Tag: Blogger

Sticking with Blogger (or not)

Recently I made a promise: As soon as the semester was over, I’d start looking into switching Media Nation from Blogger to WordPress. Now I’m not so sure.

Being more interested in blogging than fiddling, I naturally signed up with WordPress.com rather than trying to install the full version of WordPress on a server somewhere. I experimented a little — you can see the very minimal results here.

But the documentation seemed practically non-existent, and, in poking around, I found this: “You cannot edit any template directly…. You cannot add or remove any html to any theme. This is for security reasons.”

Well, now. So much for making the type a little bigger, switching from justified to ragged-right or, for that matter, adding the code that makes Media Nation part of the Boston Blogs network.

Maybe I’m missing something. Right now, though, my inclination is to try to deal with what I don’t like about Blogger — especially the comments system — without switching. If anyone has some hand-holding advice, that would be appreciated as well.

Toward less anonymity

I don’t want to rehash today’s New York Times article about attempts to encourage civility in blogland through a voluntary code of conduct. Rather, let me briefly consider one aspect of this that I’ve wrestled with from time to time: the matter of anonymous comments.

The code, online here, includes this:

We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

I can almost guarantee that Media Nation will adopt this system later in the spring. I like how I’ve seen this implemented on other blogs. Blogger, unfortunately, does not appear to offer any middle ground between full registration and total anonymity (although some commenters here work around that by including their names or pseudonyms). But change is coming.

Tag (or don’t tag) this

I’ve got a question for the more technically oriented members of Media Nation’s readership. Ever since I switched to Blogger 2.0, I’ve been attaching “labels” — what most folks call “tags” — to my posts.

But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not sure why. After all, you can already search Media Nation for anything that might be buried within a post. What do tags add?

From what I’ve seen, tags are great within a community of other users. For instance, go to Flickr, search for photos that have been tagged “northeasternuniversity,” and you’ll find 710 photos taken by a number of different people. If readers could use my tags to find other blogs using the same tags, that would be great. But I don’t think that’s the case.

WordPress lets you stack up your tags in “Categories,” as Seth Gitell has done, and which also makes sense. (Seth is also considerably more disciplined than Media Nation in separating his posts into broad categories.)

So what about it? Am I missing something? Or is Blogger’s tagging feature just too lame to be bothered with?

Comment reconsideration

After reading your public comments and private e-mails, I’ve decided not to do anything about comments to Media Nation in the immediate future. I’ve seen several good reasons not to require people to register with Blogger, including:

  • At least one correspondent whose judgment I respect thinks Blogger’s terms of service are a legal nightmare. I’ve decided not to worry about it, but I know others may differ.
  • Another tells me that requiring registration won’t even eliminate blog spam — a big incentive for making the change.
  • At least one third-party solution that I briefly investigated, Haloscan, doesn’t seem to do much.

Now that the semester has begun, I’ll probably let things continue unchanged until spring. After that, I plan to investigate a real third-party solution or possibly a switch to WordPress, which apparently has better comment tools.

Toward less anonymity

I’m probably going to require people to register with Blogger before posting comments to Media Nation. I’ve long been uncomfortable with anonymous comments, but have held back from taking this step because most users, after all, will still be anonymous. Here’s why I’ve changed my mind:

  • Having a Blogger identity at least gives you some sort of public persona — you’re not anonymous so much as you are pseudonymous. That’s a step up.
  • Spammers should be completely blocked from posting. I hope.
  • I shouldn’t have to screen comments — they’ll go up immediately, and it will save me time.

I’m going to do this unless I hear a good reason not to. “I don’t want to register” and “I’m afraid Google and the CIA will implant a microchip in my brain” are not good reasons. But if you have a serious objection, I’ll take it seriously.

More: I notice that Atrios, who’s on Blogger, uses Haloscan. Any thoughts?

Blogger blues

Since switching to the upgraded version of Blogger a few weeks ago, I’ve noticed that every time I go to the Dashboard, it says, “1 comment needs to be moderated.” Yet if I do, there’s nothing there. And if there are comments that need to be moderated, I’m still told that there’s one left even after I’ve cleared them out.

Beginning yesterday, it now says, “2 comments need to be moderated.” Same deal.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Please don’t tell me to switch to WordPress. I might, but there’s no way I’ll consider it until summer. Besides, I’d like to see if I can tweak Blogger to my satisfaction before giving up.