Commenting- The Logistics of It
So here is the logistics part of commenting.
Sometimes, depending on the blog theme or where you are on the blog, the comments are not visible to see right away. When you are on the main blog page (ex. www.langwitches.org/blog ) you will only read the post, but no comments are visible. You need to look for and physically click on either the title of the blog post or the “comments” link, which is usually located at the bottom of the post.
If you are already on the individual blog post (ex. www.langwitches.org/blog/2008/04/29/31-day-commenting-challenge ) you should see the comments already written and the textbox for you to type in already at the bottom of the post.
Before you are allowed to hit the submit button, some blogs ask you to type in an Anti-Spam word or solve a simple addition problem. Just type in the exact same letters in the textbox right next to the word provided.
Now you are ready to actually type in your comment in text, directly into the bigger textbox, but there are a few other formatting things you can do If you want you comment to either stand out or be a little “dressed up”.
In comes some HTML code. Now remember, you DON’T have to use this code. Plain text is just as good and most of the time sufficient. On Langwitches, you will not see the HTML code help as it is shown in the screenshot above on Kim’s edublog for example, but you can nevertheless type the code in and it will show up formatted in the comment.
This code turns this reply into…
…this comment
It is very nice for readers of your comment to be able to directly be able to click on any link you are referencing without having to copy/paste the URL into their browser.
Most blogs will also translate the emotion icons, such as the smilies and frowns into the yellow round little circles if you use them colon + ( for frowns and colon “:” + ) for happy faces 
Edublogs, Blogger and WordPress are all a little different in how they interface looks like. Some blogs( blogger accounts) will allow you to preview your comment before actually posting it too.
Perfect Silvia! This is just what we needed!
One thing I’ve noticed from coComment is that you may have to select that you actually want to track the conversation by clicking on the dropdown arrow on the lower right corner of the comment box and select “track.” I think if I don’t do that, my comments won’t be tracked.
Try it and see what happens – I’m curious if it’s the same for everyone, or if it’s a setting I chose way back when and can’t remember.
Trying to comment without clicking on the dropdown menu and choosing track. Let’s see if it automatically tracks it or not.
Looks like it still was tracked under My Comments on CoComment.
True: when you comment, the conversation is automatically tracked.
Thanks for the clear explantation Silvia. I am new to the world of RSS feeds etc. so it was great to see visual directions.
So do we need to add the tag in coComment for this to be tracked? I’m unsure how to get the comments added to the group.
@Lori
I don’t think you have to tag in coComment for it to be tracked in the coComment group. Just by belonging to the Comment Challenge Group, it should track your comments. Please correct me if I am wrong here.
On coComment it says the following about tags:
[...] Commenting: The logistics of it [...]
[...] For those new to commenting, Silvia also has a great post on the logistics of adding (and tracking) a comment. [...]
Silvia, I do believe you have to “share” your comment to the group each time. Makes sense because you could belong to more than one group and you don’t want all of your comments automatically going to all groups.
I’m testing out seeing if what I set up at coComments works. It’s a bit confusing. They’ll need to clean this up for greater appeal, but the established bloggers will figure it out I’m sure. I hope I’m one of them.