Andrew Ferrier notes that blog commenting is weak – and I happen to agree with him. If a comment is left on my own WordPress.com blog, I get notified by email. If I go off and comment on another blog (say, something hosted on Blogger or Spaces) then I have to remember to revisit that post later.
The good news is that WordPress.com just announced a new My Comments feature. This means that I can track responses to comments that I’ve left on other WP.com blogs via my Dashboard. Combined with the recently-launched (and brilliant) Tag Surfer feature, this makes WP.com much more like Flickr as a community site. I’m sure I’ll discovering a bunch of new blogs as a result.
I’ve recently helped to convert Sam to WordPress.com… and my own decision to migrate continues to pay off in spades, as more and more excellent new features are added. Just remind me again, does PlodderBlogger provide built-in stats, comment tracking, tag surfing, import/export, mobile support, widgets…? no? how long ago did Google buy them, promising riches and improvements?
Incidentally, IBM’s internal blogging setup also allows me to keep track of comments I have left on other people’s blogs, via a similar dashboard. I guess this is one advantage of a centrally-hosted, centrally-developed blogging system.
Any more takers for the WordPress.com conversion?
[update: apparently Blogger is about to be upgraded. Whoop-de-do! here’s a review…]
It does sound handy, I have to admit. It doesn’t help me, sadly, as I run WordPress on my own domain. Although your blogger-bashing is probably justified :), I think it would be good if there were a cross-blog standard way of doing this: after all, trackbacks, pingbacks, RSS feeds, and the like are surprisingly robust, so it ought to be manageable. I suspect that adding hierarchical support to Atom/RSS would be the best way to achieve it – then comments can be syndicated more seamlessly, attached to posts.
Very glad to hear you’re grokking the new features. We’ve got a few more community-oriented features in the pipeline. Hopefully soon getting more comments and readers will be a built-in perk of running your blog on WP.com.
Andy, I am a happy coComment user and can recommend this service to keep track of comments posted around the blogosphere. I have the coComment Firefox extensions installed and it keeps track of updates to my posted comments. At the coCommments site I can see all my posted comments.
Have a look at it at http://www.cocomment.com/.
I totally agree with Per that coComments! is a way to go. I have been using it as well since it has a wide acceptance in the Domino blogging community so it makes it easy to automatically track comments since many comment forms has coComment! support built-in.
/lekkim
That’s a great recommendation Per and Mikkel, I’ll be sure to check it out.
On the subject of cross-blog standards, there is a need for several – another one I can think of is import/export format.
Lots of perks of having moved here. As you can tell, I’m a happy user đŸ™‚
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give WordPress another try. However, I will check out Per’s recommendation of coComment first.
OK, I tried coComment and it is awesome! Love it. Thanks for the recommendation.
On livejournal, you get an email if someone comments on the comment you left. I like that.
I am a New user of WordPress and find it so easy to use. With being a New Web-site owner I love how this helps in writing blogs and so much more. Thanks WordPress.
http://suezee705.wordpress.com
Blogging is new to me and with the help of WordPress and my sister, it is easy!
I am having fun!
Thanks WordPress!
http://brenda5.wordpress.com
I have just started a blog. How do you allow comments to appear without vetting them first?
Dugald, it depends on the blogging software you are using. On WordPress you have a choice of having everything posted automatically, everything held for moderation / vetting, or using “Akismet” which intelligently works out which comments are “spam” or not. I use the latter, and it works generally very well.
So in WordPress how do you use Akismet (is it included or is it an extra) and how do you switch on and off automatic/moderated posting?
Appreciate your help.
Again it depends on your blog service. WordPress.com has Akismet included, and you can just go and change how moderation works in the Settings->Discussion section of the Dashboard. If you have set up your own WordPress installation, you can install the Akismet plugin very easily (if you have WordPress 2.7 the plugin installation is handled inside the Dashboard, which is awesome) and then configure Akismet under Plugins->Akismet Configuration, and commenting settings under Settings->Discussion.
Excellent. Problem solved. I just did not know where to find the radio button/ tick box. Again many thanks.
Cool item… I’m real new… trying to grasp on to this new world of blogging I have found… now how do I get this feature started !! đŸ™‚ I have a whole lot to learn… I have tried posting/linking other peoples blogs onto mine as a tribute to them… I get a thing saying it’s done but then I go look and they aren’t there !! But I was successful with Brukhar and his Presidia Creative blog… but others must be out in limbo somewhere… because they never showed up at my blog !! More to learn !!