One of the greatest things about blogging, especially on your own blog is the discussion that takes place through comments. Here at Jeffro2pt0.com we have taken the approach of manually typing in <strong>@CommentAuthorName</strong> as our means of typing out a reply. After typing this in time and time again, it begins to become irritating.
While searching the plugin database on WordPress.org, I came across WP-EasyReply. This plugin when activated presents a REPLYNEW link near the commenting text area. When you click this link, all of the comments that came before yours are automatically entered into the comment form along with a blockquoted version of their comment. This is similar in how a forum works when you want to reply to specific person and it automatically quotes their comment.
I thought this was great. However, I didn’t see the need of appending the same comment over and over again throughout the discussion so I went inside the plugin code and deleted a few things. Now when you click the link, it automatically outputs the @AuthorName in bold which is what the user’s of this blog and myself have been doing for quite some time now.
The only problem with this plugin is that the link only appears for me and no one else. I am currently working with the plugin author to see if the reply link can be manipulated so that it is displayed for the general public to use. I’m also trying to talk the plugin author into wrapping up his plugin into a one line php function like so many other plugins. This way, users would be able to place that line of code anywhere they wanted to within the comments.php file giving blog owners the chance to display the REPLY NEW link anywhere they see fit.
If you want the same results here is the code change:
Original Code:
$posters.="@$com->comment_author - < blockquote >".htmlentities(@$com->comment_content)."< /blockquote >$lf$lf";
Changed Code:
$posters.="< strong >@$com->comment_author < /strong >
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
Wow. That plugin is neat in concept. Please keep me in the loop as far as development goes as I’m very interested in this.
What the plugin author could do is a few things:
1. Have an admin panel where admin can specify before and after code for the comment author.
2. Or, have a function one can call where you can specify the before/after code.
Hey look, my name. Cool. Also, neat plug-in. I will look into it.
Fantastic, I’ve been looking for a similar thing and was even doodling the appropriate php tag construction on a notepad here in the office. Like you, EasyReply isn’t exactly what I need, but will use some tweaking. I like the @Name reply, but also want to add in an anchor link using the comment_ID tag so for long threads, one can click on the name to go directly to their comment.
Hopefully I’ll be able to tweak the plugin to my liking. Thanks!
@Brian You are quite welcome Brian. Once you get your tweaked version online, send us a link so we can check it out. I’d be interested in seeing what you do with this plugin.
Brian, I’d definitely be interested in that tweak, too. It’s exactly what I’m looking for, so please, if you see this, post here and let us know. Thanks!