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12 June 2010

Winding Down for the Summer

There is an interesting post on Detectives Beyond Borders where blogging systems are discussed. How to manage comments efficiently is the main issue and it has set me thinking about how quiet my own blog is in comparison with some of the ones kept by writers.

Since photography was the main reason I started blogging in the first place, I have not set out to have a vibrant comment forum here. If I want to chat I go to a chat room, though this is increasingly rare.

It may be worthwhile for anybody who is betwixt and between in the Blogger/Wordpress debate to take a look at the various comments on Peter Rozovsky's post.

I posted the following comment there and, so far, it has not been uploaded. As comment moderation is used on that blog, this is not a problem. However I thought that the comment might be worthwhile sharing here...



"There is nothing to stop you having both a Blogger and a Wordpress blog (both free). I imported quite a few posts into Wordpress, just to get used to a new system and play with templates.

However, writing blogs do not tend to need all the bells and whistles that grapic based ones do and you might be just as well to stick with Blogger and try to resolve the comment issues.

Wordpress is time-consuming, I found, but that is probably because I'm not up to speed on HTML.

You could join the Irish Webmasters Forum and ask for help, perhaps.

Also, making another Blogger blog, designed purely for discussion, might solve some of the comment issues. Your comment box is very popular and the pages read more like a chat room. Asking posters to discuss topical posts in a separate blog might help rationalise all the material?

Although I started out with just a photography blog, I ended up making several blogs. This encourages clarity of thought and each blog is like a chapter of a never ending book."

7 Comments:

Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

6/12/2010 5:47 pm  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Your comment has been posted now. The delay was not Blogger's fault or, if it was, just indirectly.

Because of frequent spam (which a better spam filter might have caught), I enabled comment moderation, and I have just now uploaded the comments that arrived overnight.

Thanks for the suggestions. You're right that I don't need a graphically sophisticated blog. By the same token, though, I want to keep things simple for everyone. I like having on- and off-topic posts and discussion all in one place. This fosters the sort of spontaneity that I like, and I would be wary of trying to direct any part of the conversation to a separate blog.

What I may do is stay at Blogger for now and set up blogs at other hosts just to get used to them. Then, if Blogger does not get its act together, I'll be ready to switch over right away.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

6/12/2010 5:51 pm  
Blogger David T. Macknet said...

WordPress isn't difficult to use, it's just different. You don't ever have to touch HTML if you don't want to (same as in Blogger), plus WordPress allows you to moderate only the first comment, or only comments with excessive links.

And: WordPress is open source, not owned by Google.

6/15/2010 5:27 pm  
Blogger Tales from the Birch Wood. said...

Thank you for helping with this topic.

When I get a moment I'll look at Wordpress again.

Certainly the spam filters there are very thorough.

This might be of use?

6/16/2010 11:11 pm  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

So thorough, apparently, that they screen out long signature lines like the ones I use when I post a comment.
===================================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

6/17/2010 1:47 am  
Blogger David T. Macknet said...

The plug-ins I have installed on our blogs are:

Akismet
Bad Behavior
Edit Comments
FD Feedburner Plugin
Google XML Sitemaps
Gravatar Signup
Official StatCounter Plugin
Post-Plugin Library
Quick Contact
Quote Comments
Similar Posts
Sociable
SRG Clean Archives
Subscribe To Comments
Time Zone
WP-EMail
WP Grins Lite

There are others which I've used in the past, but which were one-time use sorts of things. That list will get you there quite nicely, in particular the Bad Behavior and Akismet ones will take care of the spammers and 'bots.

6/17/2010 8:49 am  
Blogger Tales from the Birch Wood. said...

Apologies for the delay in moderating both comments.

I have been doing battle for several days with a large hedge... a nice change from tweaking posts on the net.

Have a great day.

6/18/2010 11:56 am  

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