Need I say more?
Blogging is not a one way street. In order to operate a successful blog, you’ve got to promote reader participation- commenting. What on earth would drive you to require anyone wishing to comment on your blog to create a Google account? I can’t even count the number of blogs I have visited in the past month that I went to leave a comment on, noticed the above message, then promptly exited the site.
Also, Blogger’s commenting form operates over an SSL encrypted page. This means, every time someone goes to comment on your blog, the first thing they see is this annoying pop-up:
Do yourself a favor and allow anonymous comments on you blog. As soon as you do, your reader participation will surely increase. As far as the http/https security pop-up goes, you can either ask all your readers to change their Internet security settings so they will no longer receive this notice, hope your readers don’t mind, or locate some other solution.
When designing their online stores, huge corporations will spend millions of dollars to develop their site to allow the customer to go from item selection to checkout in the fewest possible steps. When managing a blog, reader participation is the equivalent of an item checkout for an online store.
When developing your blog, make it a point to allow the reader to easily participate! If reader participation remains difficult, you will lose your visitors and your blog will turn into a ghost town.
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Article posted by: Neon on August 24th, 2007
I was thinking about starting my blog on a blogger account until I read your blog traffic e-book. You convinced me that for the long haul, I should do my own hosting.
It really pays off too, because I’m just paying $5/mo and now I am in control of everything so I don’t run into issues like this myself!
Thanks for the great advice.
Tony P.
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Though I’m a relatively new blogger, I’d have to say that having to register to comment or not being able to comment would have to be in the top 5 of my blogging pet peeves.
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Tell me about it! Blogger really annoys me sometimes (or most of the time…)
Just yesterday I saw a blog with its own domain, but I went to comment, and had to go through Blogger’s crap. Luckily I didn’t need an actual Google account for it, but it still had the security warning and switching domains BS before I could get back to the post, etc.
And what if I want to reference the post while I’m commenting? It takes so long to go through the extra crap that I forget what I’m commenting on!
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I can’t stand blogger commenting format. 9 times out of 10 I won’t comment because it confuses the crap out of me. I agree that if making comments are not easy, than most won’t actually comment. It is like a new trend though to see no comments allowed on blogs, which has brought up the question if it really is even a blog if you can’t even comment.
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Well, technically Wordpress is nothing more than a content management system (CMS) which 99% of people use to manage their blogs.
If your site is setup so as to disable features such as commenting, chances are those are the 1% who are just using Wordpress to manage their static websites. I wouldn’t really call it a “blog” at that point.
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wordpress.com is some how better than blogger.com but only the con is they don’t allow advertisements because of spam problems. Else every feature is better than blogger. Of course customization of templates can not be done but very nice premade wordpress templates can be used. Any of my blogs at blogger.com did not work but 2 at wordpress.com works well….
u can check http://targetlife.wordpress.com as an example.
Out of free subdomain hosts it’s best one.
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I’ve only just started my blog on blogger and I’ve read a couple of not-so-great things about blogger.
Is WordPress better, and would it be worth switching over before I start listing my blog in places?
Thanks,
Janey
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@Janey:
YES! If you’re not just running a personal blog, swich as fast as you can. Get your own domain name, hosting and setup Wordpress.
Just ask yourself a question: Do you see any “big name blogs” using Blogger?
If you’re looking at running a professional blog, do it yourself.
- John
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Actually, the advice should be “Do yourself a favor and get off Blogger.”
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Stupid move by Blogger, but well spotted!
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Requiring registration to add comments on a blog actually puts off a lot of users. I visit a lot of blogs daily and leave comments on interesting posts, but only on those which do not require signing in or registration. It is very difficult to remember login names and passwords for all blogs also, especially if you’re using a friends PC where your password might not be saved.
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Good call!
I’m using Blogger and didn’t realise people couldn’t comment on my blog without registering. It’s now fixed
Now time to see how bad the spam is
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[…] saw a post at SiteFever last week entitled Blogger Users - What Are You Thinking? that really got me fired up, so I had to post my full rant […]
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All my blogs now allow comments without first registering
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Another annoying thing about commenting on a Blogger blog is the word verification. Sometimes the jumbled up words can’t be read at all. And it puts me off whenever word verification is turned on.
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