quite a convenience for that crowd.

What are the disadvantages?

Not Officially Supported: Google has not developed a plugin to officially support WordPress. So, some features like comment notifications, are unavailable to the WordPress users who are using third party plugins.
Anonymity: Some people just aren’t comfortable logging in with their profile to leave a comment. Still, the best thing about "Google+ Comments for WordPress" is that you have multiple comment systems available!.

Adding Google+ Comments to WordPress

google plus comments Go to your WordPress dashboard's plugin section and under "add new" search for "Google+ Comments for WordPress," then install and activate it. Once you have activated the plugin you can find the settings under the "Comments" section of the dashboard.

The awesome thing about this plugin is that it allows you to have tabs for different comment systems. You can have G+ comments, Facebook comments, Disqus, and you can even keep the WordPress comments. So, if there is a certain reason you need to keep a specific comment system, or have them all, then you can! But if all you want is G+, then simply remove Disqus, Facebook, etc. from the the tab order. You can even arrange how you want the comments system to display via the tab order field. So, if you want the WordPress comments tab first, then list it first, or if you want Disqus first, then list it first, etc. If you're looking to customize it even more, then you can change labels and icon themes as well! Once you've got everything set up how you want, save and then go look at your comment section. Depending on your settings things may look different, but it should look pretty similar to our comment section! gplus settings

Conclusion

Until Google creates an official plugin for WordPress this will be the plugin I'll be using and recommending. I've been happy that I've been able to not only get Google+ comments, but also being able to get Facebook comments and keep Disqus all in one package. If you're looking for a way to add Google+ comments to your WordPress blog then this, in my opinion, is the best way to do it.