Keeping your readers happy and encouraging them to participate on your blog is a good way to start building community. For many people the first people visiting your blog - other than friends and family - are likely to be other bloggers. Why? Because to get the word out about your blog, it is important to leave comments on other bloggers blogs - and since they also want people to know about their blog - they may very well visit and leave a comment on your blog in return.

Why use the Commentluv plugin?
Commentluv is a very popular plugin and is a great way to show some appreciation and to give a little something back to other bloggers who have stopped by and left comments on your blog.

How it works
It works by parsing the feed of the commenter by visiting their blog and checking in the typical places for a feed. Once a feed is found the plugin then displays the title with the link to the person's last post on their blog beneath their comment.

Installing
You can dowload CommentLuv from the Wordpress pluging directory. The instructions for installing can be found there also and are very simple. This plugin does not need you to edit any of its files.

Customizing and Features
Once installed and activated, you can find a link for it in your Settings section of your dashboard. There are a few things you can customize. One is how you want the link to their blog displayed. They let you decide what text you want around the link and you can use [name], [lastpost] and/or [site] to have the plugin display a link to their name, most recent post and blog home.

You can also edit the text that appears under the comment form to let the user know that you are using CommentLuv. There is even a place where you can add CSS to style the text however you want.

Other
The only down sides to this plugin I can think of is that some people's feed it just can't find so it doesn't leave a link for some people. Of course, comment spammers would like to exploit this plugin to get an extra link from you but as long as you are moderating your comments that shouldn't be a problem.

If you do run into any other problems the author also has a FAQ that should be able to help you.

Do you use this plugin? Do you like it when other blogger use it? Are you more likely to leave a comment at a blog that uses it?