Blogger is broken...again. Comments are not appearing. A lot of blogs seem to be affected. So if you made a comment and it hasn't appeared, please know it's not because I'm censoring, even my own comments disappear.
I've changed the comment setting to use the popup window, in the hope that helps.
Blogger has been very dodgy in the last few months and it's very frustrating. I had a look at alternatives a couple of months ago, and nothing seemed an improvement. Wordpress is Pepsi to Blogger's Coke, but I can't say I'm keen on the Wordpress usability. In fact, it sucks. Also for every complaint about Blogger I can find one about Wordpress.
I'd be interested to know, does anyone recommend an alternative? Leave your response in comments...oh, wait...
20 comments:
Are you going to host, or do you want a hoster?
I had the same problem with Blogger a while back, but it seemed to resolve itself with the pop-up comment window.
I don't know of any better alternatives. Maybe you should start a new blog company in all that spare time of yours!
Agrrr I have the same problem with Blogger, for a while now. I keep thinking nobody leaves a comment, and then when I ask people tell me they tried and left some but I dont get any. It p***es me off big time, but, just like you, I have no idea where to move...I heard people say good things about wordpress but I hate it, too. and livejournal sucks as well. just need to invest in a proper website I guess.
I've had much smoother comment access when I switched to the pop-up window. I think it will fix your problem.
I like Blogger. I used to wrestle with line space issues, but, touch wood, I seem to have got on top of that.
I commented, dammit!
Huh.
Truly, the first comment has only just appeared. Blogger appears to be doing them in batches.
Sorry to take over your comments section, Gary. I'm off now...
As I've been largely away from blogging, I missed all the hubbub... yay, me.
I don't know of a good alternative, I've had pretty good luck with blogger and like it because it's html, which I'm okay with, as opposed to wordpress, which still throws me off...
Lots of people like wordpress better... maybe it's a temporary glitch... or it might have something to do with your new design?
Anyway, hope it fixes, Gary. How are things going?
Kind of depends on if you want to pay for it. I pay for my blog through GoDaddy, same company that hosts my web site. It's nice to have my blog/domain all the same, and there hasn't been any significant down time or glitch since I switched over in January.
For free ones, blogger/WP are the most popular. I think there's a new one called Posterous (?) that has been getting decent reviews...might want to check that out.
Party! I'll host, if you give me enough notice to get some pretzels and lemonade.
We're back!
Apparently many blogs had the same problem.
To answer Anthony and Jamie:
I'd be willing to host it if I had to. The domain GaryCorby.com is registered through Godaddy and they host the main web site (which few people ever look at, probably because it's static).
But really I want to do whatever takes the least time because, running web sites is not my core business and I have enough excuses for procrastination as it is.
Also, like Scary, Lexi, and a lot of other people, I simply prefer the Blogger system over Wordpress.
GoDaddy has a number of blogging systems. I might have a quick play and see if one of them works okay. Of course, the other factor is it must be possible to import all the existing articles into a new blog system. Can you imagine having to manually transport all this?
Gary, I use GoDaddy for my domain and host my Wordpress blog there. I've never had a complaint with price or platform with either company. Before I hosted my own blog I used a free WP blog (all told, my WP time has been about 3 years) and have never experienced glitches like I had when I was still on Blogger.
As far as transportation of posts, Wordpress can do it automatically, comments and everything.
Here's what I tell people who are considering switching. First off, I challenge your Coke and Pepsi comparison. I usually wiggle my finger at my clients when they tell me things like that.
There are two main free blog hosters, Blogger and WordPress.
Blogger is owned by Google and while feature rich, is unfortunately hosted on inferior technology (software and hardware wise) that sometimes cause problems such as accessibility and more annoyingly, their vastly brain-dead commentary system.
However, Blogger has several features going for it, mainly, the powerful "follow this blog" Google Connect, with the little profile pictures, and the related blogger profile functions such as automatic integration to the Google Reader.
Some people just cannot live without that functionality. If this is you, stop here. WordPress doesn't have it. They have something similar, but it's poor and not used.
What WordPress does is have better up-time with considerable support. However, some of the features for WordPress come at a cost. To use your own domain name, that is a small yearly fee, as is the ability to customize your blog beyond the templates with CSS. It is also a small fee to prevent the automatic WordPress add from showing up, but only people with thousands of hits a day need that.
WordPress is also a superior platform for users of Microsoft Word with their "strip your clipboard text of all the stupid HTML" feature. Writing a post in Word and then moving it to WordPress works very well.
WordPress is also superior in graphical features. For example, pasting in a picture puts the picture where your cursor is, not where the monumentally stupid Blogger editor thinks it should go.
With WordPress, there is another option of hosting your own WordPress blog on your own hardware (or someone else server). This is mainly for people who want to use advanced java functionality beyond video.
So, now down to the actual choice: If you love Google Connect you're stuck. Just make semi-frequent backups to your blog.
However, if want your blog to be commentary friendly, then go with WordPress with its Askimet spam catcher, which has a false-positive track record of about 1 every 2,000 comments and an even better record at catching spam.
If layout is your area, then WordPress is a better choice if you pay their fee for customization.
If up-time is your main concern, then WordPress is the most obvious choice, either hosed by them or hosted by yourself.
Hope this helps.
I'm using the Wordpress software on my own domain and hosting space for Rammenas. Uploaded and installed the package with FTP. Added a few plugins, worked a bit on the template and Bob was my uncle. Very easy and haven't had a problem so far.
You could install it on your own webspace. Everything will be stored there, so no losing comments any more.
Sherri and Anneke, I'll put you both down as more ticks for Wordpress.
Both your blogs are certainly great advertisements for how well it works.
If I'm to investigate a switch it won't be until after November, because the schedule is rather busy until then. I forsee some more procrastination time in my future...
Wow Anthony!
That is the most amazingly brilliant response. You should put it on your own blog, as a great reference for anyone else.
The small fees are fine with me. This is a supposedly professional blog after all (try not to laugh). The amount of extra work does worry me, because I need to stay fixated on writing. I know from lots of past experience that if I start fiddling with something technical, I'll let it become an infinite time suck.
Which of the two is the easier to customize, do you think?
Thanks so much Anthony, everything you said was very educational.
I haven't had too many problems with blogger. I happen to not be a wordpress fan but still continue to visit those friends that have switched over. It seems that the internet as a whole is an imperfect system that has the potential to breakdown now and again here and there. I'm not sure there's an easy solution except perhaps riding out the storm.
Gary, I had similar problems recently, solicited suggestions, and received similar replies to yours. You can read about it here.
I may follow Anthony's suggestion and switch to Wordpress. Blogger is doing fine with comments now, but you know that the problems will recur sometime in the next two months.
And now for the problems of moving all one' posts, comments and archives from Blogger to Wordpress ...
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Thanks Peter. It does seem to be a choice of Wordpress and Blogger. Two things put me off Wordpress: I simply dislike the Wordpress environment; and the pain of migrating and customising all over again. Still, I'll look into it.
Keep me posted. I've suspended my search for now because Blogger's comment functions are working well. But that is temporary, of course.
I like the Blogger enviroment better than Wordpress', but one can only put up with so many screwups.
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