I am sure everyone knows by now that Blogger/Google has changed their commenting system. I wasn’t even aware of this till this morning when Sara over at Suburban Oblivion blogged about it. She brings up some good points, the main one being that Google didn’t let anyone know about this change.
Once again, anyone leaving a comment with Blogspot-hosted comments must have a Blogger/Google account unless he or she wants to leave their ‘nickname’ with no link. No link = no way I (or any Blogspot-hosted blogger, for that matter) can come by and return their visit. And while it is possible for a reader to leave a comment by manually linking their blog, who wants to type in their url or hyperlink it with every comment? I’m guessing not many.
So…as much as I didn’t want to have to do this, I am going to utilize my HaloScan account for comments.
There are a few drawbacks to this.
I already know it will delete all my blogger comments. I don’t know of any way around that. But, while comments mean a lot to me, I’m not all that sentimental about them. And, I will always have the copies in my email.
Everyone will have to type in their email addy when they leave a comment. Some people clearly do not want to do this, but, on the bright side, the addresses are not published publicly for just anyone to see. And you already have to do this for pretty much any blog not hosted at Blogspot anyway.
The good things are that I have been wanting a way for a reader to directly link to their site via the comments, instead of directing me to their blogger profile page. I’ve also been wanting to connect an email address with the comments, so that I can better communicate with my readers. Haloscan will allow me to do that, so I am pretty excited. Again, the email addresses are not published publicly, but I can access them at my Haloscan account page.
I’ve been playing around with Haloscan at one of my test pages, and have figured out how to work the code like I want it. And it looks like I’ll still be able to keep Blogger’s linkback system as well….which I really, really liked.
I love Blogger, and think they are a WONDERFUL free service. Almost perfect, even. But putting limits on comments like this? In my opinion, that was just not a good move on Google’s part.
(Haloscan will be running over here later tonight)
December 1st, 2007 at 6:59 am
There are ways to set up the way people can comment on your blogspot. I have never heard this before about blogger. One just has to go in the settings and set it up that way to allow anyone to comment. At least I think that’s it. Maybe they did change it. Hell, i don’t know.
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December 1st, 2007 at 11:59 am
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Anonymous said…: There are ways to set up the way people can comment on your blogspot … ”
Yes, I am aware of the ways which you can set up for comments on blogspot. Until they changed things yesterday, I had it set up so that anyone can comment (which I still do), but now, instead of the ‘other’ option, where a person could type in a name and a link to their own page, it has to be Google account or anonymous. Unless someone who anonymously comments leaves their name and hyperlinks their url, I won’t know who they are. It’s not just me who noticed. At the link I provided, she has many, many comments by disgruntled Blogger users and those who agree it will be inconvenient to try to leave comments now.
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December 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
SAME issues here…I just posted.
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