[@joemoak Member 15 years, 10 months ago]

That’s a fair question, John. Blog apps are great if you want a place for a few privileged people to talk about what’s on their minds. Blog apps are not so great at managing discussions and comments from readers. Forum apps are great managing users and discussions. I considered dropping WordPress for bbPress altogether, but bbPress (and most forum apps) lacks many of the other features I want; listing of posts with full or summary text on the front page, image management, static pages, related posts plugins, etc.

How do people maintain and track their own conversations on the blogs they visit? Outside of third-party services like CoComment, it’s very laborious. Bookmark each page you post a comment on? I guess that works.

Really I’m just looking for a way to encourage discussion and make it easier for people to stay involved. You’re right, maybe I need to rethink my strategy altogether.

I did a little more searching and found a WordPress plugin that does almost exactly what I want with Vanilla: Janine for Vanilla