Let Me Help You Help Me
Sometimes people need a little public service announcement, I think. Jenna wrote a passionate post (read it and you’ll see that the word “passionate” is actually a pretty mild term for the post) about the word verification/anti-spam thing that pops up on many blogs when you comment. You know, that thing that makes you type in “sid09df” before your comment goes through. Except you can never tell if it is an “O” or a “0” and you end up typing in random combination after random combination.
I had turned mine off a year or so ago and gotten two spam comments within the day, so I turned it back on. But, fearing for my life after her post, I decided I’d give it a shot, and what do you know? No spam in the three months since then.
So here’s my plea for today. If you use Blogger, and I know many many of you do, I’d like to kindly suggest that you set your profile to show your email address so that when you comment on a Blogger blog, the writer can respond back. If you don’t have this set, when I get your comment via email and go to respond, it looks like this. I’m guessing your email is not “noreply-comment@blogger.com.” Unless somehow dozens of you signed up for the same email address.
And because I care so deeply, here’s how to do it. It is incredibly easy (we’re talking two minutes, tops) and then I will be able to respond when you ask things like, “What book should I read?” (Answer: The Hunger Games).
Also, even if you DON’T have a Blogger blog, many of you still have Blogger profiles so that you can comment, so it’d be very very lovely if you could do this to your profile too.
Anyway, without further ado:
Step 1: Go to Blogger.com, sign in, and ta-da, there is your dashboard. Click “Edit Profile” (for your convenience, I’ve drawn a very impressive red arrow pointing to it with Paint. Because I am a high-tech blogger).
The “Edit Profile” Page will open. Two things to do on this page. First, check the box that says “Show my email address.” And then, if you scroll down a bit more, you’ll see a box labeled “email address.” Enter the email address you’d like people to respond to in that box. Please.
Then, scroll to the very bottom of that page and click the big orange “SAVE PROFILE” button.
That’s it! So easy!
And I will love you forever because I’ll be able to respond when you ask a question or if I want to ask YOU a question or just say “yes, yes, I love that book too and we should be friends.” And believe me, if you have your email address set to display, we will be friends.
ha ha ha. It is convenient to have your comments arrive that way. I have sent a lot of replies to "noreply-comment@blogger.com" when I forget to change the email address. Fine. I will be the first. But not for this comment, because, you know, I haven't done it yet.
I only recently figured out how to do that 🙂
I hate that Blogger doesn't have an option for me to put in my name, url, AND email address, like you can on typepad blogs. I have a blogger account but it doesn't link to my personal blog, it links to my business blog on blogger so I hate to sign in with it. But for you, I will, because I like your e-mails.
P.S. While I was in there, I went ahead and added The Hunger Games to my favorite book list. (And this is a test to see if it worked)
I've wanted to do my own snarky word verification post, but I've never gotten around to it. I guess I don't need to now.
It IS fun to sometimes make up definitions for word verification, however.
I just looked and mine is NOT set (security, right?), but you emailed me back a few weeks ago about something I had asked. I'm confused. I know HOW to do it, maybe you need to clarify the safety here. For those of us who DON'T know how to paint arrows on our Facebook page.
Amen and Amen!
Gaaah, this drives me nuts!
xox
I did it. Mostly because it's early and I very easily told what to do early in the morning. And it doesn't sound like too terrible of an idea.
Done. I've been wondering if there was a way to do that, now I know how!
Okay, did it. And now I can tell you that I'm reading The Wednesday Wars right now (on your suggestion) and am anxiously awaiting your next suggestion, as I'll probably finish this one today.
Done and done..
Amen and thank you.
Done.
Did it–a scary, scary leap into the cyber world of information for me.
Cool. Thanks for the info. I just realized that my blog didn't allow anonymous comments, so I changed that, too. (Word verification was not on, though.)
Woohoo for no spam for you!
Thank you! And hey, I just posted "what book should I read?" at my blog!
For people who are worried about security and spam- make up a second email and list that in your profile. Go to that email account and set it to forward to the email account you really love. If you start getting tons of spam you can change the email associated with the blog without having to change your primary email.
oh thank you! i turned mine off a few months ago and i've been wishing everyone would do the same! 🙂
You've inspired me to give turning off word verification another chance. I had a similar experience to yours when it was off in the past, so I hope my experience continues to mirror yours once I turn it off again this time.
The email thing – that gets complicated with the stupid set up I'm using right now. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I have weird complications with multiple google accounts and anonymity. But I just realized thanks to your post that I think I have a good work around now that I didn't use to have due to a new gmail address I picked up. So I think I can go do something about that now, thanks!
Captcha is of the debbil.
Seriously.
🙂
I hope lots of people did this. I love being able to press reply and type up something right quick in response.
I don't like the blogs that have the word verification thing because most of the time I read and comment on blogs from my itouch. It has predictive text when I'm typing, which is nice, but annoying when it tries to make the random letters into a real word.
done — just for you. 🙂
why did I not do this when you first posted about it? So sorry. I was busy. But I've repented. It is done.
Is this your most current "How to change your profile" post? I feel like you updated it… would you mind if i use it/link you in my blog? I went to reply to comments yesterday and not 1/10 had updated emails. Let me help you help me is right!!
done — just for you. 🙂