Tuesday, December 8

Posting on Blogs

Updated on Wednesday

I know that CycleDog CLAIMS he is unable to post comments on this blog. Despite his devilish proclivities, he may not be misleading in this regard. I notice that I have problems commenting on many blogs, INCLUDING this one, as well as the majority listed off to the right. Here are some of the problems I've seen -  and fixes.

First, I'll mention one that I have NOT been able to find a fix for. At Carbon Trace, I am unable to make comments using my iPhone. This is a major problem since my favorite place to comment from is the Starbucks on my route home. Doncha just love WiFi? Oddly, iPhone comments seem to be taken, but just disappear into thin air. I have had no problem commenting from our comuter at home.

Second, there are quite a few sites, particularly those hosted by "Blogger," on which an attempt to comment is met with either the comment still in a box, or a message that says it was unable to post a comment. The particular message varies with the site and the mood of the browser. In such a case, just keep clicking on the "post comment" button and eventually the site will give up and post the comment or want a "captcha." Usually, the "captcha" is the last gasp that tells you the comment is within reach. On "Lovely Bicycle," to list one typical example, I click on the button three times and then the captcha comes up. Subsequent site visits, to either that or other sites do not repeat the problem. Apparently it has something to do with how blogger thinks you are logged on - or not. It occasionally tries to tell me that my browser doesn't allow cookies. Ironically, I get similar messages whether using my home computer or the iPhone.

This blog does not require captchas, but DOES require that you be registered with something. So far, this has kept the spammers away without making people try to read those odd words. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and a close watch.

Bottom line - if you've gone to the trouble of writing out a comment, keep clicking on that darn button and your efforts will be rewarded. I WOULD be interested in hearing from anyone successfully making a comment, using an iPhone, on Carbon Trace recently. It USED to work just fine and I know Andy has no reason he knows of that his site discriminates against such devices.

This blogging world can be a little frustrating, sometimes. Perhaps someone out there knows these idiosyncracies and can tell us how to fix them.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE - TWO ITEMS with more info:
First, if you are commenting from an iPhone, there is a known Blogger issue, namely, that shown below

Basically Blogger says iPhone users just need to keep clicking and ignoring the "try again" messages. Sweet. At least I know THAT isn't something I'm doing. Interestingly, this seems to occur on the same sites that the other problem occurs. I suspect there may be a connection. If so, I may try popup comments, though, as CycleDog has discovered, those have OTHER problems such as browsers that don't allow popup windows and those same windows being a spam target.

The other one (no actual error message but you just keep clicking on the post comment button until blogger gives up) is a little tougher. There didn't seem to be much help on the blogger site, here. Considering that both Keri Caffrey and I have the same problem on multiple blogs, I'd hardly consider this resolved. Then I went to the "Real Blogger Status" site, here. It suggests problems such as Keri and I experience may be due to browser security settings. I may see what more specifics I can find. Anyway, I will do some added digging - hopefully it may help both readers of this (and other blogs) and blog owners of blogs I tend to follow.

So far, no info on the Carbon Trace "iPhone comments disappear into thin air" symptom. Sorry, Andy. Wordpress problem discussions seem to be on different sites than Blogger problems. The problem doesn't seem to occur on other Wordpress sites, so it may be some obscure setting that only affects mobile devices. As I recall, it started at around the same time that many other Wordpress sites (but NOT CommuteOrlando) began showing up as "mobile" blogs.

4 comments:

Doohickie said...

You're ugly and yo' mama dresses you funny.

(If you can read this, I can comment.)

Velouria said...

I have problems posting on some blogs. What frustrates me the most is when I post a comment, press "submit" and there is an error message - and when I go back to the comment form, the text of my message no longer exists. All those valuable deep thoughts lost in cyberspace!

Steve A said...

The comment secret is do not go back, just keep clicking on the "post comment" button until the form gives up and posts the comment. If I'm thinking, I sometimes select the whole comment and "copy" just to be safe. In most cases, blog owner may be unaware of any problem and how it might be fixed. More frustrating is some of these problems just seem to come and go.

THIS COMMENT, for example, upon sbmission, shows a message of "Your request could not be processed. Please try again." I'll just click on the "post comment" button twice.

Keri said...

I get the above error message on this blog frequently. It always works the second time.

I do the copy trick, too, if I've takes some time to write a comment.

Sometimes blogger will not allow me to paste into the comment window. Like just now, I wanted to quote part of your comment and it wouldn't let me paste it. That's particularly annoying if I want to share a link.

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