Unique Wordpress Feature Ideas for Enhanced User Engagement Brainstorm

[chubes]

Sup everybody. One thing I have been thinking about a lot is implementing custom features into my sites that helps set them apart from the crowd. I'm always thinking of new ones and I derive a lot of joy out of seeing them in action.

I wanted to start this thread to share ideas and also invite others to share their unique custom Wordpress features for others to give them a shot on their sites. I think in this day and age user engagement is more important than ever, not only for Google but for making the most out of your traffic & short attention spans.

I like the idea of people being drawn to a website simply because it's fun to navigate, in addition to the draw of the content.

Some features I have implemented recently:

1. Shuffle buttons that take you to a random post, located at the top and bottom of the page
2. Filter By Tag dropdowns on category pages
3. Randomize Posts button on archive pages (works side by side w/ filter)
4. Image voting Gutenberg block with email capture pop-up (for running social contests, etc. this one was a lot of work)

I know none of these are particularly groundbreaking, but they each improve user experience on their own and they didn't exist on my sites before, so it's a net positive. It's also really fun to code things like this and they generally don't take very long. The hardest part is coming up with the ideas. Hence, the brainstorm thread.

Other ideas I am considering, some are more technical:

1. Upvote system for comments
2. Custom Taxonomies for another dimension of sorting by custom parameters
3. Scraping websites for unique events data and aggregating it in one place (more involved)

And the most involved one, which I don't even know if it's a good idea:

4. Turning that comment upvote system into a reddit clone that lives on my website, where users can both leave comments on articles and start their own discussions

Anyway, share any ideas or feel free to take mine and use them on your own sites!

 

[bernard]

Great idea, I really think integrating gamification into sites has potential, because over time, you also gain unique data, which google loves.

Of those you mention the 4th is the interesting for me. I would love to have more user participation, to go back to the good old days of relevant blog comments, in which the blog comments where as much a reason to read the blogpost as the blog itself.

With the rise of the HCU and google seemingly rewarding user content, then perhaps now is a good time to do it?

What I know is that most people these days don't bother looking to comment, so you'd want to push it up front and center, a button tucked in the corner perhaps, that will popup and have the blog comments along with the features. Easy sign up with Google etc or just Anon. You'd want to incentivize it somehow, create a community.

 

[chubes]

Great idea, I really think integrating gamification into sites has potential, because over time, you also gain unique data, which google loves.

Of those you mention the 4th is the interesting for me. I would love to have more user participation, to go back to the good old days of relevant blog comments, in which the blog comments where as much a reason to read the blogpost as the blog itself.

With the rise of the HCU and google seemingly rewarding user content, then perhaps now is a good time to do it?

What I know is that most people these days don't bother looking to comment, so you'd want to push it up front and center, a button tucked in the corner perhaps, that will popup and have the blog comments along with the features. Easy sign up with Google etc or just Anon. You'd want to incentivize it somehow, create a community.

I think you're right that now is the time. Having a forum or some sort of intuitive UGC system built directly into a Wordpress site is something that goes above and beyond expectations and can contribute greatly to brand building. At least for my brand, the more I think about it.

I just did some digging, including on this forum and found out about bbPress, the open source forum plugin.

I think I may start by installing BBpress on a subdomain, community.mysite.com, and find a way to link accounts between the sites. Then go for comments & upvotes on the blog via forum accounts, and more ways to streamline everything so it feels like a fluid experience.

It can't hurt to give it a shot especially with a free open source plugin. I love that shit. Aside from the possible embarrassment factor of prominently featuring a discussion forum that nobody uses, but whatever. I'm bleeding anyways, lol.

We're going back to old school "outdated" internet things being valuable once again, it seems. Lot to unpack there, but it feels sort of like a consolidation.

I have a post on my site from 2021 that has over 50 comments that are more entertaining and valuable than the article itself. Hilarious stuff, personal anecdotes, etc. A few instances of people trolling each other in the comments on other posts too. And that's just with the basic Wordpress core implementation...

Wheels are turning...

 

[bernard]

I mean, forums and blog comments went out of fashion because of Facebook and Twitter, but I think people have discovered that the lack of permanence of SoMe is one reason why it all seems like a treadmill and content gets shorter and shorter and more and more similar.

Forums and blog comments are permanent and for a long time, until Google weeded out all these forums and blogs, you could really find some gold in those forums and blog comments. I feel fairly sure that forums are also one of the primary sources of LLM training.

The reason why forums and blogs are now interesting is because they are actually moderated, which is ironic because the reason they went out of fashion was because of unmoderated forum and comment spam (Penguin update).

Everything comes full circle.

I wonder if just having some small prizes and such for commenters would help with this. If you had a Facebook group too, you could ask people to help contribute info on the site.

 

[chubes]

Agree with you about social media. It also seems like people are getting sick of that treadmill aspect of social media and becoming savvy to marketing tricks that worked in the early days (like "youtube face" being discussed in another thread).

I've gotten started and the idea has blossomed into something I'm very excited about. This whole thing fits with the idea of becoming a cohesive, tangible brand.

Basically it's going to be a discussion board with custom features that make it feel like a true community. It will have a custom "user profile" that users can edit on the front end to use as a landing page for their own endeavors.

This will allow them to market themselves via a nicely presented page on my site. This fits extremely well with what I've already built. I ignore so many up-and-comers who want us to write about them who would gladly go and create themselves a webpage with my blog's name attached to it. This can also be monetized in the future.

Obviously spam is a concern, but I will figure that out.

To leave a comment on the main site, you will need to create a Community account. That will allow you both to comment (and upvote) on the site and participate in the forums.

As for getting the word out, I have an idea to get some influencers to sign up and post about it. I know some people who would probably do this for free if I make it easy enough.

A simple brainstorm thread has led to me buried deep in code and building an entire website with lots of customization. Call it a "simple feature for user engagement"

 

[bernard]

Basically it's going to be a discussion board with custom features that make it feel like a true community. It will have a custom "user profile" that users can edit on the front end to use as a landing page for their own endeavors.

I think this is a great idea and I wanted to do something similar for myself. The issue is keeping it active.

 

[chubes]

To cap off the "community" idea, here's how I'm implementing it:

1. BB press plugin on community.mysite.com
2. Must have community profile to comment on main site
3. All editorial submissions to main site get directed to community
4. Custom post types for user profiles on community site, tailored to the niche
5. Each User can create 1 profile post type and after that they can only edit
6. HTML forms for creation & editing on the front end, no back end access for community members
7. Networking functions like follows & friend requests
8. Dashboard page to serve as central hub
9. Users can upvote on main site & save articles to community dashboard

This gives people incentive to promote themselves on my platform. It's like a postmodern, niche-focus Myspace clone integrated with features of Reddit and classic forums.

Giant mountain of work ahead of me, but this idea has legs.

 

[mmm91492]

I tried taking a similar approach like oh probably close to ten years ago but never really had the traffic nor dedication to see if there was a significant increase in user engagement. I ended up building a reddit-like tool to allow users to up and downvote their favorite products, which at the same time seemed like a great way to get a bunch of affiliate links on a single page without it seeming obvious.

I think I did the whole thing using ACF repeater fields, AJAX calls to update the metadata when users vote, cookies to prevent overvoting (ha), etc.

I'd be happy to share the code if people are interested, it would be fun to see how it's perceived on a site with real traffic.

 

[chubes]

Through this process I discovered something. Even if you remove your comment form, you can still get spam comments via the Wordpress Rest API. It was a bit of a head scratching moment to see a spam comment still pop up when the comment form was literally not even on the page.

 

[BakerStreet]

I stole this from WikiHow and it works so-so.

1.) Have a contact us form for "questions from readers". It lets users ask the writer questions in case the article didn't answer all of their questions. That way, you know if the article was helpful or not or if it can be more helpful to readers.

In my test, maybe 1 in 100 will be a helpful comment. Not great but also not bad.

2.) Turn the comments function to "Send fan mail" and then show anonymized comments as social proof for the article. "Your article was so helpful to learn how to lose weight J. C. from Alaska".

In my test, 1 out of 100 will be a good thank you message but it was cool AF for me and my team to receive a thank you from a reader.

 

[chubes]

In my test, 1 out of 100 will be a good thank you message but it was cool AF for me and my team to receive a thank you from a reader.

Love that. Getting notes from readers is the best. Sometimes this game feels a lot like shouting into the void. To hear that you're making an impact is good fuel.

I've gotten hateful messages too. Sometimes buried in the hate mail is a mistake in an article or something that I didn't think hard enough about that accidentally offended somebody. I've had a few really good ones that are worth pinning on a fridge and some that were actually helpful.

Hey that's a pretty silly idea for a website (or subreddit). A place for blog/magazine/newspaper people to share their funniest hate mail