The overwhelming majority of entries are detailing a problem I got and the solution that I found that worked for me. I’ve spent a couple of decades in software and hardware testing across a wide variety of platforms and so I can pretty well fault any hardware or software from a running start with negligible if any training, and, if I can get access to the code I can identify where it’s going wrong in fine detail.

I don’t bother recording common problems that you’ll quickly find solutions elsewhere. These are the odd-balls, the quirky, the unique.

I write this blog to help people. Humans have a natural and evolved instinct to be gregarious and altruistic and I see no reason to think otherwise but this openness is limited and balanced by the need for a trust model, constraints in network sizes (“Dunbar’s Number”) and what is known as the Tragedy of the Commons. Web pages are a “commons” in that whilst one topical comment won’t detract from the enjoyment that others in the community can get from the commons, many hundreds of irrelevant messages quickly reduce the value of the web page as a commons to a minimum.

Comments must have some kind of trust metric attached to them else they are of little value to anyone. There are other sites that have many-to-many trust metrics systems but that is impractical to implement here.

So that is why no comments: if you want to comment about a post then please use the contact form. I can verify what is said and incorporate the new data, citing you as a reference. That way my outbound links and content are trusted as I keep full control on these and you would end up with a quality inbound link. You have seen our content so if you do want to add stuff and get cited then it really has to add something that I didn’t think of to make it here.

As an aside, if you are setting up WordPress to appear with no comments or “Reply” footer but have already had comments then go into the Dashboard Settings -> Discussions and turn off (uncheck) the “Allow people to post comments on new articles ” and then save that and then to retro-fit that to old articles and pages go into the Pages -> All Pages and check all the pages and then set the bulk actions setting to “Edit” and then Apply and then you’ll get a new set of options that appear – under the “Comments” change that to “do not allow” and then do Update. Repeat that set of actions for the posts.

If you do want comments then there is the fantastic Akismet plugin but the API key is paid-for.

As an alternative zero-cost compromise I’d recommend disqus. This replaces the existing WordPress comment system with the Disqus comment system. The main advantage is that all comments from many web sites that you moderate can appear in one dashboard. I now use Disqus on our with-comments sites e.g. my own Lincoln Phipps blog plus the LifeSignPress book sites.

Lincoln Phipps
Director
Open Mutual Limited