Some of you might have noticed a few changes with how we handle comments on Blogstorm and I wanted to explain things in a bit more detail. I will discuss the features first and the reason behind the changes at the end of the post.
In short when you leave a comment we now allow you to add a link to your profiles on sites such as Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit & StumbleUpon as well as a link to your website.
The big change is that we now only allow registered users to leave links – if you don’t register you can still leave a comment but you can’t add a link. See below for a screenshot of how the new system looks:
You will notice the “More comments by” link at the bottom of the comment – this leads to your personal profile page with a live link to your website and other social network profile pages. To see an example check out Zoe Piper’s profile.
Once you have registered using the registration form you have access to a profile page which allows you to edit your details at any time.
The registration form allows you to add your Twitter & Facebook details – the rest of your information can be added once you log in. We use Gravatars to power the photos next to the comments – Gravatar is a free system and you can sign up here.
Why we are changing
The main reason behind this change is to encourage conversation – we want intelligent comments from regular readers and the best way to do this is to create a feeling of community behind the site.
My feeling is that if you read and comment on a blog on a regular basis then registering once is actually easier than typing your details every time you want to leave a comment.
In addition we are very aware of the fact that a blog post with hundreds of incoming links and hundreds of nofollow blog comments could be a very inefficient PageRank black hole and forcing users to register is likely to dramatically improve the signal to noise ratio of comments here on Blogstorm.
We won’t be going down the route of letting people leave dofollow comments despite the fact we offer live links from profile pages. It only needs one bad link to slip through the net and a popular blog post could be given a ranking penalty and that isn’t a risk we want to take.
Please try the system out – your feedback is appreciated.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Find me on Digg | Flickr | Reddit | Twitter
Its great. Registration on the blog simplifies the process of commenting; in fact, you can just concentrate on your comment part rather than putting in other details, such as username and email.
The addition of social networking links gives a boost to your traffic and SEO campaigns and this is a welcome addition. Cool changes, in my opinion.
More comments from DomainMarvelousFind me on Facebook | Twitter
Let me be the first to congratulate you on this system, its a great way for users to add exposure to the items that they want, and getting links to our social media pages.
Im not totally sure that it will improve the signal to noise ratio, but its a great idea nonetheless!
More comments from MOGmartinFind me on Facebook | Twitter
Somewhere else to landgrab our usernames … Perhaps I should have gone for SEO London instead …
More comments from malcolmcolesFind me on Facebook
I think this is a very good system , since you don’t fill in details every time you want to leave a comment I think this will increase the number of good comments
More comments from Nishadha SilvaFind me on Facebook | Twitter
Also, Patrick, I entered my URL as http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk in the profile field (ie with HTTP) but on my profile page it says my website address is http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/users/www.malcolmcoles.co.uk …
More comments from malcolmcolesFind me on Twitter
Hi Malcolm – I fixed it. Something strange with Wordpress auto adding http:// into the profile field but not letting that be added back into the database.
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Twitter
One extra thing you probably notice is that poor title tags on the profile pages – we are working on a fix for those.
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Flickr | Twitter
There aren’t many blogs that I’d register with, but this one is pretty decent so I’ll register!
Have you any plans to implement a system like HoboWeb where you get a dofollow link after you’ve earned some trust – after X number of posts?
I’ve just implemented it on my blog and I’m hoping that I’ll catch any spammy links before they’ve posted more than X posts. Having said that, your blog gets more traffic so perhaps it’s an overhead you don’t want?
More comments from gspowartFind me on Twitter
I prefer to give dofollow links from profile pages rather than comments. Some popular posts have hundreds of comments and there is a good chance that at any one time at least one will be a bad link.
Any comment link can turn from a decent link to a spam link at any time – all it needs is a domain to expire or a site to get hacked and all traffic could stop coming to a blog post within hours. If that post has 150 comments then how could I figure out which was the bad link in order to fix things?
More comments from Patrick AltoftExcellent comment system. I really like the integration with Twitter and Facebook!
More comments from MartijnI don’t like the whole ‘register to leave a comment’ thingy. Wordpress already has that feature by default, but no one uses it. Maybe one day I will register to leave a comment, for now, it’s okay like this.
Find me on Flickr | Twitter
Patrick,
That’s a very good point – something I hadn’t thought about.
Hmm, perhaps the new dofollow plugins from Shaun and Dave Naylor etc need to switch links off completely after 60 days or 90 days to get around that problem.
More comments from gspowartIt says “Registration is free, takes about 5 seconds and is worth doing” but then says “Please check your e-mail” after taking multiple attempts to meet all the constraints on the registration form which it only tells you about if you fail to satisfy them. Way more than 5 seconds. Why is this worth doing?
Please get with the cool kids and use OpenID instead.
Find me on Twitter
Thanks for the feedback, I will make the form clearer. You don’t actually need to wait for the email by the way – I will remove that part.
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Twitter
Nice integration with social networks but where’s the link to the profile pages?
More comments from Web Strategy 360Find me on Twitter
The link to your profile page is right under your comment. We are having issues with spaces in usernames at the minute but that will be fixed soon.
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Facebook | Twitter
Great idea Patrick. Is this a standard feature in Wordpress, a plugin or a custom job?
More comments from timparsonsFind me on Twitter
Hi Patrick – pretty cool
Anybody that passes link juice to another site should obviously be keeping an eye on things. I run a lot of blogs. I’ve only seen one instance of a site being removed from Google and that was cause it had been hacked and serving malware.
While linking to a bad neighbourhood is a concern, I think it’s well blown out of proportion. Sitewide links to a ropey site might be another matter – but I’ve never seen the odd link to a ropey site get a site de-indexed (unless it was hacked).
NO site can say it doesnt link to a bad neighbourhood, or we’d all stop linking to anybody. I link to about 4,000 pages last time I checked (!) – it’s impossible to keep track.
Maybe you’ve had different experience, but linking to bad neighbourhoods is Google FUD (unless they’re serving malware) as far as I can make out. And I can see why they promote it.
I see SO MANY sites with porn spam etc – sites are still in Google.
BUT now that I’m flowing juice, I’ll be even more heavily moderating things before they even get published. The link juice if for my regulars and intelligent interesting folk. I’ll be aggressively outing idiots too – might even do a weekly post with all their email addresses lol.
More comments from HoboFind me on Twitter
I’d add I’ve been using linky love for nearly 2 years now (I think) with no probs.
More comments from HoboFind me on Facebook | Flickr | Twitter
I don’t like the whole register to leave a comment either.
But on this site it appeared to be very simple – as was simple and quick.
The thing that made me register is that I was being asked to provide my facebook, twitter and flickr accounts. This is quite novel for me to see this on a blog site.
I may adopt this procedure for my blog, it makes sense.
More comments from Rob AbdulFind me on Facebook | Twitter
This is very cool but I just found an issue. Take a look at the profile page it created for me: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/users/Brian%20Hancock
It has no real information on that page other than that I apparently joined the site on December 31st, 1969… =)
More comments from Brian HancockWhoa! Using me as an example. I don’t know if that is good or bad. Either way thanks for the publicity.
Oh and by the way. I agree that registered commenters are preferred.
Find me on Twitter
Really good idea to incorporate the social networking element into the commenting function.
Have you had a surge in spam comments, or has the registration process acted as the gatekeeper to stop the spammers?
I’ve read through the discussion above – but is this a WordPress plug in you’re using? I’d like to try it out on my site.
More comments from shallamFind me on Digg | Facebook | Flickr | Twitter
testing your new comment system
Great Guys
More comments from dcpanganibanFind me on Twitter
@Brian – yes we are working on a fix for that……
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Facebook | Twitter
One of the few quality sites that I am happy to register for.
More comments from lightloaderFind me on Facebook | Twitter
just want to test the comment system…
More comments from michelleFind me on Facebook | Twitter
when i leave a comment, the page will refresh?
More comments from michelleYeah! It’s really cool new comment system here. It’s really great. Thanks for sharing.
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