For blog authors, reading the comments can be as important as the post itself.

Blog comments help authors gauge the popularity of a post. They are an important part of the feedback loop, often used to improve the quality of each successive post.  Comments may shape the way an author thinks about a topic and can affect the focus of future work.

But if a number of comments are occurring outside of a blog, and are essentially lost on an external social media site, then part of the blog is broken.  If an author doesn’t receive necessary feedback, readership may suffer, and for a professional blogger, that can affect earnings.

Thanks to trackbacks and pingbacks, it’s been easy to keep conversations flowing between blogs.

For microblogging and lifestreaming services, however, comments about blog posts are easily missed by blog authors.

Even though many social media services are publicly searchable, blog comments are still difficult to find. When space is at a premium and url shorteners are used, the url is hidden from the blog author, and even the best decision engine won’t uncover the link.

So how do blog publishers find those comments and bring them back to the blog?  For WordPress, Drupal, and any blogging system that supports trackbacks, Chat Catcher can help.

Chat Catcher is a free service that scans social media sites such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and identi.ca for blog comments.  It not only discovers full links to blog posts, it also translates shortened urls from any url shortening service.  It’s very easy to start using Chat Catcher.  Just follow the steps below and begin capturing comments.

1. Navigate to ChatCatcher.com and download the files for your blog.  The Chat Catcher WordPress plugin is available at WordPress.org.  There is also a Drupal module (written by John Eckman).  Chat Catcher can run on any blog that supports trackbacks using the PHP script.  Just click the Get Code button.
2. Once you’ve installed your plugin or script, register your blog with the Chat Catcher service.  Chat Catcher only captures comments for registered blogs, and you’ll need to provide your blog address, Chat Catcher’s secret code, and an email address.  The email address will only be used to notify you of important service updates.
3. Configure your script or plugin.  Add names to the Chat Catcher user name list and comments from those users will not be published.  Likewise, you can configure Chat Catcher to reject comments that contain specified words or phrases.
4. Test your Chat Catcher settings using the link provided on the Chat Catcher configuration page.  Enter a valid trackback url on the test page and generate a test trackback to your blog.

If you’d rather not install a script or you don’t have access to upload a script to your blog, you can also signup for the “Scriptless” option.  Chat Catcher still will track your blog comments and store them for you.

Because every Chat Catcher site has an RSS feed, you can monitor your blog’s comments through the feed.
Chat Catcher works with your blog’s existing comment system.  It doesn’t replace it.  Even if you need to stop using Chat Catcher for some reason, the comments that were posted will always be part of your blog.  This is an important part of the Chat Catcher service and should be a consideration for any blogger who is thinking about relying on a third-party application to supplement blog comments.

As it becomes more difficult to identify blog comments that take place away from a blog , Chat Catcher is becoming an essential part of many author’s commenting systems.  If your posts are being passed around on microblogging and lifestreaming services, you’re missing comments.  Chat Catcher can help.

Shannon Whitley of Whitley Media runs Chat Catcher with his partners at Ocasta Labs.  Shannon is a developer who enjoys coding for fun and profit and writes about it here: http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/ Recent projects seem to always include Twitter or WordPress, and sometimes both.

• Blogs
• comments
• Drupal
• friendfeed
• identi.ca
• lifestreaming
• microblogging
• pingback
• social media
• trackback
• twitter
• wordpress