It seems that the big G are pushing their monopolitic ideas to the limit.
Opal @ Vegan Momma recently commented and flagged that she was unable to add her web address to her comment without being logged into Google.
I assumed that it was a glitch with that post but after spending a fair amount of time commenting on other blogs today I have encountered it on EVERY blogspot blog.
As you can see below Google NOW only offers 1 option for you to display a link to your blog/website when commenting on blogspot blogs.
Before hand you had an option to leave your name and a weblink as an alternative to logging into Google. Where has it gone? And more to the point... Why has it gone?
This new Nickname thing is just damn insulting. I would almost rather post as Anom!
The reason I don't like commenting using my Google account is because I have two blogs registered on there and one is inactive. I don't want people going there instead of this blog.
I really think that this stupid new feature is going so push away potential new commenter's who do not use a Google account or only want to comment showing one website address.
Damn Google. Does anyone know how I can convert to Wordpress without losing my PR and all my readers?
Saturday, December 1, 2007
What are the big G up to now? Punishing their own?
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16 comments:
testing
I guess the test works! BUT you can't have the comment replies emailed to you!
This stinks! Makes me want to move to Wordpress now. I was thinking about it, and told myself I wouldn't move unless I had a good reason. This is looking like a good reason.
So what were you testing? I'm going to see what happens when I put my URL in the Nickname field, just for fun.
OK, this is very stupid. So now I won't be able to visit my commenters unless they have a Blogger blog. This is ludicrous. I can't find anything in writing that explains why they did this. I would think millions of people are screaming right now. Or is it just me and you?
I don't like it at all it's almost as if you are being punished if you don't use Blogger. Personally I've never liked Blogger with all the extras I get with WordPress hosted on my own server it doesn't even come close. If you have your website hosted on your own domain you should be have a problem simply transfer to WordPress since the info would still point to your domain.
I do think it will change the amount of comments some people will receive one part of blogging is connecting with others online. If Blogger only limits that to those who use Blogger than some I imagine won't comment as much.
Veganmomma -- Absolutely we're going to lose comments. And I may lose readers all together, if they see how dumb it is to comment. If I were them, and I didn't have a Blogger account, why would I go to the trouble to get one just to comment? Also, I won't be able to see any non-Blogger blog addresses. So for those folks, it's a one-way conversation. This is a huge deal-breaker for me. But I"m terrified to make the move. I have no clue what I'm doing. I just got over moving to my own domain and I thought I could relax a little. Forest, I'm sorry to ramble on in your blog. But thank you for bringing up this topic. And thank you again for your terrific comment on my "controversial" post today.
I don't want to lose commenter input :(
I am scared of moving over too!
If I can move over and not ruin my search engine standing too badly then I suppose it will not be an issue.
Oh and as long as I can keep posting for Pay Per Post.
I invite as much rambling as wanted on here. I want it to be a communal site sadly Google seems to be blocking that option!
Hey, Forest. I found some discussion of the matter over at:
BlogCatalog
I'll be following that discussion. I just checked into using Haloscan to handle my commenting, but it makes me nervous. Too many reviewers mentioned problems with posts going missing, or being unavailable for Blogger users. I have to take a chill pill until I can get more information.
If I find anything new, I'll come back and report it.
Ok, Forest. I think I'm onto something. I read about "Blogger in Draft" which I believe is basically Blogger with feature updates that aren't rolled out yet. Go to this site and read about it. Make sure you also click the "Blogger in Draft" link to read about what the Open ID function will do. Essentially, it'll let others insert their "Open ID-aware" sites. That gives us some hope! At least for our Wordpress friends.
Ok that's a little better!
I liked it the old way where you could manually enter you name and URL..
Thanks so much for doing the research.
My traffic didn't change when I transferred my blog Typepad to my own server. If I had known then what I know now I would have used a 301 redirect and kept the ones that might have gotten lost. My domain name changed.
Are you hosting on your own server? If so there would not be a change in traffic since your readers would still point to therandomforest.info
LiveJournal has that openid thing. I never liked it at times it wouldn't work. In the end I stopped commenting on LJ blogs simply because I always seemed to run into issues.
Talk about frustrating.
I just finished reading a similar post with the same concerns. I use a lot of google services so it's not a problem for me... but I was curious if this was google's attempt to force more people into signing up for accounts. Who better to hit than the blogging world? Just a thought!
@Dawn, It seems that I have fixed it a little now by switching to using the new drat.blogger.com site to administer things. I will not use blogspot for any new blogs from now on. I am still debating if I should move this blog.
@Opal, I don't have my own server, Google hosts it. I got this site name through Godaddy and just re-pointed the nameservers.
I sometimes use 34sp.com for hosting. They have always been very reliable and helpful but are no way the cheapest. I guess the things that are making me um and arrr about changing are:
.Time
.Will I lose PayPerPost status and have to wait another 3 months
. Will Google re-index all my posts? (Does a 301 redirect deal with this?)
Forest -- The more I research, the less I want to move to WordPress. I don't have the time, either. Especially not this month! What I might do is just tell people to type in their URLs right in the comment box. At least people can find their blogs/sites if they're really interested. They may be annoyed by having to copy or type the address into a URL field, though. I will probably post about this new development and explain their options. One of which is to do this: The Junk Drawer
That takes them an extra few seconds, but it's one option.
Forest -- I just posted about the issue on my blog. Not a magic bullet, but at least my readers are aware of the issue. All I can do is hand out the options and see who does what.
Forest - I can host your new Wordpress blog for you at the amazingly low price of $5 per month, payment via paypal. ;)
And in answer to your questions - because you have your own domain name you will not lose your page rank. As far as readers, you just need to let those reading you via a feed know you're moving. If you've been using feedburner to manage your feed most of your RSS readers will go with you. You can keep posting here to remind any stragglers how to find your new blog.
We export all your posts and photos etc from blogger.
Anyway, if you're interested let me know.
And they have now changed it - sign in using blogger/google there's a drop down box and you can choose from several other choices including wordpress.
But better to get off google sooner than later i think. They're set on screwing people over. ;(
Cheers,
Snoskred
www.snoskred.org
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