A note about the comments

Yes, I know Blogger sucks and its commenting system is awful. I also realize that WordPress and almost every other blogging software is light years ahead of Blogger in every conceivable way.

Regardless, Blogger’s upgraded itself enough whereby it’s still way quicker (and, more importantly, freer) to get a site up-and-running via Blogger than anywhere else. I also have a strong affinity for Google products of all kind, be it G-Mail, Picasa (the hell with Flickr and its 200-photo limitations), and hopefully Wave, once I receive my invitation.

But perhaps most importantly, Google is hosting my domain name for free, for some inexplicable reason. I’m surprised more people don’t know about this particular feature of Blogger, but I imagine the dislike for the platform is intense enough that this fact has been lost amid a sea of indifference.

While Google clearly hasn’t paid as much attention to Blogger as some of its other properties, having the Google name behind it gives me hope that it will eventually get the necessary upgrades it needs to bring it back to semi-respectability.

For starters, threaded/nested commenting is a must. Additionally, it’s beyond unacceptable that they haven’t even bothered to rewrite the code so that “0 comments” becomes “1 comment” and not “1 comments” after the first person leaves a note.

I tried to implement one of the Blogger hacks for threaded comments, but couldn’t get it to work. I also tried utilizing Disqus, but found the software buggy and the commenting system way too distracting. Of course, most importantly, neither of these options seem to have a reliable notification system — as inefficient and ugly as Blogger’s existing commenting system is, the one thing I love about it is that I am e-mailed the instant someone leaves a new comment. It would also be fantastic if Google would implement the ability to respond to comments via e-mail.

So unfortunately I am probably going to stick with the Blogger commenting system for the time being, and hope that Google eventually gets around to sprucing the software up so that it’s representative of the quality and high standards we’ve come to expect from the company’s products.

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