Questions about commenting on the Perfume Shrine

One of the constants I receive in emails is from people who sometimes have difficulty commenting on PerfumeShrine.

It would be practical for all if there were a "sticky" post up, so here we are.

First of all, Perfume Shrine has always been (and will continue to be) an online platform where anyone can comment. You don't need to be in any specific Group or Community, you don't need to have a Blogger account or Facebook or anything, you don't need to be "knowledgeable" about perfume (there are no silly questions or comments in my books) and you don't need to publicize your name or ANY other identifying data about yourself; your privacy is respected at all times.

Comments are non moderated for current posts which are a couple of days "old". Anywhere beyond that time limit however and I need to moderate them,  as I try to answer them all.

Any comment is acceptable, be it negative or positive. But obvious spam is pruned. Sorry, if you want to advertise your business or affiliated content, do it openly; it's very annoying for both readers and myself to read pretenses of a comment.
Insults to our readers are also pruned. This is a civilized community and we can agree to disagree with dignity & respect.


So ....what do you need in order to comment successfully? If you want the official Google help, hit this link and read for yourself (with pics). Otherwise read on.

IN ORDER TO COMMENT click on the "Comments" link AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST you want to answer/comment to. The Comments link is right besides the "Posted by PerfumeShrine at so & so day" (which serves as the Permalink of any given post) and just over the Labels/Tags.
Clicking the Comments link opens a box space BELOW the post (so scroll), integrated through the Blogger platform which controls it.

Sometimes Blogger acts funny. It's not my fault, I swear. Give it a couple of minutes and try again, please. Good things come to those who wait.

When you have the Comment window in front of you, there's a box to write in:

an older box window actual screenshot and here is a borrowed image

You see a box where you can type your comment. Under it there is a word verification code to type to prove you're not a robot spammer. (I had resisted this -annoying to some- function for very long, until one day I got about 46 spam comments which I had to manually delete one by one...).
If you have trouble "getting" the words, try again or click on the "soundbox" icon to hear them instead.

Under this word verification there is a "Choose an Identity" menu. The menu has as first option a "Google account" which takes you into a Blogger signing in page. This function allows your comment to have your own Blogger identity and link, which is useful if -say- you want to make people aware of your own blog! HOWEVER this is where most people trying to comment stumble: they just don't know what happened and they got redirected to what looks like this! They think they're comment is lost forever and resign (Shame on Blogger for not explaining in detail). Or perhaps they don't desire to sign in as a Blogger user this time or don't want to register on Blogger at all!

This is where the OTHER options (apart from option 1 "Google Account") come in.

Option 2:
"Open ID" which allows Livejournal, Wordpress, Typepad and AIM users to comment linking their own data/pages/blogs from these other, non-Blogger platforms. Cool!

Option 3:
You choose a Name/Alias. This may include an external URL to your site (a blog, a Facebook account, your Twitter handle, whatever you want). Again, hit Publish after you're done; you should see your comment published right away.

Last but not least...
Option 4: the Anonymous option at the very bottom. Just click that Anon option, type your vitriol (just kidding!) and hit Publish. Again, you will see your comment published right away, unless it's for an older post in which case I need to moderate it first.

You can Preview you comment at all times and edit yourself to your heart's content.

With the Nest/Threaded format, you can also REPLY under anyone's comment and pursue the conversation. It should look a bit like this.

borrowed from Google search

I hope I have answered that pesky question that crops up so frequently and have enlightened you satisfactorily. If you have any further problems, please don't hesitate to let me know by email using CONTACT (perfumeshrine AT yahoo dot com)