Customizing Your Comments

At the bottom of each post there is a link to leave a comment. This link's wording can be customized to fit your blog's theme, and it's actually pretty simple to do. (Hat tip: Blogger Help article, though I had to do some trial-and-error testing before I figured out what code to replace.)

1. From your Dashboard, click on the Layout link for the blog you wish to edit, or from your blog home page, click on Customize.
2. Both ways take you to the Template tab. Choose Edit HTML.
3. Click the box to Expand Widget Templates.
4. Scroll down until you see the following code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<b:if cond="'data:post.allowComments'">
<a class="'comment-link'" expr : onclick=href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr : onclick="'data:post.addCommentOnclick'"><b:if cond="'data:post.numComments == 1'">1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>
</b:if>


5. Replace the code I emphasized (including the greater and less than signs surrounding it) with the wording of your choice. I chose 'visitor has dropped by' and 'visitors have dropped by'.

Another neat trick I learned today is how to allow visitors to subscribe to the comments so that they do not have to keep visiting to see new comments. My source is the very helpful article by Blogger Buster. I opted to add this in my post footer section instead of at the end of my posts, but I tested it as directed first, and it works just fine that way, too.

I hope this is helpful to you. I'm still trying to figure out if I can add the comment feed directly onto the comment page. No luck as of yet, but if that changes, I will let you know.