Updates to Commenting System

I often get emails from my readers with great tips related to my blog posts, but I feel selfish since I'm the only one that gets to take advantage of these wonderful suggestions. The biggest reason for this is probably because of the issues some of you have had trying to leave comments on the site.

We recently made some changes that should make it a lot easier to leave comments, so hopefully that will open up the dialog. Here is a breakdown of how the updated commenting system looks:

How to Leave a Comment

1. From the homepage, click on the number of comments next to the little yellow post it note () under a blog post. You can also click on the title of the blog post to go directly to the blog post page. This is where you can enter your comment.
2. Below the post you will see a text area labeled "Post a Comment", this is where you enter your comment text.
3. Below the comment text, you need to select how you will identify yourself. This is probably where most of you had trouble before. If you have a Google Account, it's probably easiest to just select that in the drop down. Otherwise, you should select "Name/URL" or "Anonymous".
4. If you select "Name/URL", enter your Name (required) and URL of your website (optional). This information will be included with your comment. If you select "Anonymous", you don't have to enter any more information, but no one will know who the comment came from either :(
5. Next click on the "Post Comment" button.
6. You will be presented with an Image Verification window. This is to prevent comment spam robots from littering My Daily Dish with comments about porn and Viagara. Just type in the letters from the image that you see.
7. That's it. The next steps all happen behind the scenes. I will get an email asking me to approve the comment (again to make sure it's not spam) and once approved, you will see it on the site :)

I hope this all doesn't sound too complicated. It really is a piece of cake once you try it out. If we can get everyone posting comments about their experiences using my recipes & tips or their suggestions on how to improve upon them, that will make our whole community that much more valuable to everyone. Please let me know if you have any issues with the new system and we'll look into it right away. I am also going to try and start posting any email tips I get as anonymous comments on the relevant blog post when applicable.

Thanks to everyone for helping make this site such a success. I really have a great time writing it and still can't believe it has the following it does.
~Morgan