family of five

What You Have To Do To Leave A Comment On This Blog

holy cow, oh my gosh, dagnabit to pieces, etc.

Are you ready for the most painful, complicated, and inconvient way to leave a comment? Then read on:

Okay… so you want to leave a comment. Click on the link below which should take you to a page where the comments look like this:

Click the blue “Logout >>” link which will take you to a page which looks like this:

Click the link “Register” which will take you to a page whick looks like this:

Fill in the fields, follow the prompts from WordPress until you get to a page that says Registration Complete. Go check your email for a password, and return back to this site, enter the information and click “Login” which will take you to a page which looks like this:

Here you may change your profile information, password to something easy to remember, change email address, etc. but it will finally let you make a comment, as long as you follow the “view site >>” link at the very top, left side of your user account page. This should take you back to the weblog where you can click the comment link under the post you wanted to comment on, and finally be able to leave a comment.

Isn’t it truly rediculous that I had to research this and figure it out? I mean, wouldn’t an easier way be to tell people that they have to register and login in order to leave a comment on this blog. I love the spam prevention measures but this is a bit extreme and very misleading. For hours and hours I thought my WordPress was broken. You woudn’t believe how many times I downloaded a new version of it to replace the wp-comments-post.php file! I’m going to be pushing for something between this exteme and the “anybody can comment” extreme. Where is a nice middle ground, WordPress?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 at 10:11 am and is filed under gripes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

20 Responses Subscribe to comments


  1. hard times » Now I Don’t Have To!

    [...] 05, 11:15 am Filed under: BlogTech Jennifer Barnes was nice enough to put together a guide to the minefield that is now WordPress 1.5 comments. I expect you all to be registered by da [...]

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 11:14 am


  2. Lea

    Actually, I figured out a way so none of this difficulty has to happen. First of all, yes, comment out or, as I did, delete:

    // If the user is logged in
    get_currentuserinfo();
    if ( $user_ID ) :
    $comment_author = addslashes($user_identity);
    $comment_author_email = addslashes($user_email);
    $comment_author_url = addslashes(str_replace(’http://’, ”, $user_url));
    else :
    if ( get_option(’comment_registration’) )
    die( __(’Sorry, you must be logged in to post a comment.’) );
    endif;

    from your wp-comments-post.php file.

    And then, go to Presentation > Theme Editor > Comments Template

    and then comment out or delete

    which is located right before
    ” size=”22″ tabindex=”1″ />

    AND VOILA!!! :-) It just took me an entire day of fiddling the other day on top of me just experimenting and scouring the Wordpress support forums to get this. Whee!

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 11:36 am


  3. Jennifer

    Lea, I’m not sure that is the solution I am looking for, as I tried deleting the first part with NO change, whatsoever in my commenting and the second part you say to delete is … missing? in your comment… what is located right before
    “size=”22″ tabindex=”1″ />
    ?

    I kind-of like having to have people “register” to leave a comment, I just think it should be more straightforward on WordPress’s part without the end user having to polish this much php in order to make it commenter-friendly.

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 12:09 pm


  4. Lea

    Hi Jen, sorry, it stripped out my tags when I commented.

    for the comments.php file comment out or delete:

    <?php else : ?>

    located right before:

    <p><input type=”text” name=”author” id=”author” value=”<?php echo $comment_author; ?>” size=”22″ tabindex=”1″ />

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 12:55 pm


  5. Jennifer

    I’ll give it a try probably later on. Thanks Lea.

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 1:25 pm


  6. hemispheredancer

    I upgraded to WP1.5 and have not had any issues with comments for me. I did have a categories issue but I found a soundforge article that fixed it.

    It appears that there are two versions 1.57 and 1.58 and they make a difference in how the comments, categories, etc work.

    Take a look at my site comments (you still have to register but there is no (already logged in issue) http://www.ccomfort.com/blog/

    Feb 22, 2005 @ 2:05 pm


  7. OneFineJay

    There should be an option in the Discussion page that says that the email address of a commenter must be one that has been approved previously before a comment is posted. As long as commenters use the same ‘ol email (which almost always is the case) then their comments would be a moderated-once-only PITA. That’s the middle ground between that “anyone can comment” and the “we must all register” methods.

    Feb 23, 2005 @ 9:51 am


  8. Jennifer

    True, OneFineJay, but a new commenter to my 1.5 WP will still have to register at least ONCE since 1.5 doesn’t remember who commented with the 1.2 I had previously installed, and especially since WP doesn’t display any fields for entering in your name or email or url…

    My problem is that I don’t even get the FIELDS for someone to input their name or email address, so this is the only way that “works” — otherwise you just get an error message from WordPress.

    Feb 23, 2005 @ 12:21 pm


  9. OneFineJay

    Yikes, I see what you’re talking about. Could be a function of the comments template that comes with the default, Kubrick. When I installed 1.5 for a friend and used the classic theme’s comments.php (copy and pasted the code and moved it to his own theme folder) for his comments template it allows for anonymous comments. Like here: http://xrlq.com/2005/02/21/2177/blogs-for-terri/ You don’t have to be logged in to leave a comment.

    For the record I have not contributed to 1.5 and the theme development of the default/Kubrick so I wouldn’t know for sure if it’s a problem with the theme’s comment template (likely) or the core code (less likely).

    Feb 23, 2005 @ 3:10 pm


  10. hard times » Udgrade Update

    [...] was able to turn off the requirement in wp-comments-post.php, thanks to pointers from Lea here. Speaking of comments, comment spam is way down while the spammers figure out whe [...]

    Feb 27, 2005 @ 10:34 am


  11. AMERICAN BLOGGER » Comments…

    [...] #8230; Sunday 27 February 2005 @ 6:05 pm Finally I have fixed the comments thanks to Lea!! all you need to do is open your wp-comments-post.php file and delete this part of the code: [...]

    Feb 27, 2005 @ 7:05 pm


  12. locomote » Comments fixed - I think…

    [...] omments working) comes before appearance. Hopefully soon I will be bug-free~ ^^ Dibs to Lea for the fix~

    [...]

    Feb 27, 2005 @ 11:31 pm


  13. Jennifer

    looks like I’ll have to look into the fix Lea provided, though the only time I tried it before, it had no result. . .

    . . .have been distracted and busy with the preparations and ultrasound of our first child. . . . . .promise to look into fixing comments soon. . .
    -Jen

    Mar 02, 2005 @ 7:34 am


  14. Antioch Road » Blog Archive » Site Update

    [...] work out with plugins I was using on the previous installation. UPDATE IV: There’s a problem with posting comments (it’s forcing you to do so anonymously). I need to work on a [...]

    Mar 12, 2005 @ 3:46 am


  15. g i l g a m e s h . c a » The humanity! the humanity! Commenting on Wordpress blogs

    [...] comment page with login and sign-up options. In searching down the problem, I ran across this informative post on the topic.
    Filed under: personal
    Comments:
    Permalink: [...]

    Apr 04, 2005 @ 10:40 pm


  16. Dries

    WOW! Thanks so much! I’ve been having this problem for weeks and weeks and weeks, and you solved it for me :)

    Apr 10, 2005 @ 7:22 pm


  17. DriesDisagrees » Blog Archive » The Duality of It All!

    [...] 7;ll put up a little recension later on. 2. The comment problem has been fixed, thanks to these kind people! Please, feel free to try it out. This entry was posted [...]

    Apr 10, 2005 @ 7:28 pm


  18. Jennifer

    I (obviously) did the php deletion that Lea mentioned above and it got the comments back to normal… normal as in the way they worked on WP 1.2 - without having to register (I am assuming) … anyhow, I guess this ends my tale of woe with the registering to leave comments problem in WP 1.5

    Apr 11, 2005 @ 7:08 pm


  19. SCPanther

    Hi, all.

    I was going to try Lea’s solution, but I wanted to test another theory first. This may not apply to anyone else here, but in my case, deleting the user record user@cafelog.com restored my commenting functionality.

    As I recall, that user account was created automatically when I imported my posts from Blogger, so hopefully it isn’t some critical element!

    Anyway, I was having the same problems described, but all is peachy now without doing the code-editing proscribed above.

    Apr 27, 2005 @ 10:51 pm


  20. johnadams.org.uk

    [...] rdPress 1.5 a couple of weeks ago. Fixed thanks to the WordPress forums and particularly Lea’s comment on this site. You will still need to supply your name and email address. If yo [...]

    Apr 30, 2005 @ 12:48 pm