January 27, 2015

Wordpress vs. Blogspot Part 1 - the Comment Solution

Right after I started this blog, a couple of people asked me how it compared to Blogspot, aka Blogger.  It's actual name is Blogger, but because it is confusing to sort the Blogger service from the blogger people, I'm going to refer to it as Blogspot throughout this post.

I'm still learning about Wordpress, but there are some differences I've encountered. Whether one is better than the other is still hard to say. They both have their merits. Of all the blogs I visit, Blogspot is far more common, and I agree that it is easier to use, especially for someone new to blogging, and has more features. However, the features that wordpress does have are impressive.

Blogspot started in 1999, and was bought by Google in 2003, so it has a lot of might behind it.  Wordpress started in 2003 and is reported to be the most popular blogging system on the web.  That may be so in some genres, but as I said before, I don't see that in the type blogs I like to visit.

I switched to Wordpress for a couple of reasons, the main one being the email copy of comments.  In both formats, when someone comments on a blog, a copy of the comment is sent to the blog owner's email.  At least that is the way it's supposed to work.  That quit working for me in Blogspot.  I stopped getting emails when most people commented, and my comment stopped going to their email.  I knew that because the email bounced back to my email, usually to my spam folder usually with the title: Delivery Status Notification (Failure), and sometimes: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered.

EmailDeliveryProblem

 

And inside the bounced email, was all the technical gobbledegook explaining why it was returned.

EmailDeliveryProblem2

I highlighted the reason Google was unable to deliver my message:   Message not accepted for policy reasons.  What policy?  Not mine.  I don't even have settings regarding receiving blog email.  I wonder if it's because I have a Yahoo email and Blogspot is owned by Google.  I'd try it with a Gmail email but I don't have one.  My next test will be with a generic email.

Edited 1.27.15 @ 1:38 pm

I just got another rejected email but with a different reason for the non-delivery.  This was for a comment I made on a Blogspot blog but the blog owner must have a comcast email.  This one says: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain comcast.net by mx1.comcast.net. [96.114.157.80]. The error that the other server returned was:
550 5.2.0 l7KU1p00R1baoJR017KU9D Message rejected due to DMARC. Please see http://postmaster.comcast.

 

I have no idea what DMARC is.  I clicked on the link to find out and this is what it said: This message has been rejected by the Comcast mail servers due to the sending domain's published DMARC policy. The sending domain has published a DMARC reject policy and this message has not passed either DKIM or SPF authentication for the domain.

Well, that certainly cleared things up.  Snark!  I still don't know what DMARC is.  But evidently it doesn't like yahoo.  Or maybe it doesn't like Google.  Or both.  Or it's personal.  Yeah, that's probably it.

After moving to Wordpress, I thought all my comment problems were over.  Not.  Blogspot doesn't play well with Wordpress.  Blogspot is like the bully of the playground and Wordpress is that sweet kid who wants to get along with everyone.

The first day I had a Wordpress blog, I tried to comment on a Blogspot blog that I had commented on many times before.  But this time there was a word verification box.  I hate those things.  But I did it because I already had a long comment written.  Then a preview box where I clicked Publish, then it said it was publishing, but instead went back to the preview box.  Click publish again, and back to the preview box.  Over and over again.  I never could get it published.   So I logged into my old Blogspot blog and published that way.  But that was not a good solution.  I didn't want to direct anyone to my old blog, I wanted them to be able to find my new blog.

That's when I realized that in the last year I had been getting very few comments from Wordpress bloggers, and the few I did get used a blogger profile.  I had wondered why at the time, but now I know it was because they couldn't post a comment with just their Wordpress account.  So I did that too, although Google has made it harder to open an account than they did when I first started.  They automatically opened a gmail account with my blog name.  Sorry, I don't like gmail.  I tried it and just didn't like it.  If I only had one email and it was gmail, that would be fine, but I have several emails and didn't want them merged into one Google account.  So with the help of those who have gone before, I managed to get rid of the gmail and put in my yahoo email.  Now I had a Blogspot profile with my Wordpress blog as my website, and my yahoo email showing in the return email.  Still not the solution I wanted, but better.

For the first week or two, everything was great.  People were replying by email, so I knew they were getting a copy of my comment in their email.  Then I started getting some bounced emails.  And now I think they are all bouncing.  So all that trouble to make a Blogspot profile in order to comment was down the drain.

But what I wanted all along was to be able to post comments with Wordpress.  And I finally figured it out.  The problem was... drumroll please...  Chrome!  I had this aha moment when I realized that Chrome is also owned by Google and since Google wants to rule the net, it was trying to make it difficult for everyone else.  So I switched to Explorer, tried to post on a Blogspot blog, and it went off without a hitch, well,  except for that word verification thing.

So, if you are using Wordpress and having trouble posting a comment to a Blogspot, try a different browser.  I only tried Explorer and I haven't been able to update Explorer since the last Microsoft breach, so I don't use it much.  If you use another browser, please let me know how it works and I'll include it in this post.

I am still working on my Pro and Con list for Wordpress vs. Blogspot, so stay tuned.

Update:  I finally decided that Wordpress wasn't worth the extra effort and returned to my original Blogspot blog.
 

10 comments:

  1. I think I am confused!! But then, it looks like I can comment and you get them, and likewise you comment and I get those! I'm happy for now

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  2. Yes, I always get an email when you comment. I don't know if that is because you use an ISP email, if it's the browser, or if it's just Google being arbitrary.

    Sorry if it was confusing. Basically, I get some emails when people comment, and some I don't. And now the comment email when I make a comment is bouncing back. I once thought I had done something to my blog, but I have been very careful not to mess with the template or settings of this new Blogspot profile, and yet it has started again.

    I don't get it. It makes my head hurt to try to figure it out.

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  3. I've noticed that when I comment on some blogs, I get an non-deliverable email back the comment is posted so I don't understand why I am getting the non-deliver notice. It's odd. . .

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  4. IN the last couple of weeks all the Wordpress emailed posts I signed up for on people's wordpress blogs have failed to appear. They just stopped happening. I had to go back to the Wordpress blogs and sign up a different way, mostly to my My Yahoo feed, and now the posts are appearing again. Go figure!

    I hate Wordpress largely because I usually have to fill in every.single.time. my name, rank and serial number before I can even comment. Hence very few comments from me on Wordpress blogs, however much I like them.

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  5. I too have had the problem with commenting and clicking "publish" and getting the endless loop you described. Sometimes it moves a little slower. There is a word verification that flashes by--too quickly to read, let alone retype. I keep hoping someone will report it up the line so blogger or capcha can fix it. Until then a lot of cross blog visiting between wordpress and blogger is being blocked.

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  6. Oh what a mess. It's hit or miss if I get your blog comments via email or not. There are two others who comment regularly on my blog that I never get their comments via email either. I've started comparing my blog comment list with my email and manually setting up replies. Not ideal, but at least I'm replying to everyone now.

    Is it possible that it's related to the email people use? I have a Yahoo email account and I don't think Google owns that application yet.

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  7. That is aggravating. I didn't know blogspot users had trouble posting on wordpress. I thought it was just the other way around. When I am logged into my blogspot account only, I don't have a problem posting on my or other wordpress blogs. But since I have so many other problems getting wordpress and blogspot to connect, I shouldn't be surprised.

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  8. p.s. I don't know if this is part of the problem, but when I click on your name in your reply, it has both your blogs listed in the url and then goes to a page cannot be found thing.

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  9. I searched the forums at Google and couldn't find where anyone else had this problem. Have you tried using Explorer? It didn't happen to me when I was using Explorer, only Chrome.

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  10. I thought it might be because of email. When I get a comment from you though, your ISP email is in the reply to spot, not an yahoo. Still, that isn't google, so that probably isn't it. It's going to take someone with more computer know how than me to fix it..

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Your comments make my day and I look forward to visiting your blog too! If you are a no-reply blogger and don't have your blog on your profile, could you write it in your comment so I can visit you? Thanks! Due to a recent spamming problem, comments with links and unidentified anonymous comments will be deleted.