Since we've been talking about comments, here is a WordPress plugin that is great.  It's called Subscribe To Comments.  It allows your visitors to subscribe to comments on a particular post.  This is something that really should be built into WordPress and apparently one of the WordPress lead developers thought so too.

Why do you want people to subscribe?  Ahh – it gets them involved and keeps them interested and hopefully they will join the conversation!

Mark Jacquith, an all around great and brainy guy is one of the lead developers at WordPress and he has created this Subscribe to Comments plugin.  Here's what he says about it:

Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address!

Here is a screenshot of what your readers will see:

Even though WordPress claims this plugin is compatible only to WordPress 2.3.1 and it gives you a warning if you use a more current version (you do, don't you??), it works great with more current versions.  This is 3.0.1 and it is working with no problem! 

Give this plugin a try and see if it increases your return visitor traffic.

Cathy Perkins – The WordPress Wizard