Well, I finally got my blog all set up and working now... I'm Using WordPress, and I happen to love it. Its really flexible and easy to use, one of the best systems I've seen.
There are a few articles on the blog so far, but not that many yet.

I'd have to say that the best article on their so far is the 'Go bake a cake...' one.... so if you want to check it out, click here

Also, which is better: should users have to register to make coments, or should I open it up for all?

better to make restrictions (like registering before making comments, and/or moderate comments) just to have some control on spam via the comments form. when no restriction is in place, your blog will be overrun by spammers sooner or later. i would suppose you would want only relevant comments to appear on your blog, and minimize on spam.

well I don't really require my readers to register just so they can comment on my blog, especially if my blog is just newly launched. however, new comments are moderated so I could check it personally (once a comment of theirs is approved, they could comment in my blog using the same name and email address, minus the moderation). spams are filtered using akimset so I don't really have any problems with that. my only concern are the readers that put "anonymous" as their names. so far I haven't encountered such, and thank goodness for that.

oh and congrats on your blog.

Thank you for the input!

haha.... my blog is the only thing on google for my website.... I can never seem to get my main site on google when I submit..... :\

If possible, make it so that anyone can comment, but you have to approve the comment first.


Nice blog by the way.

Thank you alot for the idea Liam_CF... that makes alot of sense, and I made that change.... yaya! now its way easier to comment

good job. nice blog. i want to add to the comment thing that you changes. leave it so it states how many comments were posted, but include the words"post a comment" or something in the link text so it's more user friendly. some people wont realize that they can post a comment the way it's set up. just makes it more user friendly for those who wouldn't know any better.

also, in your original post were you gave us your link....don't put "click here" where you are advertising. put a one liner and include 1 or two keywords". do this whenever you can post your link in html. this is just fyoi in search engine optimization to help you get your site more easily visable.

again, nice blog. i read it all

Yes I already wanted to suggest this to you but I don't know why I haven't send you pm. OK this is how it is. You should disable people need to register in order to leave comment because much less people will register however you may leave option so that they may register. This way more people will leave you feedback and if you recieve some users that is readers that are comming from some other site and are probably reading only one story then you should really have obligatory register disabled.

And one more suggestion. This default skin is nice and everything but you should find or make if you know some skin for yourself this will make it certainly more appealing and in fact more personal.

Good luck to your blog. I am reading it

Regards from,
Zedsi

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Edit:

I forgot to mention that you should also disable manual comment control. If you see that some comment is spam you can delete it but instead you should also install Askimet plug in it is great plug in and it will delete most of the spamish comments.

This post has been edited by hitmanblood: Dec 17 2007, 11:07 PM

Alright I think i took most of your advice... so yeah... enjoy the new template....