wayne on September 1, 2008
Comments are vital to having an interactive blog. Without comments from your visitors, a blog would be nothing more than a web site providing one way communication. In light of that, you could easily use a Blogger.com blog to create a standard web site if you wanted to. In this post, we'll take a look at the commenting features within Blogger and learn a little more about them.
Note to new visitors! If you would like to know more about this series or view all available lessons, just follow the appropriate link.
Comments are the life-blood of any blog. With the variety of blogging systems to choose from, as well as the variety of templates one might pick for their blog, one things remains the same: comments are always found at the bottom of the post you are reading.
The comment settings page
There are 12 different settings you can configure your blogs comments with. If you have commented on any other Blogger.com blogs, you will have noticed a variety of way that blog owners can configure their comment mechanism. Here is how they do that, and what each setting is for.
Comments
The first setting is simply labeled 'Comments'. This is defaulted to 'Show' since most blogs allow visitors to comment on your blog. If you are tired of having comments, you can set this to 'Hide' and you will no longer accept nor show any of the existing comments you may have on the blog. This doesn't delete existing comments, it only hides them from view. Changing this back to 'Show' will display all your comments and allow others to comment once again.
Who Can Comment?
Blogger provides a fair amount of control over who can comment on your posts. There are 4 options to choose from.
- Anyone - includes Anonymous Users - Like the label says, this allows anyone and everyone the ability to comment on a post.
- Registered Users - I see this one quite a bit, and each time I'm a little disappointed when I do. This only allows you to post a comment if you have a Google/Blogger account, or an OpenID account. The reason I don't like this setting is because I cannot refer to my blog on WayneJohn.com. It's not a blogger blog, so I'm forced to reference my ViewsOnLife blog.
- Users with Google Accounts - Just the same setting as Registered Users, but without the OpenID option.
- Only members of this blog - Use this setting if you only want to allow team members to be able to comment. Non-members will not have the ability to comment.
I recommend not limiting yourself and to allow Anonymous users to comment. That is until you start to get spam comments. Once you start to get the spam, then you can switch it up and inform your users.
Comment Form Placement
When a user wants to make a comment on the post, do you want them to go to a full page, or have a pop-up window display alongside the post where they can comment? This is purely personal preference here, but I enjoy the pop-up type. I can still see the post in my other browser window and yet make comments that refer to the post much easier than if I was taken to a full page.
Comment Default for Posts
When you write a new post, would you like to give the users the ability to comment by default, or is commenting something you want to turn on and off depending upon the post you are writing? This setting allows you to define if new posts allow comments by default or not. If most or all of your posts will not allow comments, save yourself a little time and change this value so your new posts don't allow comments by default.
Backlinks
Ever wonder why there is the 'Links to this post' hyperlink at the footer of each post? That link is there to show you any links that people have made to the particular post. For instance, if I were to reference one of your posts here, you might see it as a 'Link to this post' on your blog. That is a backlink, a link from somewhere else to one of your posts.
Showing and hiding the backlinks to your post is just the same as showing or hiding your comments as described above. The only difference, this only affects the 'links to this post'.
Backlinks Default for Posts
The Backlinks Default for Posts settings behaves exactly the same as the Comment Default for Posts except that it modifies the default for the Backlinks setting. The image above shows more of the same post entry screen as the image before it. Use this setting to control how the defaults for new posts are set.
Comments Timestamp Format
Each comment has the date and time that the commenter made a comment. This control allows you to specify the format of the date and time. You can also use this control to show only the date if you wanted.
Comment Form Message
The comment form message is a message that will display immediately above the textbox where a visitor would write their comments. You can fluff the text up a little with some light HTML as well. I think the best thing about this particular control is that I can thank my readers ahead of time. I can also provide a link to this blog from there by using a simple hyperlink.
Comment Moderation
Here is where I'd like everyone to listen up. I explained above in the Who Can Comment control that I prefer allowing anonymous users to comment, and this control is exactly why. You can moderate the comments you receive using this control. It doesn't make any sense why one would moderate their comments, yet not allow anonymous users to comment on their posts. Of course, if you are receiving an inordinate amount of comment spam, this doesn't apply, but I suspect that most of us aren't.
You can choose to always moderate your comments (the default) or only those comments made after a certain number of days have passed after the initial post date. Of course, you can turn it off altogether by selecting 'never'.
There is also an email address textbox where you can supply an email address that will receive an email after every comment is made. I use this on my blog here so that whenever someone comments, I know about it and I can come and comment back. It's a great feature and helps to create a sense of 'does he ever leave his computer?'. hehe
Show word verification for comments?
If you are being bombarded with comment spam, this would be your first line of defense. Rather than demote your comments to only allowing registered Google users, or no comments at all, try implementing the 'word verification for comments' control instead. When you implement this, the commenter will be forced to type the text they see above the word verification entry textbox. This helps to eliminate automated comment spam.
If you are the author of the blog, this control will not show when you comment on your blog. It only shows to those that are not authors.
Show profile images on comments?
If you have a blogger account, you might have uploaded a picture for your profile. If you say 'Yes' to this option, when another blogger user leaves a comment, their profile photo will show alongside the comment. Choosing 'No' will do the opposite, obviously.
Comment Notification Email
Here is another way to be notified by Blogger when a visitor leaves a comment on one of your posts. You can enter up to 10 email addresses, and when someone leaves a comment, each address will get an email informing them of the new comment.
The email will inform you of which post and the text of the comment.
Conclusion
This concludes all the controls on this particular page. Establishing how you want comments to be handled on your blog is something you can do up front during the creation and definition of your blog, or after it is already up and running. The impact of any changes to your visitors should be apparent.
Do you get any comment spam on your blog? Do you allow anonymous users to comment on your blog? If not, why not? I personally enjoy when I can reference my non-Blogger blog waynejohn.com instead of the ViewsOnLife Blogger blog. When I encounter one of these, I do a double-take and sometimes will not comment where before I wanted to.
There may be others out there that do the same thing, and I'm sure there are plenty of Blogger blog owners that don't even realize this. Something to think about while you review your comments. Could there be more comments?
Blogger.com Help Topics
What are backlinks and how do I use them?
How do I moderate comments on my blog?
What is the word verification option?
