How can readers search comments on my blog?
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Comments to posts have very valuable information that my blog’s readers (and I) need to be able to search through the comments easily. From what I can tell, right now only I can search my blog’s comments — not very useful to my readers! What I’ve found under Support and the Forums hasn’t told me how to make comments searchable by all readers of my blog.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Your readers can search comments on your blog is by using seach engines like Google.
Here is an example of the search format using “cat” as a keyword.
Google search string (no space after the colon)
cat site:lummiislandliving.wordpress.com/search results http://tinyurl.com/4fetylg
Your readers can subscribe to all the comments on your blog via a feedreader. This is the URL for your comments feed:
http://lummiislandliving.wordpress.com/comments/feed/ -
I take it that your responses means readers can’t use any WordPress search box/function to search just among the comments?
The google search idea seems neat, but the results are overwhelming, not limited to just blog Comments and not re-orderable (at least not easily) by date, etc. This is big usability barrier to my blog/community readers, many of whom are NOT internet nerds.
If they could just search for <author “key words”> within JUST comments using the wordpress search bar, that would be much, much better.
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Since I, as admin, when I go to “Comments” can search quite nicely through them, why couldn’t there be a setting option under “Discussion” to let readers access the same function, maybe via the same kind of search bar described under Search Comments in the wordpress main help area?
Or else add this option (where to search) to the search widget already available? That would be great!
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I have only twice in 6 years had an inclination to search comments on anyone’s blog other than my own and when I did I used Google.
I have never tried using wordpress.com search for locating comments. Have you tried it?
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Yes, I’ve tried wordpress.com to search comments. I can of course do it for my blog under the search function. It’s my readers I want to be able to do the same, and just as easily as me.
Why? Well, turns out that lummiislandferryforum.wordpress.com blog offers unique covers information related to the whatcom county ferry. This ferry is the ONLY access to the island, and the past few years many serious problems. The forum is the ONLY place for islanders and others to find needed news, info and comment substantively and civilly (unlike local news blogs, filled with GIGO).
Started last year (intended to be small and short term), it keeps growing and now is being accessed not only by islanders, but news media, government officials and members of indian country (notably, Lummi Nation). LOTS of people, more as time goes on, need to find information, by category/tag, that was added not only as posts or pages but under comments. So the ability to effectively and effeciently search for info (without my having to re-do the whole site, comments and all) is REALLY important to readers of this blog.
I can’t imagine I’ve the only blog in wordpress.com that has useful comments people might want to search, although I fully understand that comments on most blogs are either useless (not bearing looking at more than once, if that) or obnoxious or worse.
Still, for substantive blogs with substantive comments of long-term value, it would sure be nice if wordpress.com could provide readers with the same “search comments” function that we administrators already have. Probably wishful thinking, but hey, it’s worth it to me to keep asking!
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@Hello again
You misunderstood me. I am a Volunteer. I do not make decisions about any added features.IWhen I asked if you had used the wordpress.com search feature to search comments I was niot referring to the one we can use in our dashboards. lol :D I’m acquaitnted wih it as I’ve been here for 5 years and recall wehn it did not even exist. :D
What I meant is have you pretended to be a reader and then tried to search. That’s all. The bottom line on this is Staff make decisions. They are away until March 2nd, 2011 and when they retrun you can make your request using this link. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
P.S. Like you I am a gumbooter. I live on a small island in the gulf islands in Canada.
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P.P.S. I apologize for the typos. I’m visually challenged and I forgot to proofread before clicking “submit”.
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Thanks, fellow gumboater.
I appreciate your time. I’ll put in a support request to the wordpress folks for when they return.
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I’d like to see this feature, and agree it couldn’t be that hard to implement. God knows, I’ve spent HOURS looking for a particular comment. People give me great ideas for posts there, but I can never find them again.
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