Had I forgotten about you guys? No way – you are the ones who are making my blog successful and keeping it alive. I would not forget you ever. Everyday, I was thinking about you, deciding to talk about you and finally today – I sat to link back to you as you did an awesome job being in the Top commentators list on my colourful blog.My blog anniversary contest that is just over with awaited results, has given me some really beautiful readers who are contributing this blog in true sense.

You had been reading about Making money online but ever thought of a blog that talks about losing money online . It’s little towards sarcasm way to tell you how you cannot make money online by doing these mistakes. I liked the way, Suzanne tells how not to do mistakes and I learned something from it as well, you would soon see an About us page that is missing here

Nick has been around for a while, I am coming across this blogger often through one of the common blogs we read and I shall say you are lucky if he is one of the top commentator at your blog because his comments make lot of sense most of the times. I would be glad to tell you that he was one of the sponsors of our contest and someone of you would soon get ad space at his blog

The third top commentator, Varu, does not have his website linked to his name, may be because they are the aspirant professionals coming to the States and are not into online blogging and all. This top commentator is religiously replying to the queries by many aspirants at the popular H1b 2009 post

Likemusic seems to be a die hard music fan with a niche website developed for music lovers – don’t forget to check him

Tara, again a music buff, made to the list. Wow, I have two top commentators from music niche. Cool!

Well guys, let me see if you earn 3 extra tickets that would be counted in the blog anniversary contest. The top commentator should be counted from 9th June to 14th July and I believe some of you should make it to the list and gain extra points for the draw planned on coming Saturday.

Also, keep in mind guys, I would watch your comments and would not link to commentators that are commenting just to get a link back. This might force me to put you in probation period of the top commentators as well .

You might have seen the post coming up on this blog again in last week after I come back from the hospital, everything went well and I am enjoying bed rest since last couple of days until all next week. Due to the blogging break for surgery, there were three pending actions for me here. I could not get couple of my regular posts up like link love to top commentators that I started last month, regular monthly earnings report for May month and the blog anniversary contest announcement.

Commentators being one of the most important aspect of any active blog, I would like to give them the love they deserve. This time with little twist! I would not just link back to your blog guys [if you have one] but I would link to your post that I liked the most from last month. For website owners, it would be link love to their homepage only.

But one moment, I am stuck. I missed to note down the top commentator names from last month and now the list is vanished! Oh Damn, now what???

I was stuck for couple of minutes, but nothing to worry if you face similar situation. You just need to have little knowledge of SQL and database and you are there. I ran this SQL query on my blog’s database

SELECT COUNT(comment_author) AS comment_comments, comment_author
FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_date > ’2008-04-30 23:59:59′
AND comment_date < ’2008-06-01 00:00:01′
AND comment_author != ”
AND comment_author != ‘Life is Colourful’
AND comment_type != ‘pingback’
AND comment_approved = ’1′
GROUP BY comment_author
ORDER BY comment_comments DESC LIMIT 5

and I could fetch the list I wanted. I had to remove my name from authors as it was fetching my name as well considering my own comments. It’s little bit techie stuff, but if you are not a technical webmaster and want to know what this query is all about, feel free to contact me or comment here and I would explain.

So here are my top 5 commentators for May month

Chetan from thewwwblog.com is a new entrant in the list this month. Rather he has been active here since April but he just missed the bus at last moment. I was sure that he would be in the list in May. He is one of the bloggers I am watching lately. He is kind of upcoming star blogger in short, and you would like his thought process when you read about his tips on how to get more comments on your blog

I never could know his real name, but Mauritius has been very regular to this blog and has topped the list again this month. He has a website on Mauritius tourism and it’s pretty like the country itself. Keep in mind bro, I would just drop by your home anytime in next few months.

Ralph has again topped the list after he just came out of the blue in April month . As I pointed out last time, I think he has been reading the blog regularly now. By the way, he has a beautiful web design niche website for UK market, check it out.

The computer repair guy and Paul, joined the gang along with Ralph and Mauritius this month as well. As I said last time, computer repair guy as the name suggests running an online business, so you need it ever, don’t forget him. Paul who runs a real estate website, is also participating as sponsor in my blog anniversary contest that I would soon announce about.

So are you guys ready to top June month’s list! As I announced before about weekly change in top commentator list, I might not be going ahead with it and continue keeping it monthly as it might give a hard time to commentators to stay on top and it will kind of injustice to regular people.

We might see a tough competition this month, as my post on H1b 2009 visa process has been a hit and people who are visiting this blog are actually using this post as a forum. You would know it when you see the comment count almost touching to 400 now. It has been not only bringing this blog tons of traffic but also providing good help to needy people.

This is kind of announcement for my regular readers that I have decided to change the top commentators list every week from the coming Monday or simply June month.

I have been passing on the link love to the top commentators of the month since last month because I feel they deserve it. The regular commentators show their loyalty to the blog by subscribing to your blog, revisiting the posts and adding their valuable inputs. You would understand how important it becomes after you read couple of top posts under most commented posts on right side bar.

While we discuss about comments from readers, I can quickly summarize my opinion about the groups I form:

1. Passive comments. These comments are done if the reader like the post and just wanted to compliment. Unfortunately, you have to be very careful while approving such comments as these can be made up to look like real compliments but can be just spammish comments from link builders
2. Active comments. These comments often come from people who come to your blog searching something and then have more questions in your mind. I have been helping such commentators going beyond extra mile and emailing them solutions to their problems if needed [when screenshots etc are needed or when they contact me through contact us page]. These comments are also from your regular visitors or subscribers that are interested to interact with you or fellow commentators. Every blogger love these kind of comments.

I would encourage both kinds as long as passive comments are real readers as well. Alright, so I decided last night to change few settings in top commentators plugin options and update the top commentators list every week. I believe this would be accepted by everyone out here as it will see the real regular commentators on the list. What do you think? Would you like to see this change?

Since I have installed the top commentators’ plugin and had installed DoFollow plugin, I have been seeing lot of increase in commentators for this blog. The comments started flowing because of these two plugins, but once readers get addicted to the content and see some returns in terms of link love and traffic, they prefer to stick to the blog for a while.

Being in top commentators’ list gives you a clean “DoFollow” link back from many PR3 internal pages and homepage of this blog. The top commentators here are anyways getting a backlink, but I thought to add up in the dofollow link love because I would like to give it to them as my existing loyal and faithful readers. Just a token of appreciation from my side.

As a blogger, you and me shall know the importance of appreciating readers time to time, as the blog is alive and kicking due to their existence only.

At this moment, I am linking back to the commentators that are regularly commenting and being around for a while. At this moment, I am only linking back to people in the top commentators’ list but next time I would wait to link back to commentators that have added many comments same day and did not come back often. Just to see if they would like to be loyal readers of this blog and instead link back to people who are contributing to the content of the website.

So here are the commentators I would like to pass on the link love to this time:

Gadget has a very good technology website that talks about new and upcoming hot gadgets. Many categories as per the brands so I hope you would find something of your interest in there if you are tech savvy like me.

Computer repair aka pparis has been running a business website that will take care of your computer and laptop repair problems. All the best with your business fella.

Paul has been there around for a while too, he has a real estate website and if you check out the website it’s designed pretty good and again it’s a business website, so has to attract potential customers anyways.

Ralph who promotes a web design company in UK and Mauritius who promotes tourism in Mauritius – topped the list as well this month. I would hope you guys would become regular readers and contribute to the content of this blog.

I wonder there are very few actual bloggers I could see in the list, where as I was expecting them to be here more often.

Let’s see if you would also like to get some link love next time.

I have been using this Show top commentators plugin available from Nate right from my first WordPress templates. Recently I switched to this FourWPTP template but could not get a chance to write about my new template with lovely red colour; I liked this professional looking four column template than the previous one.

I realized in some time that my favorite plugin of Showing top commentators is not working the way I expected. First it was not showing the list, and secondly it did not appear properly. I could not see a way to comment on Nate’s plugin web page but then I decided to contact him by all means [and telling you it was not really very straight to find his contact]. Meanwhile, I tried Krizka’s Show Top Commentator wordpress widget based on Nate’s plugin and unfortunately that didn’t work too.

I m so glad to see Nate replied back within 12 hours, with suggestion to tweak the code as per the sidebar. Nate fixed the problem with appearance of “Top Commentator” title which was appearing in between two columns. But the list of commentators still remained an issue. He asked me to look into the code to fix it which I was planning to, but meanwhile Krizka fixed the issue in his wordpress plugin and replied me.

If you are aware of it, Nate’s plugin is pure PHP code, which in turn was converted to a flexible wordpress plugin by Krizka

I hope you know why this widget is important for me and have read before what I give back to my commentators as a token of appreciation. Thanks Krizka for fixing the widget quickly for me and helping me to reward my regular commentators.