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Most WordPress blogs usually have a Show Comments or rather Show Recent Comments option in their WordPress theme. However, you should take this step even further and reward people who comment the most on your blog by displaying their name and their blog/website prominently in a Top Commentators subsection.

Enter WordPress Show Top Commentators Plugin. Using this plugin, you can encourage even more discussion from your readers, by displaying their names and the number of comments they have made recently to your sidebar. You can also link to their site without a nofollow tag if desired.

You can also set the settings on how often the plugin should reset the comment count whether it is from the last 30 days, last month or last year or the default all time option. In case your blog is starting out or you set the plugin to reset every month and it is the beginning of the month, you can set the plugin to display a message instead if nobody has commented yet.

Plugin Name: WP 2.x Top Commentators Plugin

Plugin Page:

http://www.pfadvice.com/wordpress-plugins/show-top-commentators/ 

Download WP Top Commentators Plugin

http://www.pfadvice.com/wp-content/plugins/show_top_commentators.zip

Install the Top Commentators Plugin for your WordPress Blog

Step # 1: Download and extract the plugin to your computer. You will find a show_top_commentators.php file.

Step # 2: Using your FTP client, upload the show_top_commentators.php to your Wordpress plugin directory at wp-content/plugins. Once you upload this file, you need to change the file permissions to all or chmod 777. This is needed if you wish to make changes to the plugin options which I will talk about below

Step # 3: The best place to show your Top Commentators is in the sidebar of your Blog. Check out the TechCounter homepage or any post on how I display the Top Commentators to this blog. So, in your WordPress Admin Dashboard, go to Presentation  –> Theme Editor. Once in there, select the sidebar template usually called sidebar.php. Add the following code to your template in the spot where you want the top commentators to be displayed.

<?php if(function_exists(’ns_show_top_commentators’)) { ?>
<li>
<h2>Top Commentators</h2>
<ul><?php ns_show_top_commentators(); ?></ul>
</li>
<?php } ?>

Step # 4: Modify options (this is not required)

There are currently 9 options you can modify inside ’show_top_commentators.php’. Note, you will not be able to edit these options unless you had chmod’d the show_top_commentators.php file to 777 (see step # 2)

a. filter_users option

This option lets you filter out any usernames you don’t want to be shown. Here, a good example would be Administrator or your blog nick name. This filters out from showing you as one of the top commentators on your blog. If you blog is new, I would recommend that you do not edit this option and as you get more and more commentators, filter out your name.

Step # 5: Activate the Top Commentators Plugin

Got to Plugins from your WordPress Admin Dashboard. Scroll down till you see Show Top Commentators and click Activate

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