Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Top Commentator Widget Problem


If your blog is using wordpress and you have a top commentator widget on your blog, you might want to take note of this possible problem that I have encountered. I did some testing and try out and this is a problem and possible causing some problem to either you or the reader, and maybe you are not aware of it.


Problem:

Top commentator widget is using commentator name as a grouping criteria. So, if two different person commented on your blog using the same name, when the widget calculate and show the top commentator, they will be group as one same name with an additional comment count.

For example, if you commented as "SEO Expert" and someone else also commented as "SEO Expert", the top commentator will count "SEO Expert" as making 2 comments. So, if "SEO Expert" happens to be one of the top commentators, the last person who commented will get his/her link shows beneath the "SEO Expert" commentator.



Implication:

Now, if you want to play prank, you can simply go to any blog with top commentator widget installed. See who is the top commentator name and make a comment on any post with that same name, but, put in your own URL. In this case, when the next page load, although the top commentator name is still the same, but, the link is actually changed. And chances are, he/she probably won't know about it.

So, if the search engine bot hit the site, you will actually get all the links instead of the other poor fellow.



Of course, I won't recommend you to do that because this will in fact make you more enemy instead of friends, but, sometimes, people don't know and such a mistake do happens.



So, if you have a blog with top commentator widget or making comment on other blogs, do take note of this.

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