Comment Form De-Mystified

Greetings, one and all!

I have had a fair number of people tell me recently that they have had trouble leaving comments due to difficulty ‘signing in.’ I actually have anonymous comments enabled on this blog, (as well as my other 2), so no sign-in should be required.

Please bear with me--I tried to make this very simple, with illustrations, but for some reason, Blogger is not letting me paste in the screenshots.  So, I'll have to ask you to do a little bit of jumping up and down between the post and the comment form.

Now, if you will click on the comment button (just under this post--the word 'comments' in blue), as if you are going to leave a comment, you will see first any comments that have already been left.  If so, then go to the very top of that box and click on 'jump to comment form.'  (If no comments have been left previously, the comment form is what you will see straightaway.)

You will see the blank square in which you may write your comments.  Below that, the word-verification box shows—I do have this enabled, to thwart spam-bots—we’re all accustomed to using this device.


Now, scroll down a bit, so you can see the rest of the options underneath the 'word verification' box.

Note that under, “Choose Identity,” there are numerous options. Yes, “Google Account”, asking for name and password is the first thing you see. This is probably understandable, as this blog is written on Google’s platform. I’m sure they want to encourage subscribers to their service. 

 Don’t be put off by that. Keep reading down the list. You will also see: "Sign up for a Google Account," "E-mail follow-up coments to...," "Open ID," "Name/URL," and finally "Anonymous."

I’m not going to go into explaining the middle options. If you do not have or don’t want a Google account, then “Anonymous” is the one you want to use.

If you simply do not want to sign up for a Google account, but do want to let me know who you are, then simply sign off your actual comment using your name or online screen-name identity, whichever you prefer, within the comment box itself.


Voila! No sign-in necessary! Thanks for visiting, and thanks for leaving comments!