An odd thing happened the other day: I got a comment. Its been a while! Now, a lack of comments isn’t a problem for me: I’ll be the first to admit that my sales strategies rely heavily on SEO and attracting traffic from customers who are already close to the point of sale. One obvious advantage of this is a high conversion rate, and the other big benefit is that I don’t have to spend as much time “selling” to regular readers and casual browsers.
But I still do appreciate the comments I get! Which is one of the many reasons I dislike the nofollow attribute in outbound and user-generated links. A good comment has value, and its only fair to repay value with value. Us web publishers can’t afford to spend all day surfing around the web answering questions and helping people out. I can live on links, but not good will alone!
So of course, I was surprised to discover that the link in the comment came up showing nofollow. This can’t be right, I thought: Maybe the plug-in I use is out of date. Indeed, my copy was an old version, but even after the update, the link still said nofollow!
Fixing the Template Functions
Well, if you’ve read the headline I’ve already ruined the end of the story. It turns out my new WordPress Theme was adding nofollow to all the comment and trackback links, and it was over-riding the plug-in.
The good news is that the solution is quick and easy.
If your theme is adding nofollow or other attributes you don’t want in to your blog’s comment section, you can fix this by opening up the Theme Editor and selecting the file Functions.php. (It may be under the heading/title of “Theme Functions.” If you’re so inclined, you can also edit this file directly from your CPanel file manager or upload an updated and edited copy through your favorite FTP.
Once you’ve got the file open, all you have to do is search in it for any instances of the word nofollow (or whatever you’re trying to get rid of) and delete. Really, that’s it!
As soon as the functions.php file was modified, the plugin was able to kick in and do its thing. So that means my theme won’t eat your link love anymore!
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