Changes to Blogger Commenting (continued)

Most of you will have noticed that it has been made impossible for a while to comment on Blogger/Blogspot blogs without a Blogger/Google account (unless the blog owner allowed anonymous comments) and that the 'other' option (used to just enter your name and your url as a hyperlink behind it) has disappeared.

This was apparently an effort by the Blogger Team to avoid too many spam links being placed in the comment box, and it now turns out (thanks a million, Joel, for your assistance!!) that this was intended as a step towards a better solution.

I still think that it was a horrible mistake by the Blogger Team not to communicate any of this, and even worse that the deletion of the 'other' option was simply done globally, while the possible solution was only revealed in an un-announced 'draft'-version!

Anyway, here is the solution: from now on, you don't need to have a Blogger/Google account to comment anymore. You can use the OpenID identification from your own blogging platform (Wordpress, TypeKey, LiveJournal) or 'Any OpenID'. This places your blog's link within your comment name (similar to the old feature where you clicked on the 'other' option while commenting). It's simple and all you have to do is to log into it and publish you comment. It's explained in the following procedure:

1. On clicking 'comment', you will reach the familiar comment page (which has a minor modification in the 'Choose an identity' section):

2. Click on the 'sign-in using' - drop down menu:

3. This drop down menu will show a list of possible hosts (including Blogger/Google). Click on the name of your blogging platform or on 'Any OpenID' and enter your comment.

Regular Blogger/Blogspot users won't have any trouble (they have to be logged in to their own Blogger/Blogspot account and make sure that the Blogger/Google option is visible). Non-bloggers can use their AOL/AIM or Google account. Clicking on 'Any OpenID' enables commentors to place their website url in it.

Note (for Blogger/Blogspot bloggers): If you want to enable this option for your own blog, see my post "How to enable OpenID support for your Blogger/Blogspot blog".

For more information, see the Blogger in Draft message about this. See OpenID explained: Convenience+Security for a brief animated explanation of the benefiots of using OpenID.

UPDATE:
I have created a new OpenID on my own name and registered my blogs to it. I can now simply enter any of my blogs urls as an OpenID, resulting in a commentor name with the direct link to my blogger/blogspot blog attached to it.

This is a whole lot better than signing in with my Google/Blogger account, as that would only result in a commentors name with a link to my profile page.

See my post "Commenting with your OpenID (and delegating your blog url to it)" for instructions (it requires a.o. the possibility to add some code to our blog template, but if I can do it, I guess anybody can;)

See the comments to this post with my names as "nodirecton", "ogendicht", "marketingreview" and "nodirectonbloglove" as examples.


UPDATE 2: PLEASE NOTE: Blogger are announcing to re-introduce the option for unregistered commenters to provide an auto-linked URL with their comment. See my post "Blogger to re-introduce auto-linked URL in commenter identification".