How I Reduced the Comment Spam Substantially and Increased Number of Twitter Followers, Together?

For the last few days, I was very unhappy to see one of my posts receiving a lot of comment spam. One of the most spammed posts was the one about drug addiction. The others, thankfully, were only moderately spammed. Thinking of a better way of controlling comments got me into this little idea.

1. Disable Comments on Your Blog Posts

I went ahead to the post that was receiving comment spam and disabled the comment form there. In Blogger, you can just go to the post editor and click Post Options. You may find the options to disable the comments and decide whether to show the current ones or not. Choose "Don't Allow, and Show Existing".

2. Put a Message in the Posts

You can set a message that all commenters can see, by going to the blog's Settings->Comments->Comment Form Message. This will be displayed above the comment form. In this message, clearly put the comment guidelines.

You can check my message at the bottom of this post. You will see that if the comments are disabled, you have to follow me in Twitter in order to still comment. This has helped me and will definitely help you too in increasing Twitter followers.

3. Enable the Message in Comment Disabled Posts

You will see that the message we set is not displayed in posts where we disabled the comments. In order to reverse this, follow this template tweak:

Go to Layout->Edit HTML->Expand Widget Templates

Look for the code, <h4 id='comment-post-message'><data:postCommentMsg/></h4>
<p><data:blogCommentMessage/></p>

Cut it from its original place and search for the following block of code,

<b:include data='comment' name='commentDeleteIcon'/> </span> </dd> </b:loop>

Below this, post the above code. The result should be like the following:

<b:include data='comment' name='commentDeleteIcon'/> </span> </dd> </b:loop> <h4 id='comment-post-message'><data:postCommentMsg/></h4> <p><data:blogCommentMessage/></p>

Conclusion

You are done! Now, if you really have posts that people want to comment at any cost, you will find an increase in the Twitter count. If you want to promote something else, then put it there.

You have read this article Blogging Tips with the title How I Reduced the Comment Spam Substantially and Increased Number of Twitter Followers, Together?. You can bookmark this page URL http://neurotica-exotica.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-i-reduced-comment-spam.html. Thanks!