Friday, July 11, 2014

Housekeeping + Let's Have Some Good Conversations


I have been avoiding switching to a new blog commenting format for, literally, years. People have been telling me — intermittently, yes, but still — for a while that they were having problems leaving comments through Blogger's default comment form.

And also, since I discovered that it's easier to have legitimate conversations with people through e-mail responses to comments, I've felt like kind of a tool only responding to certain people within the original comment thread (because I was e-mail-responding to everyone who had it set up).

I had wanted to switch to Disqus a loooong time ago, but was terrified by the prospect of losing all the comments that I've received over the last three years. And it wasn't until Jennifer told me that she thought they'd fixed that problem that I even reconsidered switching.

So now Everyday Adventures has a shiny new comments section! Hopefully it's all working hunky dory. But if it's not, and you're having problems commenting, please e-mail me. I don't know if I'll be able to fix it, but I'll do my best trouble-shooting. :)

Hopefully this will help to facilitate better conversations, as you'll receive notice (via e-mail or Disqus notification) when I respond to your comments!

So here's our conversation starter for today: what's the best thing that happened to you this week?

P.S. I know that the switch messed up the formatting of the old "stacked" comments (like, if I've replied to your post with my own comment), so I'm sorry if it looks like you didn't get a response, or if my response isn't attached to your comment and therefore doesn't make sense. It'll be better moving forward.

P.P.S. If you don't already receive e-mail notifications about responses and you'd like to, you can set it up through Disqus when you set your avatar and the name you want to post under.

20 comments

  1. Katie @ A Beautiful Little AdvJuly 11, 2014 at 11:02 AM

    I'm always going back and forth on whether or not to use disqus on my blog as well. Will you let me know if you have any problems or bumps?? I like USING disqus for commenting but don't know if I'm ready to make the switch myself yet.

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  2. Yep! I'll make a note to tell you if it's all still going smoothly in a couple of weeks. :) And the setup was pretty easy, just a few minor tweaks in the HTML in order to get everything working properly, but Disqus took care of most everything else.

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  3. Yes, ditto to the comment below. I'm still on the fence. My main issue (one of my main issues) is that I really don't need to see every single reply from the blog author show up in the comment area. Is there a way to just respond via email still? Cuz I like that.

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  4. Okay, so the short answer is: yes you can!


    The long answer is: so you know how Blogger e-mails you comment notifications and you can reply by e-mail? You can still leave that function on, and it won't interfere with Disqus, and you can respond directly to people via e-mail without it showing up in the comments thread.


    I got annoyed with Blogger notifications, though, because every time I tried to reply to someone in the comments through Blogger, it'd e-mail me my own comment notification. And I was getting two notifications for every comment, one from Blogger and one from Disqus.


    But! You can turn off comment notifications in either Blogger OR Disqus, so you only get the one notification. You can't hit "reply" and e-mail with the Disqus notifications, but they do include the commenter's e-mail address, so you could hit "reply" and just copy-paste their e-mail address instead of the generic "comments@disqus" or whatever. And then, if you choose to keep the Blogger notifications on, you can just reply to specific ones in the Disqus comments and continue to respond to others' by e-mail.


    Sorry that was super long. Hopefully it was at least a little helpful and not super confusing.

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  5. Oooh! Very pretty! I like it :)

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  6. Hey, happy new commenting system to you! I'm still sticking with default on my blog for now...at least partially because I just like the writing part of blogging, I don't like the part about figuring out the internet... :P

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  7. I think I left a comment on this post yesterday, but I said it was timely because I'm having trouble with my comment notifications on WordPress.

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  8. No, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. See, that whole email thing sounds like too much work. Maybe I just need to stop being lazy. I don't want people to have trouble commenting, though. Decisions!

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  9. To each their own! It does seem kind of convoluted when it's all typed out (like above), but it feels like it will be easier for me personally to interact with others, and that will be nice. :)

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  10. Boo. I think Wordpress might have changed their basic commenting system, because I've seen different versions on other people's WP sites. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

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  11. I've definitely thought about switching to disqus too, but I'm a chicken! Let me know how you like it! And the best thing that happened to me this week was being able to play outside in the super warm weather. And eating ice cream multiple times ;-)

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  12. Yay for being brave and going for the update! Hope it all works out the way you want it to :)

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  13. Yay Disqus! Blogger doesn't play nicely with me for comments, for some reason!

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  14. Oooh congrats on your switch! I like commenting on Disqus but I mentioned switching on my blog and everyone told me not to. Maybe I shouldn't listen to them haha :)

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  15. Just wanted to follow up and let you know that I really love using Disqus for comments. It's made the whole process so much easier for me. I haven't had any problems whatsoever!

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  16. Just wanted to follow up in case you were still interested — I really do enjoy using Disqus for my comments now. Not that a lot of people actually use this functionality so far, but I love the idea that other people could, theoretically, see a topic someone else has commented on and jump in with their two-cents. I love the idea of that!

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  17. Just wanted to follow up in case you're still interested - I love using Disqus! It's a lot easier for me to follow-up to a lot of comments quickly (and gives people the ability to see a response if they don't have their e-mail address attached to their Blogger profile), and I still get the notifications and everything.

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  18. Wanted to follow up - why did people say not to switch? I really love using Disqus! It's so easy, and I like easy lol.

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  19. Katie @ A Beautiful Little AdvSeptember 8, 2014 at 10:45 AM

    Thanks for the follow up! I'm glad you're happy with it, since I kind of slowed my blogging down this summer I didn't think too much about switching. But with the "back to school" mindset I'm thinking about it again.

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  20. People had a few different reasons - I still like Disqus as a commenter, but you should read the comments in my post: http://www.thecreamtomycoffee.com/2014/05/a-few-little-announcements.html#comment-form

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