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To blog or not to blog? Comments or not?
Yahoo? Blogger? WordPress? Joomla?
A pal called because Gary Kurfirst, manager of many landmark punk bands and nice guy, passed away unexpectedly at 61. He worked with bands now in the Rock Hall of Fame, but at the time, these bands were struggling for acceptance.
I only met him after a Santa Barbara Talking Heads show, probably 1977 or maybe 1978.
Michelle worked with him and said everyone she knew was talking about it. I said that's strange, because I'm online 24/7 and haven't read a thing in the news, nor received emails from my pals who write obits and tributes, often before the news hits the news outlets, and nothing on the various blogs I read.
She told me about a blogger, sent me his link, and I subscribed.
I was stunned when I tried to add a comment and couldn't.
He wrote he saw Tom Petty at the Whisky, 1977. I asked if that were in February, when Blondie opened. Most people think Blondie's debut was with the Ramones. But they opened a few days earlier for Tom Petty, too. He wrote back it was August ‘77, with the Rubinoos opening.
Not a Nice Attitude
The blogger wrote back, "You've never heard of spam. Even Yahoo has problems with it."
First, that's rather condescending. He has no idea I've been heavily involved in computers, from training, to art to programming, for over two decades.
Secondly, is anyone using Yahoo for blogging?
They don't install full features of WordPress, nor the latest version. I used Yahoo for my webhost. I spent months trying to get WordPress to do what is so easy to do, particularly installing themes, which determine how a blogsite looks.
Now I always suggest using a dedicated webhost over Yahoo.
Google's Blogger is even worse, if you want to add functionality. There's this thing called Akismet, which filters spam quite effectively for many blogging platforms.
Thirdly, he doesn't use Yahoo as his webhost, but his writing was on some Yahoo sites with spamming issues. As he said, there are two schools of thought: comments on or off.
I'm all about community.
Creating a Clear Path
I've transitioned from pure html to Dreamweaver to WordPress and now to Joomla, a particularly robust and solid content management system (CMS), with a logical database backend.
It's so easy to organize info so readers can navigate and Google can index it.
What's the point of blogging if comments are turned off, particularly because of a non-issue like spam? Websites created using CMS and blogging features create community.
Why be online if you don't want participation?
Or are writers so arrogant they think people will read anything and not want to make comments?
Or too lazy or ignorant to deal with the issue?
Or am I the one with the attitude, insisting that success on the net requires commenting?
(Interesting that the MOST popular and successful – moneymaking and most beloved — sites are those with open-ended comments.)
What do you think about commenting?
Do you think or care about that aspect of communication via blogging?
