No Blog Comments Here

Those have have followed this blog over the years, or have viewed it using the WayBack Machine, know that at one point that I did have commenting turn on for my blog when it was on Drupal. Eventually I decided to no longer allow comments on the blog. Here are several of the reasons why.

Spam

You probably knew this was one of the reasons. I will be honest, it was the main and number one reason why I turned off commenting on the blog. It is something about the Drupal-based websites that the spam bots seemed to seek out and always fill out a form or create a user account. To be honest I had thousands of users, majority of which were spambots, that had created accounts on my blog in order to be able to leave a spam comment with links or something else included. Using Captcha didn't help. It was like if the spambot knew how to get around a Captcha or if it got stuck at a Captcha, that a human was alerted to assist and then continued on its spamming journey. It was indeed annoying.

Moderation

When the legit users would leave comments, it was great. However, because of the spam comments being left with the good comments, each comment required review to keep the bad off the blog and the good on the blog. For those of you who have never been an administrator or moderator of a group or forum, just know that being a moderator takes time. The more users, the more time. Now my blog was not reaching millions of people, but the fact that there was an audience there, meant that everything new had to be checked. Taking time to moderate took away from the time to create content and to enjoy other activities outside of the blog. Moderation at this point became a pain point.

Technology

When I got away from using Drupal as my blogging platform, and switched to MkDocs, this limited the amount of functionality that I could have on my websites. There are a handful of commenting systems that can be used with static websites. After giving thought to the previous two paragraphs, I decided not to have comments on the blog. You are probably asking...

• What if someone has a question? They can send me a tweet or Instagram message.
• What if someone has the answer to a problem that you posted about? They can send me a tweet or Instagram message.
• What if you posted something that someone objects to? They can send me a tweet or Instagram message. Do note that it is my "40 acres of the internet" and I will use it how I choose.

At one point maintaining the systems was fun and cool, but it clicked that if I spend more time maintaining the system, then I spend less time creating content, blogging about my ideas and thoughts, and enjoying other aspects of life. I do still spend time adding enhancements behind the blog, but that time is because I choose to do so. Whereas with Drupal, if I did not install the latest feautre and security updates, my blog could be hacked or compromised and I would end up having to spend more time fixing the website. Using MkDocs means I can update my blog from anywhere that I have an internet connection and not have to worry about formatting or other things like that.

Conclusion

Yes I do answer those that do have a question after watching my videos or reading my content. However, I want it to be more difficult for those spammers to get my attention. By not having comments on my blog, it has eliminated the amount of spam that I have to deal with on my website. Now if there was some way to have this work on those Instagram comments.