Commenting

I think one of my favourite things about blogging (okay, besides keeping a record of our daily life, meeting other bloggers through their blogs and knowing I'm not the only one out there who has a passion for flowers, doesn't really like playing with her kids and pins a lot of stuff on Pinterest she'll never do -- okay, really everything about blogging is my favourite!) is your comments. I love reading them and responding to them and the conversations that happen around them. But I need to make some changes.

Here are some comments I've received lately:

"Woah! I'm really loving the theme of this site. It's simple, yet effective."

"Lucky me! I discovered your website by accident. I have saved as a favorite for later."

"Hello. I enjoyed reading all of your posts. I wanted to leave a comment to support you."

"You're a very professional blogger. I've joined your rss feed."

"Hello there! This post couldn't have been written any better. Reading this post reminds me of my old roommate and I will forward it to him."

And while normally comments like this would make my heart sing, you probably recognize that these are all actually from people who really have an ulterior motive. And it's not to tell how Wonderful! Interesting! Relevant! my blog is. They want me to check out their websites about watches, handbags or things like that.

I took word verification off my blog when I was doing the SUYL series through Kelly's Korner last summer. One person commented on Kelly's blog that when you are looking at 100 blog posts in a day and want to leave comments, the word verification is really annoying. Which it is. So I took it off our blog. But I've noticed lately that the spam comments are driving me nuts. And a lot of bloggers have turned word verification back on. And I'm sorry to inform you that I have now joined those ranks.

Also, last summer, when reading the archives of my blog friend, Erika, I found this post about commenting. And her new dress. But the commenting part (at the end) is what I want to draw your attention to. I love responding to your comments and those of you who don't have an e-mail address linked to your profile get a response from me in the comments using the "reply" option. Which is fine.

However, Blogger is annoying. Currently people who use an iPad can't leave a comment unless I turn the "reply" option off. And I would like to do that for awhile. So in the next week or so, I will change the way comments appear on posts and I won't be able to reply to you through the post. So please, please, please, link your e-mail address (I have one I use for personal e-mail which I never give out online and one which I use for online things like blogging, Amazon, Pinterest, Facebook, etc) to your Blogger profile. This way I can comment on your comments and, since I've started writing this post I've decided that my absolute favourite thing about blogging is our conversations through the comments. At least, for right now!