A blog without comments is like sports without commentary and television without viewers. Audience members add a great deal to the overall value proposition, which is why it is important to encourage comments on your blog.

One way to do that is through the Simple Top Commenters Widget. There are other plugins available that serve a similar purpose and go by similar names, but it’s the combination of simplicity and robustness in this offering that helps it stand out.

After installing and activating the plugin, you can go to the options panel from within your WordPress admin dashboard. Once there, you can define the title of the widget, choose the date range, activate links to commenter URLs, decide whether or not to display Gravatars, and opt to hide the total comment count.

If you want the sidebar widget to integrate better with your blog, you can additionally edit the CSS, customizing it to suit your needs. More information, including screenshots and the download link, can be found at TentBlogger.com. The same site contains more WordPress plugins and themes too.