WordPress Comments

When I switched to using WordPress as my "primary" blog, I wanted the transition to be as straightforward as possible.  I’d like to think I achieved that, although there has been a slight sticking point related to the posting of comments.

To keep things clean and simple, I decided to make commenting only possible on the original WordPress entry.  After all, that’s where the "real" post lives.  I made the mistake of requiring a name and e-mail address, though, since I thought it would cut down spam.  Which it didn’t, as it turns out.

So, I have removed the requirement to enter a name and e-mail when commenting on a post.  I hope this is an acceptable compromise — I know some of you have been reluctant to comment on my posts because of the hassle of going to the WordPress blog, but really I’ve tried to make it so that it is no more complex or difficult than commenting via LJ.  With this change I just made, it’s now even simpler.

Of course, having said that, if you guys still don’t like it, I’ll re-enable comments on LJ.  I’d rather hear feedback from you all than try to cater to my obsessive compulsive need for organization. ;o)

Just an FYI, though: besides the spam issue, I did have another reason for requiring an e-mail.  E-mail addresses were never, ever made public-facing.  (i.e., there was no way for a spambot to harvest an e-mail from your comment.)  The actual reason for this was because if you have an account set up at Gravatar, it will display your avatar instead of the grey, generic "ghost man" icon.  For those who don’t know, Gravatar hashes your e-mail address so that whenever you comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog with that e-mail, it will display your unique avatar.  It’s not locked down to just one site — like LJ.

Anyway, thanks for understanding, and let me know if you guys still hate commenting over at mageuzi.com.

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2 thoughts on “WordPress Comments

  1. Furahi says:

    I feel important… and bad :P

    As far as I know, LJ publishes an ATOM/RSS feed of comments to entries, would it be too much work to enable comments in your LJ, and have that bring them over here?

    I mean, without the need for an e-mail it’s not a big issue posting here (except perhaps for people with mobile LJ clients?)
    But you still defeat the purpose of LJ…

    You could still keep your comments organized and mantain the ability to use LJ, if you automagically X-posted comments…

    • mageuzi says:

      Don’t feel bad, I understand your point. I just wanted to make my side clear too — I’m not trying to be mean. :o)

      If there is an RSS feed, I’ll see what I can do to automate it. If I can work something out, then I’ll re-enable LJ comments. Thanks :o)

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