Comments are Back!
Oh my gosh, guys, I am so excited to tell you the news: I finally have comments on my blog again!
It is completely ridiculous, that after being a full-time professional blogger for 15 freaking years, I haven't had comments on my blog for over a year.
Big Tech Censorship
It wasn't my fault, though. See, my blog got deplatformed by Google in the summer of 2019.
My blog was also shadowbanned on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. If you tried to share a link to my blog – even a recipe! – you couldn't. It would be marked as spam and you literally could not share it.
Ghost
So in November of 2021, I had to move my entire blog from Wordpress over to this (relatively) new Ghost platform.
I came across author Forrest Maready's blog... and saw that he was using Ghost and I really liked how it looked. I was also worried that I would get deplatformed by my hosting service, since I had been deplatformed by almost everyone including Amazon and Patreon.
You can read about Ghost here – it was started in 2013 by a Wordpress UI designer via Kickstart. I was a Wordpress user for 14 years, so this was not a light decision for me.
But I'm glad I did it. I now recommend Ghost to my students in my online course, Online Marketing Simplified, and it's pretty much the only thing I'm going to teach.
Wordpress is just overkill for what most people need. Wordpress has become the tool that big robust websites need, but for the average person who just wants a blog, Ghost gives you everything you need. Wordpress is not worth the headaches.
A Ghost Town
The only problem with Ghost is that it's still relatively young so they don't have all the bells and whistles that I'm used to with Wordpress.
And without comments, my Ghost blog was a ghost town.
The only choices for adding comments on Ghost were Disqus (UGGGHH) and some paid comment tools you can add on to your Ghost blog.
1.) Disqus SUCKS. I don't trust that the own all your comments and you have to pay for it unless you use the free version – and then they put tons of nasty foot fungus ads all over your blog. So that was a hard no.
2.) I have been broke since Big Tech censored me, and my blog has barely made enough to pay my hosting and software bills. So I didn't want to pay for comment tools.
Anyway, finally this fall, Ghost launched free built-in comments to their site.
I am so happy about this!
I am a writer who THRIVES on back-and-forth with my readers. I tried to write books before, and while I was able to write two books (one, a cookbook, was published – this was before I was a blogger) it was so lonely and boring and I hated it.
Also, it's great to have people be able to interact with me here on my blog. Back in the early days of my blog (2007-2009) before social media really got ramped up, people were always on my blog, commenting.
After Facebook and Instagram became ubiquitous, everyone stopped commenting as much and all the comments were over there on those platforms. Which really hurts independent bloggers, because we don't get paid for all those views.
And then of course I got banned everywhere and I couldn't interact with my readers anymore. It sucked.
Thank You!
I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has been emailing me, following me on Twitter and Telegram, etc. and everyone who has been praying for me and wishing me well.
I really love you guys.
Drop it Like It's Hot
Leave me a comment below.
(Woohoo! It feels so good to say that!)