Rick Beckman

How to Avoid Losing Visitors Due to Comment Links

Note: The code in this arti­cle was updat­ed and test­ed to work as of 2015-09-01.

If you run a Word­Press-pow­ered web­site, ask your­self, how many users leave your site by fol­low­ing the links left by com­menters? The answer will no doubt vary great­ly site to site, but if your users are leav­ing your site pre­ma­ture­ly and for­get­ting to come back, then you need to improve that sit­u­a­tion straightaway.

And it’s easy to do! What we’ll do is add a small snip­pet of code to your site which will alter the links to instead open in a new tab (or win­dow, if tabs are unavail­able), ensur­ing your site remains open in the user’s brows­er. Links which point to the cur­rent site’s address (as deter­mined by home_url() will not open a new tab). 

Sim­ply open your The­sis 1.8.x custom_functions.php or your site’s func­tion­al­i­ty plu­g­in and paste in the fol­low­ing bit of code:

/**
 * Comment author links open in new windows
 */
function custom_pop_open_external_commenter_links ( $link ) {
	if ( ! strstr( $link, get_home_url() ) ) {
		return str_replace( 'rel=\'', 'target=\'_blank\' rel=\'', $link );
	} else {
		return $link;
	}
}
add_filter( 'get_comment_author_link', 'custom_pop_open_external_commenter_links' );

If you want all com­ment author links to open in new win­dows, sim­pli­fy the code to this:

/**
 * Comment author links open in new windows
 */
function custom_pop_open_external_commenter_links ( $link ) {
	return str_replace( 'rel=\'', 'target=\'_blank\' rel=\'', $link );
}
add_filter( 'get_comment_author_link', 'custom_pop_open_external_commenter_links' );

Also, I should point out that this code inval­i­dates The­sis’ XHTML strict markup due to that par­tic­u­lar stan­dard not rec­og­niz­ing the target attribute.

Learn how to con­vert your The­sis site from XHTML Strict to HTML5!

Tab for a Cause

Obvi­ous­ly, keep­ing vis­i­tors on your site is a pos­i­tive thing, but all of this talk about tabs reminds me of an amaz­ing way to spread pos­i­tiv­i­ty: <a href=”/get-tfac/”>Tab for a Cause</a>!

Tab for a Cause is a brows­er exten­sion which turns the “new tab” place­hold­er page into a won­der­ful­ly sim­ple tool to raise mon­ey for char­i­ties, and all you have to do to con­tribute is keep open­ing new tabs like you would be anyway!

Do your part to make the world a slight­ly bet­ter place.<a href=”/get-tfac/”>Get Tab for a Cause</a> and keep on press­ing that “new tab” button!

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Rick Beckman

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Comments

17 responses to “How to Avoid Losing Visitors Due to Comment Links”

  1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
    Avinash D'Souza

    Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather have the com­ments load in a pop-up box…that way as soon as they’re done with the com­ments, they’re back on my site.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      There is a com­pelling case to made for using Word­Press’ pop­up com­ments fea­ture; how­ev­er, for most peo­ple (myself includ­ed), pop­up box­es are annoy­ing and may even be blocked by browsers.

      Open­ing links in new win­dows at all isn’t an ide­al solu­tion, at least not until browsers give users the option to dis­able such behav­ior, but it’s far more accept­ed than pop­up windows.

      Reply
  2. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
    Avinash D'Souza

    Had anoth­er ques­tion Rick(and this kin­da freaked me out in a good way).

    How do you get the “Speak Up, XYZ” in the com­ment intro? I noticed it on the Timthumb post and was total­ly blown away!! Adds a whole new spin to the per­son­al­i­sa­tion angle…

    Are you using cookies/custom php? How can one repli­cate this?

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      You’re the first per­son to com­ment on that! And you’re right, it is a com­bi­na­tion of Word­Press cook­ies & cus­tom code. The exact code I’m using fol­lows; sim­ply drop it into custom_functions.php. A prop­er tuto­r­i­al on this code will show up some­time in the future, i’m sure.

      /**
 * Customizes the text introduction to the list of comments
 */
function custom_comments_intro( $intro ) {
	if( isset( $_COOKIE[ 'comment_author_' . COOKIEHASH ] ) )
		$commenter = ', ' . $_COOKIE[ 'comment_author_' . COOKIEHASH ];
	else
		$commenter = '';

	$intro = str_replace( ' comment', ' voice', $intro );
	$intro = str_replace( '&#8230; read it below or', ' in the conversation.', $intro );
	$intro = str_replace( '&#8230; read them below or', ' in the conversation.', $intro );
	$intro = str_replace( 'add one', 'Speak up' . $commenter . '!', $intro );
	$intro = str_replace( ' trackback', ' linkback', $intro );

	return $intro;
}
add_filter( 'thesis_comments_intro', 'custom_comments_intro' );
      Reply
      1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
        Avinash D'Souza

        Haven’t seen this on any oth­er site. Peri­od. Seen some gor­geous CSS work but the PHP is pret­ty vanilla.

        Stuff like this blows me away…

        Love your daily/weekly The­sis snippets…

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          Style isn’t my strong suit at all. Code tweaks, how­ev­er… Well, I can rock those. Keep your eyes on my Word­Press direc­to­ry for all my lat­est tuto­ri­als. Not much there yet, but i’m going to keep work­ing on it! (It’s all tar­get­ed to The­sis users, of course.)

          Reply
  3. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
    Avinash D'Souza

    If you ever have the time for it, would love to see a post on post for­mats styling…

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      A styles ques­tion? Hmm… That’s cru­el, man. I know how to turn on post for­mats in The­sis — link, quote, etc. — but styling them well is not some­thing i’ve yet to pull off, which is why i don’t use them here.

      Reply
      1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
        Avinash D'Souza

        Fair enough.…a bit of PHP then? I’m up against a road­block with the link for­mat in par­tic­u­lar… ( http://diythemes.com/forums/showthread.php?56149-Keeping-post-title-linkable&highlight=links+in+pos+titles)

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          Workin’ on it for ya. Keep your eye on the forum thread!

          Reply
          1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
            Avinash D'Souza

            Saw the forum post.…thanks a ton for that! A par­tial solu­tion is bet­ter than no solu­tion at all…

            Reply
            1. Rick Beckman Avatar
              Rick Beckman

              Check the thread again. ;)

              Reply
              1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
                Avinash D'Souza

                Almost there!! The code is work­ing fine cos no parse errors.…but I don’t see any meta box! :-(

                Reply
                1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                  Rick Beckman

                  There are a cou­ple of things which could be wrong. Make sure you’re using the lat­est ver­sion of Word­Press, and make sure the exter­nal link box isn’t hid­den in “Screen Options” at the top of the post. Also, the box will only appear for sin­gle post adding/editing, not for Pages.

                  When it works, the box should appear just above the cus­tom fields meta box, but it can be dragged to any oth­er location.

                  Reply
                  1. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
                    Avinash D'Souza

                    Hous­ton, we have liftoff!! I can’t thank you enough for this Rick…it must have tak­en you ages to bang it out. Works like a charm…I can see the meta box now. Ques­tion: would this also hold good for teasers if I knock out the is_single?

                    Reply
                    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                      Rick Beckman

                      Pos­si­bly. With­out look­ing at the code, i’d sus­pect that you’d need anoth­er con­di­tion­al in there to detect whether the head­er is for a teas­er or not (unsure if the markup for teas­er head­lines is the same). You could cer­tain­ly try it; worst case sce­nario, you just have to add the con­di­tion­al back in.

                    2. Avinash D'Souza Avatar
                      Avinash D'Souza

                      A lit­tle more help over at the forums? Com­ing a cropper…

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Rick Beckman