Blogger’s Commenting Blunder: Move Over Blogger, ‘Cause I’m Outta Here
I have to agree with reader Kathy Frederick’s assessment that the recent changes Blogger has made to it’s commenting feature is the last straw.
My response was to be expected. I believe this was an unbelievably stupid blunder made by Blogger. Its comments feature was already a weak point, and this latest change is a huge step backwards. I mean, what are they thinking? Combine that with the fact that their hosted images aren’t working properly either, and Blogger will soon have a mass exodus on its hands.
In case you don’t know, readers have only 3 choices for leaving comments. A Google/Blogger Account, a Nickname, or Anonymous. But the kicker is there is no longer an option for leaving your blog address with your comment!
Unbelievable! How can they be so arrogant? How DUMB can they get! Do they honestly think this is going to encourage more people to sign up for Google/Blogger/OpenID accounts? I think NOT!
A major benefit to building a blog community is offering your readers the ability to increase their traffic and pagerank value by leaving comments with a link back to their blog.
But now your readers will have to fiddle with code to create a link within the body of the comment box.
So who needs the hassle, and why would anybody in their right mind want to give Blogger the pagerank value instead of their own URL?
That’s a major nuisance and a complete turnoff for savvy readers which can only hurt our blog community.
Images hosted on Blogger now also try to download the pic instead of opening it in a new window. Huh?
It’s a comedy of errors that just keeps going from bad to worse.
Dumb, Dumber and STUPID!
In hindsight it seems my loyalty to Blogger was misguided, to say the least. Google is going to lose so many bloggers over this.
I can foresee Blogger becoming just a depository for spammers, scrapers and evil doers. But serious bloggers won’t even consider using their service after this blunder.
My problem is I just don’t have the time and energy to convert this blog over to Wordpress right now. If anyone can help please let me know.
UPDATE: Blogger has implemented in draft (beta) an OpenID option.
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Bloke — I’m glad you mentioned that thing about images not opening in their own pages. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. But I guess it’s just a new problem to add to the list.
I have the time to move to WordPress. I just don’t have the know-how. It’s going to be a huge pain if I move. I just really wanted to stay. They’re making it too hard for me, though.
This has got to be the stupidest blunder of the century. It will be the impetus for anyone who has been contemplating moving off Blogger.
Finding a free template and cheap host with Wordpress already installed is easy. It’s the converting of your custom blog code that will be the tricky part.
My advice is take your time and wait for me to do it first so I can write you an easy how-to tutorial
Bloke — Do you realize how happy I am that you said that? I don’t know how to repay you. Tutorials from you are gold. I would love for Google to rescind this commenting change, but I think I know the chances of that happening.
Too many changes lately. The picture thing I thought was some sort of fluke until you mentioned it. A few people on my blogroll have switched to WP in the past few weeks, and I’m considering it. My problem is also the time to figure it out.
I couldn’t agree more. I left blogger this weekend after much deliberation. I agree on all your points, namely the new commenting system being a stupid move on the part of blogger and the fact that the commenting system was pretty sub-par to begin with. I blogged about the whole thing in a post on my new, (temporary) blog.
I did move to Wordpress (I had the account for a while, but never used it before now), but am now in the process of setting up my own domain since Wordpress hosted blogs do not allow sponsored posts. I opted out of returning to Blogger with HaloScan comments simply because I feel like the day is coming when Blogspot users can no longer make sponsored posts or have off-site comments which will allow anyone to comment and have a link back to his or her site.
I am trying to read everyone’s thoughts on this. Not only was it a stupid move, but an unexpected one, to me at least. To my knowledge, Google never announced such a change was going to take place.
For what it’s worth, the picture problem is a known bug, being worked on by Google. Just read about it on Blogger Help at groups.google.com.
Now if they could just see the commenting thing as a bug and fix that!
I so agree! I’ve lost so many pictures on my blog and now the downloading of them. I didn’t even relize the comment thing.Quess I better wait for your tutorial. Untill then, I’ll just keep up loading those missing pictures!
Now I feel more satisfied and more happy that I have quit Blogger and just ahead of time too !
Submmitted to Digg.
For those of yu that are worried about moving, WordPress will import all your Blogger posts, comments, etc with one click and there are plugins to generate the redirect so you don’t lose your Google rankings. Don’t use WordPress.Com, though, buy hosting (there are lots of inexpensive deals) and using Control Panel, you can install WordPress with a couple of clicks.
Dumb and Dumber! Google is going to pay big time for this.
Calling all Comment Crusaders!
Don’t be too quick to jump ship! Wordpress has it share of problems too, I was thinking of using the Ocean Mist Wordpress theme until numerous problems were reported by Wordpress Bloggers.
I am not happy with the new Google comment system, but I don’t want to pay hosting services and fix the hard to find errors of a unstable Wordpress theme.
The whole idea of Blogging is writing posts not administration, html coding, and all the other monkey business we have to deal with!
Unfortunately no template/theme is without it’s bugs. Even if you pay for one. Look for one that is widget-ready and expect to do some tweaking.
In my case I want to convert this template to something similar in WP. There’s a lot of customization in the code which will take a fair amount of work to convert.
Unfortunately, for the average non-profit Blogger, most if not all Blogging software is HYPED as ready to go and HTML coding knowledge is NOT necessary - All an author needs to know is how to write and perhaps a little HTML knowledge to customize the theme to their desires.
The key issue is hunting down errors in HTML code written by others takes the precious little time I (we?) have from writing posts. And, you may never find the bug which means new posts can NOT be written while searching for another theme or learning how to create a working theme.
One Wordpress Blogger went through Blogging Hell (offline) for almost a month due to Wordpress Theme Troubles and hosting crashes. Like I said in my post yesterday, we must be living in the Computer Stone Age 2007 BC!
My Blogger theme may have some bugs yet, thankfully these unknown pests have not crashed my Blog!
Switching from a free platform to a paid one to deal with blogging software issues is something that most bloggers are not able to do. All this Blogger wants to do is get back to Blogging Basics, BB!
I understand what you are saying Debbie. For example, when Blogger forced me to switch over to Beta I had rebuild this blog from scratch. Because the code had changed so much I had to learn all over again which took time away from my writing.
It’s a pain in the ass to be sure. The problem is Blogger keeps changing the rules and you never know what unpleasant surprise they will throw at us next.
I suppose it all comes down to the corporate plan. Blogger is more proprietary and going for the newbie crowd, and believes that the average blogger won’t know or care what changes it makes so long as it just works.
Word Press on the other hand is focused on open standards and more professional use. If I had switched to WP at that time I wouldn’t be in this position right now. Clearly, I’ve been wasting my time on Blogger.
Hi, Bloke. Well, I’ve made the decision to move to WordPress, sooner than later. I’ve decided I need to move quickly because I want to get back to writing, not site administration. I’m enlisting the help of a colleague, who can probably get me up and running fairly quickly. I’m so disappointed with Google. Of course, now I wish I’d started with WordPress out of the chute. I never saw this coming.
I understand you, too! I am deeply concerned about exchanging one set of headaches for another set of unfamiliar headaches.
Hopefully, someone has a clear method that avoids or prevents the blogging minefields in WordPress, has clear instructions to install WordPress using Tiger (OS X 10.4.11), and can recommend a reliable hosting service!
Google must be going thru menopause or something. Mad to put people off commenting.
Anon!
Kathy, with all due respect I recommend that you wait a little. Unless your friend is prepared to do a lot of handholding over the long term, there is going to be a fairly steep learning curve. There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. You just got your Blogger blog set up nicely and I would enjoy using it for the time being. I don’t think your readers are going to disappear overnight because of this recent blip.
I agree with Bloke that you must be patient about your move to a new blogging platform !
It takes a lot of time off your hands and besides, if you are not familiar with your new blogging platform, then you will have to “go to school” to learn the basics of customizing it !
It took me four weekends to move from Blogger to ExpressionEngine. That includes installing ExpressionEngine, learning the template language, designing the new template and putting up my first post !
Try to get an idea about how long it may take you depending on how tech-savvy you are !
Sure, you can always work on setting up a WP blog in the background. But don’t be in a hurry to make the switch. Wait until you are comfortable with using WP and got (most) of the bugs resolved.
One plus for not having an option for leaving a blog address, is that comment spammers won’t be able to abuse that system. I’ve had comment spammers who included their spam website in this address. Blogger allows me to remove the comment, but not the address.
It would have been much better if Google would allow the blogger to have the admin control to completely remove the spam comment and the blog address.
Bloke and Jaffer — Thanks for your assessments. I know I will have a learning curve to deal with, but I do have a colleague who has offered to assist me. I shall take my time with it, while continuing to post to Blogger. So you’re saying I can continue the Blogger blog, even after I do the import over to WP, right? That would be the best scenario for me.
On a side note, it seems there was a problem with commenting again today. This time, I wasn’t receiving emails when someone commented. I believe it’s fixed now. Thank God for that little crumb they threw us. But, again, no mention of the problem, no confirmation of the fix.
You could continue working on Blogger after importing to WP, but that would create a gap in your posts. I’m not certain, but trying to import again after that might also possibly create double entries.
So I would just play around with WP until you think it is ready to go and then import and use it. In the mean time continue using Blogger.
Ken, you are absolutely right but the problem is they’ve made us all suffer because of spam. The fact that Blogger also automatically inserts “nofollow” code into their templates demonstrates their controlling nature and lack of concern for the majority of us legal bloggers.
Like you said (and so have I) all that Blogger has to do is give us more control over editing comments and we can sort out the spammers for ourselves. We don’t need big brother controlling it all for us.
Not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not, but now I don’t get emails anymore when people leave a comment. This makes things EVEN worse. I only know a comment’s been left if I go look! That’s fine for my recent posts, but what if someone leaves a comment for an older one? I’ll never find it. I did get notification when I responded to some comments, so it looks like they only go out when the blog owner posts a comment. I don’t know how much worse this can possibly get. Makes me want to move to Haloscan and live with the fact that all my old comments won’t appear. That’s the lesser of many evils. It’d also keep me from stressing about moving to WordPress too fast.
Kathy at The Junk Drawer
Must be bug they introduced when they made changes to the commenting system. I’m also having the same problem.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this post and comments, learnt so much about blogging.
And sorry, a little evil part of me is pleased that I chose Wordpress….
But if it wasn’t for the ultimate arrogance of Blogger, I would never have found your blog.
Swings and roundabouts baby, swings and roundabouts…
Kelley
http://magnetoboldtoo.wordpress.com
Sure, rub it in why don’t you
Welcome to the community Kelley, and thanks to Blogger for leading the way.
After I read about the new OpenID system that Google are testing out for Blogger, I thought I had overacted in my criticism but it only creates a partial solution to their change of comment login. Many people are not going to bother getting an OpenID and blogspot users are already suffering from a downturn in comments.
I had already got teed off with Blogger and made the move to Wordpress on my own domain a little while ago. There is certainly a learning curve although the help available is quite good.
One idea is to install Wordpress on your own domain and keep your old blog going until you are comfortable with using FTP and Wordpress, you have your theme sorted out and plugins added. You can then transfer over from your blogspot blog.
Blogging Sueblimely
That would be my strategy Sue, unless you are already using your top level domain with Blogger. In that case I would leave it the way it is until you are ready to make the switch to WP.
I’ve been racking my brains trying to come up with an advantage for users having OpenID shoved down their throat –and I can’t. It might help Blogger curb spam but the bottom line is it will be a pain in the ass for users and I believe it will hurt commenting over the long run.
This will only work if ALL blog platforms implement the same sort of strategy. But at this time that seems unlikely, and it will only serve to marginalize Blogger users all the more from the rest of mainstream blogosphere.
Non-Blogger users already balk at the prospect of leaving comments on Blogger blogs and this will only add to the conundrum, and how will this play with PR over the long run is anybody’s guess.
For what it’s worth, the most recent commenting snafu has been resolved:
http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2007/12/commentnotificationbroken.html
Kathy at The Junk Drawer
Whether the OpenID comment system is major or minor issue for the Blogosphere, we need a short term solution as well as a long term solution!
I needed to enable OpenID for my WordPress Blogging Buddies. OpenID is working for me tonight on Blogger Blogs that have enabled OpenID. I am not sure this change is major for WordPress Bloggers since they needed to enter their URL both before and after OpenID to comment. Once “WordPress” is selected from the Drop-down Menu, “WordPress” stays selected.
I believe the major issue was the lack of communication by Google to both Google Blogspot and WordPress Bloggers to ease our concerns and release the simple procedure to enable OpenID which WordPress Bloggers should be familiar with!
Hopefully, there will be more time to tinker with WordPress after the Holidays.
Happy Holidays Brother Bloke,
Debbie
PS. seems this comment fits both of your posts. I have also encountered many WordPress Blogs where I need to re-enter my name, eMail, and Blog address every time I post a comment. Whether this is a WordPress theme issue or something was not enabled is unknown.
I think I will enable my OpenID and play around with it myself. The problem is Blogger made no announcements that I’m aware of and left it up to us to figure out. For a company that is well versed in PR they seem to have done this assbackwards.
I still have my suspicians that this will negatively impact backlinks PR.
This is a test comment using my OpenID.
Just as I suspected, while I’m still logged into my Blogger account my link defaults to my Blogger profile. There’s still no way to leave a link to my blog address unless I make one within the comment box.
Take a look at what happens when I’m logged out of Blogger and use my OpenID and Wordpress identities.
Wordpress here I come.
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