Wow, how time flies. It was just over two years ago that I wrote a post asking people to check their blog commenting systems because many times when I comment on their blogs I’m not receiving anything telling me my comments have been responded to. That post was well received, and got a nice number of responses.
You know what? It seems that it’s time to bring this subject up again, and in a weird way it ponies on a topic Brian, Sheryl and I were talking about once in a video. I was lamenting how it seems that so many times I visit blogs that have titles making me think I’m going to see something new, only to see the same, tired thing I’ve seen previously. And Brian said that even if something is old to us because we’ve been around a long time, it’s a new concept to someone.
That being the case, I’m bringing this up because I figure that many of you aren’t intentionally ignoring me and my comments. The thing is I visit so many blogs and many new ones that I don’t often remember where I’ve been. If I’ve been to your blog often I’ll at least remember to check back on that one but many others… nope, no clue. Thus, I might be thinking you’re a blankety-blank when in reality your commenting system isn’t letting people know you’ve responded to them. By the way, I always check the boxes asking to be informed of responses, though not all of you have that on your blogs.
What should you do to check things out? As I said two years ago (just so everyone knows I’m being consistent lol), go to your blog post (you might have to sign out or use a different browser), sign in as if you’re leaving a comment but use a different email address, write yourself a comment (make it short), and after you get your notification of your comment go into your blog, respond to yourself, and see if your other email address gets it.
You can do this on an existing post (if you do, I’d recommend being the first commenter so you’re the only one who’ll see it & you can delete both before anyone else sees it) or create a test post and go through the motions, then delete everything.
If you get it, then others should get it. If not… well, now it’s time to see what’s wrong. You might have your setting wrong or you might need a separate plugin to get it taken care of. At least you’ll know to take care of the issue.
My final words… this is happening on some of the blogs of those of you who comment here, whose blogs I may have written a comment on. I’m not calling out any names; if you check, you’ll know who you are. lol
I read the older post you referred to and went to my main blog and clicked “Enable threaded comments” and installed “Subscribe to Comments Reloaded” plus I manually approve comments for now at least. Eventually I would like to have a system in place where trusted commentors like yourself would be auto-approved. What do you think the best way to do that on a WordPress platform would be?
Where there any other suggestions?
Thanks for your advise. (I clicked “Notify me of followup comments… ” 🙂
Truthfully, I’m not sure there’s a program or plugin that auto-approves anyone. You could turn off all your spam filters but I wouldn’t advise it. Course, you turned all those things on, but did you go to a different browser & test it with a different email address?
I do need to ensure it all works. 😉
Not much of a commenting on my main project. It seems that for most bloggers, everything starts and ends with WordPress. Though my commenting system is quite the same and I offer do follow links, not much action is going there. Well, a bit plus is that I don’t have to fight with comment spam as this commenting system doesn’t leave footprints.
I was very active at Imjustsharing, a year ago and mostly likely I will be again! Excellent post, Mitch.
It’ll be good to see you here again more often Carl. I’ve commented on your blog here and there, as my overall commenting has gone down since I started traveling for my work over the last few months, but I almost never seem to see any responses coming back. I’m also wondering why your blog doesn’t show up in CommentLuv; any ideas on that one?
Almost same with me, Mitch. Had a bit different work to do in the last couple of months, so I was not commenting as much as before.
Regarding CommentLuv not showing up my blog, I turned off the RSS feed from the home page and leave it only on my blog. Just reverse the trick and it will show up again.
And there you are Carl. I think CommentLuv is one of the best things ever; wrote that in 2008 & I still believe it.
Well I guess most of the bloggers are using plugins on their blogs to get the response or replies direct to the commentator email. Only few of the blogs aren’t.
Thanks for bringing up this again.
Many might be Mark, but I’ve found that if people don’t test those plugins they don’t really know if they work or not. I never just up and trust a plugin to do the right thing without testing it.
Hey Mitch,
Yes, indeed. So many bloggers still ignore (or forget) this awesome tip (I had already set this up, before launching the blog. It is working, as far as I know – I had tested it out..plus a few folks came to to reply back to my replies :D).
Sorry about the troubles with my email address (I will certainly keep it in my mind and in the auto-fill form :D). Thank you for letting me know!
Hey, it’s what I do Jeevan. 🙂 However, I have to tell you that I’ve never received any responses to my comments via email from your blog, and what I’ve done is revisited your blog to see if you replied to any of my comments. And I know those things aren’t showing up in my spam filter, so you might want to test it again. I just left comments on two of your posts; let’s see if I get those.
Great point Mitch
I have not checked that.
In fact I was just surfing on a different computer last night and noticed something on my blog I had not seen.
Just goes to show how not only can the computer and browser affect your perception of your site, so too can your “blindness” to things you have seen and done 1000x.
ashley
(BTW in your post it says “so to your blog@ perhaps you meant “go to your blog”)
Good catch Ashley; thanks for that. I learned the lesson about how different browsers see similar content a while ago myself and it was quite illuminating. Glad I’ve got you thinking about comments; to me, they’re the biggest deal about blogging.
Hey Mitch,
So it’s obvious that a LOT of people have nothing in place so that we’ll know if they’ve responded to our comments. I do find that very frustrating myself because I comment on a lot of blogs and I don’t have time to stop back by so see if they responded.
I must confess while I’m at it that I’ve never received anything from you either.
Now I never check that plugin box below this comment for me to receive followup comments because I don’t want to get everyone’s comment. I’m assuming that it means that I’d only receive responses to my particular one but just today I checked that box at Harleena’s because I’m her guest there and there have been 19 comments and I haven’t received a response to one. I did email to let her know so we’ll see what her response is.
For this particular comment though I’ll check the box below and put yours to the test but I’m so spoiled with having used the ReplyMe plugin for so long that it’s automatic and people don’t have to check anything to receive their replies.
So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 😉 Okay here goes!
~Adrienne
LOL! Adrienne I know mine works because I’ve tested it often on all my blogs. Unfortunately I have an old theme that doesn’t support every plugin that comes through, even with the updated WordPress software. I’m running a couple of plugins for comments because of the age of my theme that I don’t have to use on 3 of my other blogs. Still, on your blog I get every single comment from everyone, and you don’t offer a choice either; just sayin’… lol
Hi Mitch,
Sorry for being so late to this post.
I totally see what you mean. You go to so many blogs, how in the world you are going to remember every single one? That has happened to me too many times.
And what about those who not only don’t have a system in place that let you know you left a comment, but never come to see you back anyway. Now you’ve got to wonder what kind of bloggers are those people. I guess not the kind interested in building relationships for sure.
I usually don’t check the follow up all comments box, because my inbox is already in a bad shape as it is, but I’ll check it if it says followup to your comment as I understand that I will be notified about MY comment only.
Thanks for stopping by Sylvaine. I always check those boxes because I don’t mind getting all the responses from others for a while. When I get tired of it I click on the link at the bottom of one of the messages and unsubscribe from the post. By that time I’ve usually been responded to, and if not then I know it’s not coming and I move on. However, I need it so I’ll at least know if I’ve been responded to or not. At my age I just can’t remember everyone like I used to be able to do.
Hi Mitch,
Great idea. I was suspecting for a long time that my readers don’t see my replies to their comments. After reading this post, I checked with 2 email ids and didn’t receive any notification. Then I installed a plugin that was sending the emails directly into spam. The best solution that I found is “Subscribe to Comments Reloaded”.
Seems to work just fine. It also allows people to subscribe to receive only replies to their comment, or all the comments on the post.
Thanks for making me realize what I was losing!
Cheers,
Minuca