12. Comments.

There's a lot more to Blogger than just what I've taught you, but hopefully this primer will give you the confidence to explore the ins and outs of what can be done. One final thing I want to talk about is Comments. Each blog post will have the option for readers to leave comments for that post. This is a great way for readers to give feedback or just chat, and you can easily reply to them in the comments section yourself.

First let me show you how to edit your comments settings. I'm not going to tell you what to set these to, but want you to know where to look and you can have a think about how open you want your commenting system to be.

1. Click the Customise button. From the Layouts tab, click the Settings tab. It's from here that you can edit the settings for your entire blog, and it might be an idea to have an explore at some point. For now, click on the Comments sub-tab.


2. This will open a page with a long list of options for your comments system. You should have a close look at these at some point, but for now I want to draw your attention to a few things. First, at the top of the options list you can choose to Show or Hide comments. If you choose Hide, you'll make it impossible for anyone to comment on your blog.

3. Secondly, you can make a distinction over who can leave comments, an option just below the previous one. I would advise keeping it on Registered Users but you may wish to be more or less open. Bear in mind that if you leave it completely open to Anyone, it allows for anonymous users to leave comments: this can often facilitate abusive or offensive comments being left.


4. If you are concerned about the potential content of comments, it may be advisable to set up a Comment moderation system. Scrolling further down the Comments options will bring you to the Comment Moderation options. If you select Always, then every time a comment is left, it will be passed by you first. You can moderate these either through your dashboard, or by setting up an email alert, sent to an email address of your choice.


5. If you don't want to go to that extreme, but the occasional unwelcome comment appears, you can also just plain delete them by clicking the Trash Can icon beside the comment when you're signed in.