Leighton Hubbell - Illustrative Designer

When you're starting a blog, you often times feel like you're just talking to yourself. Article after article of writing about this and collecting images of that, trying to find your voice. For me, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to have comments on my blog. Initially, I thought I wanted that kind of monologue where people would stop by and check out the work, hopefully impressed enough that they would send me an e-mail. That didn't happen very often–if at all.

What I didn't know is that people who stop by are checking you out, much like that new store that opened up on the corner. They walk in the door and give the place a quick look around. Some are browsers and hang out for a while and others are looking for that one specific thing. If you don't have it, they're moving on. I'm OK with that, but after awhile, it can get kind of lonely.

So, a long story short, I activated my comments for this blog and over the course of a few months I got a decent amount of feedback on some very hot topics. That was great. I was really starting to feel like I was getting in the groove and certainly getting the kinks out of the format. The only thing was, the commenting software I used, did not have the capability for the administrator to comment back to the contributor. Very frustrating and I am sure perplexing to some of the commenting audience. I'm sure some people thought I didn't care what they were saying and moved on.

Then, while doing some maintenance work on another site on the same hosting account, I uninstalled and pretty much erased the entire blog by accident. And of course, so went the comments. Sheer panic sets in and fortunately after a week, I get it back up.

This blog is a Joomla blog and although it is a great format, there are some limitations to the availability of certain types of software. Unless you are a developer, you're at the mercy of the marketplace. The most recommended and useful commenting software that was available was JomComment. It has great backend admin control, but as I mentioned, the whole idea of establishing dialog with the audience is being able to respond–which was not something JomComment lets you do.

So while I was on Twitter one day, I found out that Disqus had made an improved plugin for Joomla and gave it a try. THIS is what I wanted for my blog. Great admin control with the ability to chat with the commenting audience. Unfortunately, the down side is that I couldn't find a way to migrate my existing comments from JomComment into Disqus. I thought for the sake of making the transition, I wouldn't get so far down the road and not be happy with the way things were set up. So there they sit. Hopefully one day soon I can migrate them, but for now they are shelved.

I apologize to all the great people who made comments here. There was nothing done to purposely stifle anyone's thoughts on my various articles. In fact, I encourage you to throw your two cents in, in the future. Unless something unforeseeable comes along, I am sticking with this format and don't plan on changing any time soon.

So please, let me know you're out there and by all means, feel free to comment.