NOTE: This post was originally published in June 2018 while I was still using Blogger. I’ve since moved this blog to WordPress in late 2019. The content may therefore be outdated.
For about 2 weeks or so I have noticed a rather peculiar thing: I’m no longer receiving comments on this blog as I typically do. That is to mean even the usual SPAM comments that I’ve to get rid of once in a few days have miraculously disappeared.
For a moment there I got a sigh of relief that I was no longer a target for spammers but this would only later find me worrying on the apparent lack of actual comments too.
Well it turns out I was misled. You see I rely entirely on the email comment notification to keep track of new comments. As such, I always equate no email notifications to no new comments. This is the way I’ve operated in the past three years of running this blog.
That’s up until yesterday when I decided to check the comment dashboard on Blogger only to be taken aback by the amount of SPAM and comments sitting there.
This was very odd but I didn’t read much into it. My assumption at the time was that Blogger with its peculiar bugs had probably this time round turned off the Comment Notification Email setting.
So I got rid of the SPAM and headed over to that setting. Alas! nothing had changed. My email address was there as I had left it and last time I checked that address was still getting emails.
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| Comment Email Notification Setting |
At this point time I decided to try the obvious thing: I left comments on my two blogs then sat and wait to see if the notifications would arrive. They never did as I had feared. I tried using a different email address and that failed spectacularly as well.
A quick search online later allayed my fears and confirmed what has happening. I wasn’t the only the victim and neither are you.
A Known Issue
Blogger is encountering issues in this regard and they’ve since acknowledged it after many users reported the problem on the Blogger Help Forum.
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| Message by Blogger Team |
The problem began around the end of May 2018 and some users have suggested that it could be linked to the new GDPR policy that went live around that period.
I suppose we’ll have just to wait as they resolve it. In the meanwhile, you can try the following:
- Check the comment page regularly. You can also bookmark that page so that you don’t have to switch to it every time you open Blogger
- Leave a comment on every post and tick the option to be notified (notify me) when there’s a new reply. I admit this seems rather counter-intuitive but if you receive a lot of comments it’s worth considering.
- Sticky a message on your blog using a HTML/JavaScript or Text gadget informing your readers to contact you directly via email or direct them to the contact form gadget/contact page if you have it already implemented on your blog.
- In the long run you may want to consider switching to a different comment system altogether. For instance, I’ve seen a couple of Blogger blogs/templates use Disqus rather well (update: I made the switch too eventually).
09/18 Update: this problem has since been fixed.
