Recent Commenting Difficulties on WordPress

This post is just a public service announcement. Have you noticed that it recently has become significantly more difficult to leave comments on certain WordPress websites? Your website might be one of them and you may not know about it. The people having difficulty leaving comments on your website may have a hard time telling … Continue reading “Recent Commenting Difficulties on WordPress”

This post is just a public service announcement. Have you noticed that it recently has become significantly more difficult to leave comments on certain WordPress websites? Your website might be one of them and you may not know about it. The people having difficulty leaving comments on your website may have a hard time telling you.

A pexels image showing a man with a tophat and a big megaphone
There are no comments to be had! That’s the reality on some WordPress websites. Photo by Monstera Production on Pexels.com

I like to use the emails I get by subscribing to certain WordPress websites. I can often read the post in my email inbox and then press the comment link. I also like to go straight to the webpage and read and comment there. When I do this (both cases), I have issues with leaving comments on some people’s posts, and I’ve come to realize, it’s not just me, it is a general problem. There is an alternative way of leaving comments, and that is to use the WordPress-Reader. This is an indirect way of leaving, or sending, a comment, and this seems to always work. A friend of mine, Alex, pointed this out to me and I finally got around to doing it this way instead. However, if people have issues with leaving comments on your website you may not be aware of it, for quite understandable reasons. You will just get less comments.

A toolbar including an email client icon
I like to use the email I get by subscribing to certain WordPress websites. Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels.com

This is typically what happens when you try to leave a comment on the websites that have commenting issues. Again, this happens only on some websites, but it is a quite common problem.

  1. The Reply button is greyed out. You are asked to login to WordPress even though you are already logged in.
  2. So, you login to WordPress (despite already being logged in).
  3. After logging in two duplicate WordPress-Reader windows popup and cover almost the entire page.
  4. To get rid of them so that you can write your comment you have to reload the page because there’s no close feature. Doing this will erase whatever you have already written in the comment box.
  5. Now you can typically write and post your comment (but not always)
  6. In some cases, it does not matter what I do, I cannot leave a comment directly from the webpage (but it is possible using the Reader).
A pexels image showing a frustrated man in front of a laptop.
Are you having issues with commenting on certain webpages? Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I talked to a Happiness Engineer about this. I was told that they are streamlining the commenting feature and there are currently some issues. He did not seem to know the extent of the problems but appreciated people’s input on the issue. He did not have an exact date as of when it will be fixed.

A pexels image showing a bug with orange and black stripes.
A bug in the system. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Have you noticed these problems?

If you see this on my webpage, please use the contact page to tell me (or comment if you can).