Disappearing Comments!

Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Gulf Waters RV Resort — Port Aransas, Texas
Temps: Hi 83F (28C) / LO 77F (25C)

Has this happened to you?  Have comments you’ve left disappeared?  I just found out that it’s happening to me.

Pam (of Oh, the Places they Go!) left a comment on a recent North Pole posting in my Two to Travel blog asking if I had seen their post about Iceberg Lake.  I had; and in fact, I had left a comment.  How could I not — it had two of the things I love in life … ice and wildlife (specifically, bears).

Going back to the post in question, I scrolled through the comments … none from me!  So I left a second comment in case I had forgotten to hit the submit button; that also disappeared.  I then checked a few of the other posts in Pam and John’s blog … no comments with my name on it!  I checked a few other blogs I read regularly — albeit not always as timely as I should … none, nada, zip!

I sent Pam an email to assure her I was reading.  She wrote back that John checked their spam folder — et voila … my comments were all there.

This has happened to comments left on my blog a few times.  In fact, just last week, I fished out a comment from Sue and one from Sherry from my spam comments.  They are regular readers, so I have no idea why they ended up in spam.  I’ve also had this happen to the comment notification emails I receive.

Anyway … just want to say that it doesn’t hurt to check your spam folder every once in a while.  And if you haven’t seen comments from me recently … they just might be sitting there waiting to be fished out ;-)

Comment Notification … You Don’t Have to Moderate

Thursday, June 21

In a comment on my Spam post, Sherry (of In the Direction of Our Dreams fame) noted:

… I get almost no spam AND blogger doesn't catch any either but I do leave comment moderation on because I love having the comments come in my email. Without those I wouldn't get any email. :-))

Comment moderation doesn’t bother me.  In fact, I have it turned on for posts that are 14 days or older as those seem to be spammed the most often.

That said, if getting comment notifications in email is the only reason bloggers have their moderation turned on, there is another way to do that.  I get ALL of my comments — legitimate and otherwise — sent to my email.  That way, I don’t have to go back to my blog to read them.

If you’d like to have your comments sent to email, here’s what you need to do (using the new Blogger interface):

• Go to your Dashboard
• Click Settings from the sidebar
• Click Mobile and Email
• Enter your email address where it says Comment Notification Email
• Click the orange Save Settings button in the top right of the screen

Once you’ve completed the steps, all of your comments will go to your email.  No worries; they’ll be published in your blog too :-)

At this point, if you want to leave moderation on, you can do so.  The email you receive will have the usual options to publish, delete, etc.  If you want to change your moderation settings, however, here’s what you need to do:

• Click Posts and Comments in the sidebar (still in Settings)
• Click Never to turn off moderation completely — you’ll have to go to your blog to delete any comments that are not legitimate; or
• Click Sometimes to moderate comments on older posts and enter a number to specify the time frame (as noted above, I’ve got mine set for 14 days) — you will have links in the email to manage these comments as they won’t be automatically published
• Click the orange Save Settings button in the top right of the screen

Have fun blogging!

Spam … On the Rise Once More

Wednesday, 20 June

It’s been a while since I turned off word verification and comment moderation on my various blog sites.  After the change, I was averaging 5-10 spam comments per week.  Most of them were on my ‘original’ blog, Two to Travel.  This is the blog where I recount our non-Phaeton travels.  It has an international readership, which, I believe exponentially increases the chances of receiving spam comments.  The good news, all of the spam comments were caught by the Blogger filter.

The spam comments tapered off to almost nothing for a while, but now they seem to be on the rise again.  And this time, Phaeton Journeys seems to be the target.  Why?  Who knows; my mind doesn’t work like a spammer’s mind works.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Two to Travel has been on hiatus for a while.  That’s about to change, however, so we’ll see what happens then.

All spam comments are being caught by the filter, and I have comment moderation turned on for any post that is older than 14 days.  Overall, I’m a happy camper — though I can’t help but wish that spammers had something better to do than to flood the www with meaningless words.

If you don’t have comment notification turned on, you might consider checking your spam box every once in a while.  To do so (in the new Blogger interface):

1. Go to your Dashboard.
2. From the list on the left, select Comments.
3. Click the Awaiting Moderation and Spam boxes individually to see if there are any comments in either box and take action accordingly.  (I usually report them to Blogger as spam and then delete them.)

By the way, a more important reason to occasionally check your spam box — to make sure legitimate comments have not been filtered as spam by Blogger.  I’ve fished quite a few out of the spam box and restored them to their rightful place in the blog world.

Word Verification Turned Off

Thursday, February 16

Blogger has changed the word verification feature.  The problem … these ‘supposed’ words can be far more difficult to decipher.  (Usually worse than the ones in the screenshot to the right.)

I’ve turned off the feature on this blog and will monitor what happens with the spam comments.  If I start getting a whole bunch of them, I may revert to comment moderation in lieu of the word verification.

 

In the meantime, I’ve read a few comments on other blogs where some have noted that they aren’t sure how to remove word verification.  Here are the ‘how to’ steps — if you are using Blogger’s new interface, you will have to temporarily revert to the old interface first.

• Open your blog in your dashboard; I do it by clicking Design as shown below

• On the far right of the dashboard, click the gear icon; select Old Blogger Interface

 

Once you see the old Blogger dashboard:

• Click the Settings link

• From the second row of tabs, click the Comments link

• Scroll down and find Show Word Verification for Comments? and select the No radio button

• Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Save Settings button

That’s all there is to it.

 

And if you want to revert back to the new interface, you can easily do so by clicking the ‘Try the Updated Blogger Interface’ link at the top of the Old Blogger dashboard.