I’ve been thinking a lot about comments lately since I got a bunch of contentious anti-Mormon spam (call it what you will). I just read this very informative and pertinent article at Lorelle on WordPress:

Editing Your Blog Comments:

I believe that everyone has a right to their opinion. I also believe that not every opinion is appropriate for this blog. I take time to carefully reexamine my post content to see if I invited the comment. Even if the comment opposes my beliefs and values, but is related directly to the content, then I’ll leave it. If it makes a good point, I might edit out the nasty parts, leaving the value. It depends, but I think about it and weigh my options, taking into account the intent of the commenter.If it is to inflame, then it’s gone. If it is off topic, it’s gone. If it is spiteful, it’s gone. If it is harmful to others, it’s gone. If it continues the conversation, then it may stay.

There’s a lot more good stuff on that post; I’d recommend you read through it. As she says, comments are a crucial part of blogging. Feel free to leave me some, and I’ll work on being a better blog administrator.

I’ve been using WordPress for less than a day and like it much better than Blogger already.

• Better comment features The comment interface is much nicer than Blogger, where you have to go to a separate page to leave comments. It’s so much easier to just have it at the bottom of the post. And the administration side is much easier to use and gives me finer control.
• Tag cloud I like tag clouds, and they just weren’t easy to do on Blogger.
• Good analytics WordPress tells me not only how many people came to my blog, but what parts they looked at, where they came from, and where they went. This is a bit better than what I was getting from Google Analytics on Blogger (that service is really nice, too). UPDATE: Just to clarify, I actually think Google Analytics are better overall, but WordPress’s analytics give me what I need to know more concisely. For one thing, WordPress doesn’t provide geolocation information, a feature I like on Google.
• OpenID Haven’t used it yet, but WordPress gave me an OpenID, which will make it easier to comment on LiveJournal and other sites that use OpenID.
• Finer control over layout and content Blogger is all single-page oriented, but WordPress allows me to have static pages in addition to my dynamic content.
• Administration interface WordPress just provides so many features that Blogger doesn’t have.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Blogger, and I like Google. Blogger is admittedly easier to setup and use, and probably better if you want a blog that just works. But I’m quite enjoying my new toy: WordPress.

So I just ported my old blog from Blogger to WordPress and have been quite satisfied so far. WordPress gives you a whole lot more control over just about everything than Blogger does, and it’s much easier to customize. Given, Blogger was simpler to set up and easier to use, but I like WordPress better overall so far.

One gripe I have is photos don’t work quite the same as on Blogger, but I’ll get used to it. It still works reasonably well. I hope I don’t use up my 50MB too quickly.

So, that’s the latest news here. Hello, WordPress!