What is up with Blogger? I’ve tried to leave comments with some of you with Blogger blogs — Shannon, WordGirl — and it won’t even show that lame “word verification” thingy. You know, those smushed-together, distorted letters that you’re supposed to be able to read and then type in the little box? Yeah, those. I’m not getting those. I HATE those, to be frank, but they are a necessary evil if I want to comment on Blogger.
So Blogger bloggers, what is up with that? Is invisibility is the new distortion? Is smushed the new straight? Is homeless the new charming?
I mean, have a hard enough time with the funhouse letters. I frequently type them wrong and not from typos either, but from bona fide belief that those are the letters they’re going for. Well …. that, and guessing: “Is that “ld”? “lal”? “bl”? “Okay, uhm, uhm, uhm, let’s go with … l-a-l.” Waiting. Waiting. Nope. Wrongalito. And then after you type in the wrong letters, Blogger sneers at your intelligence and good intentions and posts a new set of smushed letters which I’m pretty sure is basically their way of saying, “Good Lord, Peaches; you suuure is dumb.”
So tell me, Blogger bloggers. What is UP??
Short answer: you get what you pay for.
Blogger’s had this issue off and on for a while. It stinks, but since Blogger’s free, I guess their techs aren’t always super-fast on it.
I find what works best for me is to login (I don’t know if you have a blogger login or not) BEFORE I comment. Sometimes that gives the word verification thingy.
My solution was simple – switch to Haloscan, which offers free commenting, and a cheap upgrade option (which I took) for a lot more customizable experience. They give you HTML code to insert into your template. In fact, with the new template they give you instructions on how to have them automatically insert the code themselves, and then you just upload the whole thing. It was a heck of a lot easier than the actual switch-over from Old Blogger to New Blogger, actually.
So, come comment at the Hive, Tracey, and it’ll be a breeze!
I’m having Haloscan issues right now, too, ‘Fly. I’m wondering if I need to reinstall my code.
I’ve always wondered if those smushed letter discriminate against visually impaired people, Tracy. And you’re not dumb until you’ve accidentally typed the blogger’s name as yours for your comment by accident.
Yeah. I was (temporarily) banned from one of my favorite blogs yesterday morning and didn’t realize what I had done until I came back to it and saw a really nasty comment from the blogger listing my work’s IP address and yelling about forgery. I e-mailed her in a panic so she knew it was a stupid mistake and she apologized saying had she not been in such a hurry to get to work she would have recognized my e-mail address. She took my IP address off and declared it a mistake but now I’m paranoid about proofreading!
letters–not “letter.” See? I still can’t proofread. Sigh. . .
I had a few spam attacks and enabled the word verification thingy, but I hated it so much I UN-enabled it. And I really haven’t had any spam problems since, so I haven’t felt the need to turn it on again.
I guess I don’t like making my commenters jump through hoops.
I am so sorry! In my barely aware of life outside of tax season, I wondered where you had gone! I figured you were just busy with the coffee!
I have been having trouble commenting on Ricki’s blog, but haven’t had time to deal with it. At least now I know I’m not alone.
I got nothin’. I had no idea.