After configuring my HeadwayTheme, including colors, fonts, my new header, the Blog Index, and other design attributes, I found only one missing detail I couldn’t live without: a subscribe to comments button. Plus, I wanted to employ a no-cost web traffic tool.

On this page, you’ll find a description for how I : 1) track my web stats 2) added a subscribe-to-comments button.

About tracking web traffic

I’d like to point out one great feature that has helped me monitor my web traffic. I use elogicwebsolutions to monitor basic web stats; it is a free service and has proven to be insanely reliable. Elogicwebsolutions provides the  HTML code, which you copy and paste into web pages that you’d like to monitor. 

Headway designated a footer for this type of thing—brilliant! You can literally copy/paste the HTML code from your preferred web stats monitor into this footer to monitor your entire site—easy schmeasy.

Go to Headway Configuration> General Options and paste or type the HTML code into the footer box (see screen shot below). Remember to click the save button after making changes.

About adding a comment subscription service to your blog posts

~A very simple process to install a comment notification service to your Headway Theme includes using the Comment Notifier plugin.

Simply go to “Add New” in the plugin section of Wordpress, and search for Comment Notifier.

Find the Comment Notifier plugin, and install it by selecting the “install” button. Once installed, activate the plugin (select “activate plugin”) and go to your Setting panel in Wordpress (left-hand navigation) and click on Comment Notifier.

You’ll need to do some very minor configuration to the settings page for the notifier to function.

First, you need to select “Yes” for the subscriptions checkbox insertion option. With Headway, since it is designed so well, you don’t need to worry about changing any code.

This is a great plugin because the developer lets the individual decide the text adjacent to the subscription check box. I use this text, “SUBSCRIBE TO COMMENTS (Check this box if you want new comments emailed to you. You can unsubscribe at any time via your notification email.)” However, it is completely up to you. 

I decided to select “No” for the checkbox default. By selecting “Yes”, you’re setting the default to automatically subscribe folks without their direct permission—without an action on their part (via checking the checkbox).

The next step is to type in a few preferences for the email that is sent to your post’s subscribers.

The plugin’s developer made it easy for us by using simple tags. This screen shot is example of what I typed into the fields of the Notification section of the plugin general options panel. You can see I chose to limit the comment text to 30 characters.

Finally, set the unsubscription setting in the case a reader wishes to unsubscribe. You can take a peek at my settings below. I don’t use an unsubscription page URL so I, in my case, this field remains empty.

Finally, save your work and I strongly suggest you use the “save and send a test email” button to ensure everything functions OK.

That’s it! 

Please email me with questions and enjoy this traffic tracker and plugin. Also, let me know if I can answer questions about using or installing Headway Theme.

Cheers!