Personal blog commenting setup

Posted on 2009-10-14 by Ecliptic Rift

Figuring out how to track my comments drains my soul.

Figuring out how to track my comments drains my soul.

In an admission that should surprise no one, I like to comment on blogs, particularly EVE-related blogs. But since I also comment on non-EVE-related blogs as my RL persona (rather than Casiella), I occasionally run into trouble keeping the avatars and such straight. So I thought I’d document my current setup here, both to keep it straight in my head, help anyone struggling with similar problems, and possibly even get some feedback from you folks.

Previously, I just used the “automatic filtering” feature of Gmail, where you append “+label” to the end of your account name (like “name+label”) so as to set apart EVE-related stuff. But I found that a lot of broken implementations don’t accept email addresses with the “+” symbol in them, so I ended up just using my regular email address. This causes me trouble because, among other things, it causes the avatar lookup (using WordPress or Gravatar, I think) to show my crew-cut head rather than Casiella’s sexy features.

Also, I had to frequently log in and out of WordPress.com depending on my commenting identity due to my use of it for an OpenID authentication site. Complicating this, I don’t even use WordPress.com for EVE stuff anymore.

So I decided to get a wholly new email address and change my Casiella avatar stuff to that. I wanted a new OpenID, too. And so, poking around, I decided a Yahoo! account would satisfy me: OpenID, email, and the chance to poke around with Flickr and Pipes as well.

Thus, “internetspaceships@yahoo.com” came about. Too bad the fabled IM network crosstalk never did come about, but I can live with that thanks to Twitter.

I still have the challenge of collecting all the blog comments I scatter about the intarwebtubez. Following up on conversations is difficult at best, and if I make a comment that I decide later I really like (and maybe want to expand into a full post here), then I have to try to track it down. I don’t have a good answer to this, since most of the “solutions” involve all the blog admins installing some plugin on their site. That’s a non-starter for all sorts of reasons, most of which are pretty good ones.

But I’ll live. For now, Casiella now can exist with her own independent… um… existence.

Image credit Clearly Ambiguous via Flickr

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  • http://vievetisserand.blogspot.com/ Vieve

    Oh, hey, so I’m not the only person who struggles with this. I’ve tried for a long time to separate my life into individual boxes: writing over here, friends over there, gaming somewhere else, homelife in one place, and relatives-I-don’t-like-sharing-anything-with-about-the-first-three-things in a box way the hell away from everything else.

    It’s resulted in a lot of e-mail accounts, a lot of different aliases, and headaches keeping them straight.

    So, do you aggregate all of your mail into Google?

    And will I ever remember to add you to my messenger friends list so we can chat real time? :P

  • http://vievetisserand.blogspot.com Vieve

    Oh, hey, so I’m not the only person who struggles with this. I’ve tried for a long time to separate my life into individual boxes: writing over here, friends over there, gaming somewhere else, homelife in one place, and relatives-I-don’t-like-sharing-anything-with-about-the-first-three-things in a box way the hell away from everything else.

    It’s resulted in a lot of e-mail accounts, a lot of different aliases, and headaches keeping them straight.

    So, do you aggregate all of your mail into Google?

    And will I ever remember to add you to my messenger friends list so we can chat real time? :P

  • http://rift.chromebits.net/ Casiella Truza

    Yeah, I have struggled with this on a daily basis. Not to mention the personal / spiritual stuff I do my damnedest to keep away from my gaming / tech stuff.

    I aggregate all my other mail into Google, but this one I keep separate. Dunno why or how long I will do that, but for now the geek in me enjoys seeing how far Yahoo! Mail has come in the 6 or 7 years since I last used it.

  • http://rift.chromebits.net/ Casiella Truza

    Oh, and I am not always in IM. Which do you use? (I hate the fact that that question still has relevance.)

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    Yeah, I have struggled with this on a daily basis. Not to mention the personal / spiritual stuff I do my damnedest to keep away from my gaming / tech stuff.

    I aggregate all my other mail into Google, but this one I keep separate. Dunno why or how long I will do that, but for now the geek in me enjoys seeing how far Yahoo! Mail has come in the 6 or 7 years since I last used it.

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    Oh, and I am not always in IM. Which do you use? (I hate the fact that that question still has relevance.)

  • http://Vivevirtual.blogspot.com/ Jaggins

    I have a similar issue as my eve blogger Account is under a sererate gmail account from my main personal account, which includes my reader subscriptions. This makes commenting on blogger posts a major PITA. I have to re-open the page in a second browser to make the comment… BTW, the commenting software @Rettic uses looks pretty cool…

  • http://Vivevirtual.blogspot.com Jaggins

    I have a similar issue as my eve blogger Account is under a sererate gmail account from my main personal account, which includes my reader subscriptions. This makes commenting on blogger posts a major PITA. I have to re-open the page in a second browser to make the comment… BTW, the commenting software @Rettic uses looks pretty cool…

  • http://rift.chromebits.net/ Casiella Truza

    Agreed, Blogger commenting can be a pain, particularly when they ONLY allow commenting from other Google accounts.

    Disqus is cool but it’s not yet proved reliable enough for me to try it out on my own blog. Keeping an eye on it for now, though.

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    Agreed, Blogger commenting can be a pain, particularly when they ONLY allow commenting from other Google accounts.

    Disqus is cool but it’s not yet proved reliable enough for me to try it out on my own blog. Keeping an eye on it for now, though.