[Etiquette] Replying to Comments #2

ok - I admit I have a problem currently with comments replies. For over 2.5 years I diligently answered just about every single comment I received. Every one. Ok - not quite - I confess I had a "duh" moment for the same 2.5 years, where if someone commented on an old post, I couldn't always work out which post they'd commented on so I couldn't always reply. I didn't realise the link in the email notification took you to the post in question. Anyway, I digress...

Recently my readership has gone through the roof AND I have an intensive new job which has reduced the amount ot time I can spend on my blog by about ten fold.

Where I once had the time to answer every comment, I now keep getting behind with the task (which I really enjoy, by the way, so its not that I don't want to do it) and the more I get behind, the more terrible I feel about now not replying to everyone who so kindly made the effor to make a comment on my blog.

I don't know what to do - it's just not me not to reply - it's in my genetic make-up to respond and be polite, so the fact I am overwhelmed by it all is making me quite unhappy. I am consistently getting 10, over 20, sometimes 40 great comments a post these days which I love to get, how can I make all of those kindly commentors feel like their comments are really appreciated. I always thought a personal reply was the best way to go but I just can't quite cope with that any more and a global reply doesn't address all the individual comments presented.

Does anyone have any advice for me please?


This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

[Etiquette] Replying to comments

Not sure if Miss Manners has weighed in on this issue yet. I am always delighted when people comment on my postings. I love the exchange of ideas and would love to encourage more conversation on the site itself.

Initially, I used to reply to comments both on the site and also via email to the commenter, as I get an email notification on all new comments. I find this especially useful when I want to establish a one-on-one connection with a commenter, particularly if it's someone new to me. However, in so doing, that conversation gets derailed on the blog.

I don't expect that there is a single right or wrong way to go about this communication. I'm more interested in your thoughts. Do you reply directly to commenters via email? Do you expect direct communication? Or is it incumbent upon the commenter to return to the postings upon which they comment to continue the conversation?

(This dovetails with a previous posting, which I cannot find now, having to do with being able to track your own comments. I believe someone recommended a program called CoComment?)

This Post was written by Sean from Hedonia

[content] an Amateur on 'How to Food Blog'

Will you, or won't you agree with Adam's take on "More Blogging Advice"? Does he make points that make you feel umcomfortable, or is he simply airing publicly what you have been secretly thinking all along?

Agree or disagree, have your say here or continue the conversation over at Adam's blog.


This Post was written by "Cheeky & Charming"

I hate my hosting service!

So it's like this:

I've had the same hosting service for years and for years they've been just fine. Very little down time and they gave me a pretty good deal on a reseller account so I could host multiple domains and host sites for my web design clients.

Well. Ahem.

Two weekends ago, the SQL server at my hosting service crashed and I lost several days worth of blog posts and comments -- the service crashed on the 18th and hadn't performed a back-up after the 12th. Also that weekend, their email server went down, and though that's back up and running, the Mailman listservs haven't worked since. I was patient. I was going to give them a second chance.

Not anymore. Today, everything's down again, and while this may be a glitch and my sites may be back up and running soon, I've had it. I can't even get to the hosting service's main website to file a tech support request -- not that this will do any good: they used to respond quickly to tech issues, but since this last crash two weeks ago, they've been deathly silent.

All of this brings me to say: HELP! I need to find a new hosting service and I need it ASAP.

What I'm looking for is a reliable but inexpensive service that allows for multiple (25 at least) domains and the ability to continue purchasing added space & bandwidth as needed. I'm used to cPanel as a control interface, so that would be preferable. Also, I must have PHP and SQL installed, and various other scripting options & add-ons, like Fantastico Scripts.

If any of you techie types have recommendations for me, please let me know! I'm eager for personal recommendations and not just links to "top hosting services" rankings. (And I hope this info will be helpful to others who want to move to their own domains or from their current hosting services.)

The worst part of all this is that it's fallen during a week when Chopper's lost his temp job and we're still trying to dig out from all the wretched stuff the tenants did to our house while we were gone. Feh. Sometimes bad luck runs in streaks a mile long!

Many Thanks in advance,
Robin aka MizD of Belly-Timber.com

I installed Site Meter and it took my blog down.

Yesterday I added Site Meter to my blog. It worked fine for a few hours, then removed access to the blog and all I got was code.

I removed Site Meter and the bog returned.

Anyone else have this problem?

Thank you.


This Post was written by mimi from French Kitchen in America

How can I delete "LINKS TO THIS POST:"

How can I delete access to Blogger's "LINKS TO THIS POST:"
I'm getting very strange links turning up at the end of
My Camera post :(
Such as:
Hi My Name is Paul and I am a Racist & THE GIRL WITH SIX FINGERS etc.
Totally inappropriate. I haven't a clue how to remove them.
Has anyone else had this problem?
This Post was written by Carolg from
ParisBreakfasts

From Food Blogging to Professional Food Writing

Hello Food Bloggers,

I have benefitted from so many of your posted questions and helpful responses, and, for the first time, am submitting a question of my own.

In truncated form: How many of you are aspiring to write about food in a professional or semi-professional capacity?

In a slightly long-winded form: I am working on my Ph.D. in a non-food related field, and have found my food blog to be a really enjoyable outlet to write casually about food while dedicating most of my time to my dissertation. I would eventually like to do some freelance writing about food-related topics. For those of you who do this sort of work, did you publish a food blog first? If so, do you think that your food-blogging opened up opportunities for you to move into professional writing? Have any of you been approached with offers for writing projects by way of your blogs? Any suggestions for how I can, in the future, use the writing I have done on my blog to get my foot in the door of professional food writing?

This Post was written by Sarah Miller from Food and Paper.

How to insert a blank line?

Until a few days ago, I hadn't much time to play around with the way my blog looks. Now I've added Technorati and a few other things but I find I cannot insert blank lines into my template, even when I use the proper html command. What am I doing wrong?

I used it here, and it worked. (I took it out because I have no idea how to disable it.) So why doesn't it work in my template?
What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.


This Post was written by Mimi from French Kitchen in America.

slide.com

Alright, I might be a bit slow but: I just wanted to say that I have been hooked on slide.com and think it's wonderful! I take tonnes of pictures and this is a wonderful way to share them on a blog (or on other mediums for that matter). It saves me play favourites with my pictures. Thoughts anyone? Maybe other new/old [free] useful programs anyone might want to share?


This Post was written by celine from black.salt

Correcting Recipe Errors

I just corrected this recipe for chocolate pumpkin pie. (My original post was missing a line—and one cup of sugar). I also put up a subsequent message saying that the recipe had been corrected, but not giving details, because the less said the better, right? And I emailed one blogger who mentioned in comments that she might try it. I still feel terrible because this is my most hit recipe ever; I wish I could reach everyone who is planning to make it. Is there something else I should be doing? Have I fulfilled my obligation?


This Post was written by The Chocolate Lady from In Mol Araan

[Bloggers who bug me] How Does One Handle Them?

Hi Folks!

I really need some advice because there are a few things that are driving me nuts about a few Blogger Buddies. i am not too sure how to tackle these issues.

1. I often get mails from certain Bloggers telling me to leave a comment on this or that post or even why I have not bothered to comment on a recent post or why I have not visited their blog for a few days.
While some have the time and ability to cover 100 blogs a day leaving comments, I cannot. I have a day job and I can only visit a few, sometimes even none, a day. There are times that I do not leave a comment because do not see the need to. Is this wrong? I think many of us are well acquainted enough to realize this and there are no harsh feelings. There are others however who actually go by their stats and as soon as I have visited a blog and did not happen to leave a comment, I can be sure I will get a mail telling me why I have not. How do I handle this?

2. The mails also often have comments like "There have been 67 comments on my post, why have you not commented yet?" "My post today had 140 comments!"
Hello? Did we all go back to Kindergarten and someone forgot to tell me? A closer look reveals that out of the 140 comments 120 are from the blog owner themselves. So what is the deal here? Are our blogs judged my the amount of comments one gets or should this be a fun thing?

3. I have noticed many new blogs and while I know I cannot do anything about it, I just wanted to vent my frustration - I see that some are very much copying a similar style and layout. There are some things that are fine - for example the recipe boxes, this is not the annoying factor.
What I mean are things that I find personal. For example, the Google Reader bit on my sidebar under "Blogs I Am Reading". I noticed this on a certain blogger's sidebar too - that is OK I have noticed the Reader on many blogs - but what bugs me this blogger has the exact same reading list, contents and titles!! Are these people lacking imagination or are we so similar that we could have been long lost twins?
I added a little thanksgiving graphic to my Banner and I am wondering how long it is going to take these people to implement this idea too. As this is my personal touch for my readers it gets annoying when one sees the same thing everywhere. Am I being petty?


This Post was written by MEETA from What's For Lunch Honey

[img] problems with blogger img upload?

hi all!

for the last day, i have been having a very odd problem with uploading photos for my blog.

i use HELLO - the little tool to upload photos directly to blogger. when i look at the image in say, photoshop or in explorer, it looks fine - 200x150 px. after i upload it to blogger, the image is cut off at the bottom. the image itself is 200x150, but for some reason, the bottom part is white.

for example, this:

looks like this:

(i have no idea how it worked this time, but for everything else, it's getting cut off)

am i doing something wrong with photoshop? is there an issue with the HELLO tool, or is it blogger?

any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

This Post was written by sarah from the delicious life

Hiding the Blogger Navbar

Some time ago I searched out some code that I put into my Blogger template to hide the navbar at the top. Recently I've been looking at migrating from Blogger to Blogger beta and a search of the web quickly turned up the new code needed to hide the navbar in beta. It came with an add-on that gets rid of the space left at the top of screen.

The code can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yl6p3g - Technique 1, with the extra bit that you will find after Technique 3.

Testing the code on someone else's blog that has just migrated, I was very pleased with the result. That was until I realised that the code works properly in Firefox, but in IE it hides the bar but does not remove the white space at the top.

So does anyone have code that works properly in both browsers?

This Post was written by Trig from Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef.

Blog redesign inspiration

I've got this major redesign looming over me and apparently the silly writing project I've been buried in has left me utterly braindead when it comes to graphics. To complicate things, I've got multiple sites that need a coordinated look/feel and I need to come up with a logo. (and I have no clue what I am making for thanksgiving dinner, beyond a 21 lb turkey, but that's another problem entirely!)

My problem is not that I can't do the design work, it's that I can't decide what I want. (any mindreaders out there to help?) I have some general thoughts but I think what I need now is to go look at a bunch of sites for inspiration. Which is where you all come in.

What are your favorite blogs as far as design goes?
Are there specific aspects of blog designs that you either love or hate?
Have you run across articles that helped you with site design?

Anything else you think might help would be great!

I have a few Typepad specific questions, but I'll save those for another post.

This Post was written by kitchenMage from kitchenMage

For Fans of Sugar High Friday

The Herald-Tribune just published a great piece about Sugar High Friday by Laura J. Cullumbine, who's another SHF fan. The story is here (and might require registration).


This post was written by Alanna from A Veggie Venture

Error Message in German??

Hi all!

Does anyone know why when a page won't load I get an error message in German? Actually I am only guessing it is German.

Webseite reagiert nicht
Die Webseite, die Sie angefordert haben, ist wegen eines besetzten oder unterbrochenen Servers auf technischen Schwierigkeiten gestoßen. Bitte versuchen Sie es noch einmal, indem Sie den Button Neu Laden auf Ihrer Navigationsleiste anklicken oder - wenn das nicht funktioniert - kommen Sie zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt zur Seite zurück.
502f Verbindungsfehler

This Post was written by Gabriella True from

My Life As A Reluctant Housewife

Moving Photo hosting to Flickr?

I use Typepad, and for 99.9% of my posts, have inserted photos into my posts from my computer, basically hosting them at typepad, which is fine, except that I am really exceeding my bandwidth. One way they suggest of extending bandwidth is to host some content at shared hosting sites. I thought I might move all of my pictures to Flickr, which I already use but not really for blogging. Has anyone done this or another type of shared hosting for content? I don't want to lose anything.


This Post was written by Lisa from Restaurant Widow

[Ads] Problems with AdSense?

I searched and didn't find this mentioned yet, so forgive me if it has been discussed before.....

I recently added Google's AdSense to my blog more out of curiosity than anything else. I really don't get the traffic to make much money, but I figured I'd try it out just to see how it works.

When I first added it, I got a lot of blog-related ads. I followed some of the tips about removing the word "blog" from the sidebar which seemed to solve that problem and things were working pretty well for a while. Now I'm getting a lot of junk. "Find your soul mate" kind of stuff that I really don't want. I visited Kalyn's Kitchen and noticed that the same thing is happening on her site as well, although perhaps not to the same degree.

It appears that this is happening mostly on the main page. When I click on posts that are elsewhere in my blog, such as a specific recipe or the permalink, the ads at the bottom of those posts are generally relevant.

Is this normal for AdSense or is this a recent problem? I certainly am not going to make much money on this, so I'm tempted to remove it if it can't even generate relevant ads.

Any tips or suggestions?

This Post was written by Alysha from The Savory Notebook

Chain emails : Recipe Exchange

By now, some or all of you might have come across this chain emails that is circulating around the food blogosphere.

I don't mean any malice or cause anyone upset but i am terribly busy at work and home at the moment [i'm preparing for a 3 weeks holiday], that i have to decline participation. So please don't take it personally.

This chain email though, bugged me a bit.

This is how it looks:

1. name of person - email
2. name of person - email

You've been invited to be part of a recipe exchange!

Please send a recipe to the person whose name is
listed in the number 1 position above (even if you
don't know him/her)--preferably something quick, easy,
few ingredients.

Then copy this letter into a new email, move my name
to the number 1 position, and put your name in the
number 2 position. Only your name and mine should
appear on this list when you send out your email. Send
this to 10 friends. If you cannot do this within 5 days,
please let me know so it will be fair to those
participating. You should receive 36 recipes. It is
fun to see where these recipes come from. Seldom does
anyone drop out because we can all use new recipes.
The turnaround is fast because only 2 names are on the
list.

I really don't get why whoever set this up have chosen to email to 10 people?
I mean, they've overlooked the fact that one person might get so many repeat participation email because of the amount of people to email.

Let's say i get 5 emails and reply to all of them, that means, i have to think of 50 new participants, right? Also, it would mean that whilst i only share 5 different recipes and pain-stakingly type them as email format, i would then receive a whopping [it says i will get 36 recipes in total for every participation- how did they get to this number?] 180 recipes if i participate to all 5 emails.

But my calculation tells me that i will get 100 recipes for each participation. So multiply that by 5, equals to 500 recipes. That's if my math's right? I had to draw up a diagram to understand and work this one out.

Wow. That's a lot of recipes. Do i really need all these? As it is, i haven't even had a chance to cook from my cookbooks...

What do you personally think of this?

This Post was written by Mae from riceandnoodles

Kosher cooking food blogs

Hello,

A reader of my blog asked me for recommendations on kosher cooking sites and "hip" Kosher food blogs. I haven't found anything, but I am sure there are some sites out there. This seems like a fun niche. Does anyone have some suggestions I can send along to him?


This Post was written by Chris from Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen