Update: 29 Aug, 2022
Woke up to some even better news from WordPress. They’ve now fixed the bug that has been plaguing a number of sites for the last week. I’ve run a few tests and am happy to report that all the comments I tried to leave went through without problems — even those on sites that were throwing up error messages a few days ago.
The issue of the unwanted email notifications also appears to have been resolved.
I hope this is the case for all of you who have experienced similar issues. I must say I’ve missed the lack of a full comment function so much. It’s the social interaction that keeps me interested in blogging and without it, well I’d just be talking to myself.
Update: 28 Aug 2022
Some good news from WordPress about the problem that has plagued many of our blog sites in recent days. (If you don’t know what this is all about, scroll down to the “What’s The Problem” section.)
I’m still having problems leaving comments on a large number of book blogs and having to use the work arounds described below.
But I’ve just heard from WordPress that they have now identified the bug that’s causing this issue. An email from one of their “Happiness Engineers” tells me that “The developers have found the issue and are working on releasing a fix soon. I don’t have an exact ETA, but we will email you once the fix has been released.”
Though it would be good to know how long it will take before we see normal service restored, at least the source of the problem is known.
On a related point, I know from all the Twitter chat that there is another issue that has materialised in recent days. Bloggers are now getting email notifications whenever there is a reply to a comment they’ve left on another blogger’s post. I’ve certainly noticed that happening in the last two days even though I haven’t requested a notification.
I’ve reported this new issue to WordPress and they advise us to take a look at our settings.
Go to your WordPress account.
In the menu on the left, scroll down to “Notifications” . Then on the menu along the top of the screen, select Comments. Here you can select your preferences.
When I checked mine, somehow it was set up for me to receive email notifications of “likes” and “replies”. I don’t recall ever doing that but have now changed the setting. I’m hoping that fixes the issue.
What’s the Problem?
First of all, my apologies to those of you who’ve encountered problems trying to leave a comment on this blog in recent days.
You may have seen this error message:
Over the past few days this error message has become an all too familiar sight for me when i’ve visited other blogs and tried to leave comments.
The first time it happened, I thought I’d done something wrong or there was a temporary glitch with that particular blog. But soon I was getting the exact same problem with other blogs. Not with all of them — just some.
Then I learned people were getting the same error message when they tried to leave a comment on BookerTalk.
The WordPress “happiness engineers” who picked up my help request, did they best. They ran some tests but couldn’t find any problem with my blog.
On their recommendation I cleared out the cache on my web browser and did a restart of the laptop. They even had me record a video showing step by step what I did to comment on blogs. None of this worked unfortunately.
It now seems I wasn’t the only WordPress user having problems. I’ve since heard some bloggers have found all their comments are coming through as from “anonymous” users.
WordPress have now confirmed that there is a bug in the system. I received this update today.
In the Meantime Try These Solutions
We don’t know how long it will take for this bug to be fixed. Hopefully only a day or so.
In the meantime I’ve found two ways to get around the glitch so you can continue to interact with blogs you enjoy following.
Use the WordPress Reader
I don’t use the reader to follow blogs because I find the Feedly newsreader gives me more flexibility. But I’ve discovered in recent days that if I access a blog directly from the WordPress Reader, then my comments are accepted. If I access the very same blog via Feedly, I get an error message when leaving a comment. So as a temporary measure I’ve reverted to using the Reader.
If you’ve not used the WordPress Reader, go to your WordPress dashboard and look on the top left of your screen -you should see the word “Reader”.
Click on that and you’ll see a screen with a box where you can search by name for a particular box. On the results page, click the blog you want, and hit “follow”. Any new posts from that blog will now be added to your feed. You can choose whether to receive any updates direct to your in box daily or weekly,
Log Out/Log In
If you don’t want to invest the time in setting up the Reader, there is another option available.
Visit a blog as you would normally, and type in your comment.
Before you hit the “Post comment” button, select the “Log Out” button just under your profile name. The immediately log back into WordPress using your WordPress user name and password. It’s a bit of a faff but it works — don’t ask me why !
Update: booksteacupreviews.com has left a comment here that there is another work around that might be easier than log in/log out. In the comment box, click on the word “change” – it’s to the right of the “logout” button as shown in the above image.
I’m Not Ignoring You!
Thank you to everyone who has let me know they’ve had a problem leaving a comment here on my blog. It meant I could show clearly to the WordPress engineers that this wasn’t an isolated issue.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to visit anywhere near as many blogs as I would normally, I’m not neglecting you but it takes me twice as long to write and submit one comment now so interaction has been lower than level. Rest assured I still love you all and am still reading your reviews and posts 🙂 Hopefully normal service will be resumed soon.
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