The thing I loved most about LiveJournal versus other blogging sites is that it lets you reply to comments and e-mails you when someone replies to your comment, which encourages conversation and community. When I left LiveJournal and began hosting my own blog, I found a workaround in Brian’s Threaded Comments, which e-mails me when you comment and gives you the option to click a little checkbox on the comment entry form and receive an e-mail when I reply back to whatever brilliant thing you said.

Most people aren’t hosting their own blogs, though, so plugins like Brian’s won’t work. And for those instances, my best friend Tracey and I recommend subscribing to comments feeds. Because I don’t get e-mailed whenever Tracey replies to one of my comments, I check her comments feed via my Google Reader to see if she’s written back to me. If you have a blog and you want people to know when you’ve replied to their comments, I heartily suggest that you add a comments RSS feed link in an obvious place.

For WordPress, the link would look like: http://[yourusernamehere].wordpress.com/comments/feed/
For Blogger, it’d look like: http://[yourusernamehere].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

I only tell you this because y’all have been so nice about commenting on my blog, and I want you to be able to share in the wealth. Let me know if you add one so I can add it to my Google Reader and keep up with you better.