Blogger Comments
The blogs are the space where you will get to interact with other people in the class: you will be commenting on other people’s blogs, and they will be commenting on your blog posts. I hope you will enjoy this way of interacting! Of course, you can also leave comments for each other on any post at any time, totally separate from the weekly assignment. This page should answer any questions you have about commenting, and there is also a page of Blogger FAQs. If you have a question I have not answered, just let me know!
Leaving a Comment
When you want to leave a comment on someone’s post, first make sure you are logged on with your Google account. An easy way to do this is to go to your own blog and look up in the right-hand corner. Do you see “New Post” there? You only see that if you are logged in. Otherwise, you will see a link prompting you to “Sign In.” If you see the sign-in prompt, sign in with your Google Account. Now you are ready to comment!
So, go to the blog where you want to comment, find the post, and scroll down to the bottom of the post, and you will see a comments link showing the number of comments: No comments, 1 comment, 2 comments, etc. Click on that link, and you should see a comment box open up right there on the page (i.e. “embedded”), or the comment box may open on a separate page, depending on the blog settings.
You should see that your Google Account name displayed there, along with a box where you can type your comment.
Read your comment after typing because you cannot edit it after you publish! Then, when you are done, hit Publish. You should see your comment appear there on the page.
Viewing Comments on Your Posts
There are different ways you can read the comments left on your posts:
Email. You will get an email notification with a link to the comment (see comment settings below).
Post Editing. You can see the number of comments per post listed on the post editing screen next to a “bubble dialogue” icon. Click on the bubble dialogue icon to view the post comments.
Design: Comments. If you click on “Design” in the upper right-hand corner of your blog, and then select Comments, you will see all the comments displayed together.
Blogger Comment Settings
Make sure to look at this carefully if you did not configure your comments settings when you created your blog in Week 1. There are many different options for configuring blog comments; here are the options I would recommend:
- Embedded. The default option of “embedded” means that the commenting box appears together on the same page with the post. It’s a convenient option, and there’s no reason to change it from the default.
- Google Accounts only. My experience is that if you limit comments to Google Accounts, it stops spam very effectively. If you did not adjust this setting when you created your blog, click on “Design” in the upper right-hand corner of your blog, choose “Settings” in the left-hand column, then choose “Posts and Comments,” and then choose “Users with Google Accounts” for who can comment. Since everyone in this class will have a Google Account, that will work nicely!
- No comment moderation. Please do not use comment moderation; people need to see that their comment was published successfully. If you do get an occasional spam comment, you can always just delete it, no problem.
- No word verification. My experience with the Google-Account-only setting is that it effectively prevents spam, so you do not need the extra protection of word verification.
- Comment notification email. The email address for comment notifications is on the “Mobile and Email” settings page. You can enter the address here where you would like to get comment notifications; by default, it is set to the email associated with your Google Account, but you can change that to a different email address if you want.
Spam and Problem Comments
Last year, there were no problems with spam comments on the blogs, but if you do run into a spam comment, you can just delete the comment. Please let me know if that happens! I’m feeling very confident about the comment setting recommendations below, but if people run into problems with unwanted comments, then we’ll need to figure out which settings are best for avoiding that problem.
To delete a comment, you can just click on the little trash-can icon you see below the comment; click the icon, and say “delete forever.” Alternatively, you can go into your comments panel where you see all the comments, and if you hover on the comment, beneath it you will see a little link that says “spam” and you can click that. Both ways work!
Also, I’ve never had a problem with the actual comments people leave on the blogs: as a rule, the comments have always been positive and helpful. If you do receive a comment that you are concerned about for some reason, please let me know!
