I’ve recently come into a few new blogs that I enjoy reading. What I normally do is hang out at a blog to read some older posts, catch up with the latest, wait a few days to see more posts added and then after all of that, I begin to comment.

What I find to be really annoying is when I am ready to let you know that I’m there by commenting, it’s a difficult process to leave my comment.

OK, HaloScan and other services are just fine for leaving comments. But I can never remember by Blogger username and password so typically I pass on commenting on Blogger accounts. It’s just too much for me to try to figure out the damn thing every time I want to say Hi.

Recently I’ve noticed that the growing trend with WordPress bloggers though is to require registration to leave a comment.

Are you are crack?

Seriously, I’m not going to take the time to setup a username and password on someone else’s blog just to leave a comment. I don’t care if you are a “do follow” blogger, that’s way too much effort for me to leave a 2 or 3 sentence comment.

What I have read though says that these people are doing this to prevent spam. OK, I can see that but a spammer can still create an account and spam you. . .

So, here are my suggestions for managing spam in hopes that these people give up on trying to make people register.

Akismet – It’s even coming pre-installed with WordPress these days. Seriously, activate and use! It’s been the best thing I’ve ever had to pick up the comment spam.

WordVerify – This doesn’t do much by way of stopping the comment spammers that are real people but it does stop bots.

Comment Timeout – This plugin will shut off comments when they get to an age date that you set it to. For example, older than 30 days, comments are off. But if you have a popular post you can make sure the comments always stay on for that post no matter how old it gets.

I’ve also heard a lot people saying that the amount of comment spam they receive has come up since they installed the Do Follow plugin and that sucks. For me, it hasn’t changed. Spammers will be spammers with or without the Do Follow plugin.

For record, I’m only using WordVerify and Akismet. And I don’t moderate comments, when you hit submit shout out, your comment is there. But previously I had this set to only allowing comments to be seen right away from those who previously had an approved comment.

The last thing, avoid being picked up by spam plugins by not including 5,000 links in your comment. All comment forms ask for your URL. You’ve got one chance to get a URL on my blog and I don’t care which one it is, but that’s the one you’ll use. I’ll happily modify comments that link to all of their blogs at the end of their comments.

Do what I do. . .

If I’ve commenting on any random blog, I link here. If I’m commenting on a Mommy blog, I link to Raise It, Clean It, Blog It and now when I comment on a scrappin’ blog I link to I’m Scrappin That.

It’s real simple. If the blog your reading is relevant to one of your blogs, use that URL. Otherwise, link back to the blog that you want more link love to. Period. I’m not here writing so that people can comment with a lot of links.

Lastly, it’s your blog, you’re not obligated to have anything on it that you don’t want. If you don’t like the person that commented but want to show the comment, remove their URL. Since I installed Do Follow I have had no problem going back in time and removing links in comments from people I don’t care for and only came to my blog to stir up trouble.

Not that I know everything but dang I sure hope this posts changes the mind of just 1 person requiring registration on their blog . . .

Technorati Tags: Comments, Spam, Register, HaloScan, Blogger, WordPress, Bloggers, Comment Spam, Plugins, Akismet, WordVerify, Comment Timeout, Moderation, URL, Blogs