Sunday 11 March 2012

Remove message verification?

Hi everybody, just a quick post to all of you who has been annoyed by Blogger’s recent change in word verification of post messages. You know, those often impossible to read words you have to write, in order to send your message. These words are called captcha and are meant to prevent spam, but they seem to prevent legitimate people from leaving messages too, as sometimes it is just impossible to find out what the words are!

If you have a Blogger blog and want to get rid of your word verification, please read on, because I sat down tonight and decided that I just had to find out how to remove it, and I will let you in on what seems to be a well kept secret by Blogger. First of all, you might not know that your messages require word verification, as I didn’t know until I was told by several of my readers. If you leave messages on your own blog, you are logged in and Blogger kindly let you leave messages on your own blog without demanding word verification. So to check if your Blogger blog now has the dreaded verification you need to visit your blog using a different browser than you normally use, or use a different computer or ask someone else to check for you. If you now have word verification, and want to remove it, here is how to:

Blogger switched to new interface last year, you know the bit where settings and design and template and all that stuff is. And one of the options in settings is Comments. But they didn’t bring everything they had on the old interface regarding Comments; you can no longer answer Yes or No to whether you want word verification. Why?? No idea, but I guess they would want all of us to have it to prevent spam. But you can still access the old interface, and the option to say No to word verification is still there, so all you do is to go back to the old, say No to word verification and then you go back to the new interface after you have saved. So simple when you know how to….but it shouldn’t be necessary to go this round-about way to choose preferences on our own blogs.

Open the overview in the dashboard and click the gear icon in the top right corner to open the menu that has the link to go back to the old interface. Click on the Settings page, then choose Comments. You can disable word verification there, see the screen print (Click picture to see a larger version). Save changes. Go back to Dashboard and return to the new interface with the link near the top that says ‘Try the updated Blogger interface’.

NB! If you can’t see the gear icon: you can't be in draft.blogger.com, you have to be in blogger.com to change between the old and the new interface. Check if you have a box like on this screen print and if it is ticked, un-tick it and re-load the page (Click picture to see a larger version). You should now be able to see the gear icon. Follow the instructions above.

That’s it, no more word verification! A cautionary advice though. Word verification or Captcha is invented for a reason….if you used to have a lot of spam and that’s got a lot better lately, that might be due to the default introduction of word verification. If you remove it, the spam might return. But if you have one spam message every 3 months or so, like me, and don’t really find it taxing to keep on top of it, then go ahead and remove the word verification, you can always put it back on if you find you get loads of spam.

Hope this was useful to you, and now there is no excuse not to leave messages on my blog :-)
Take care!

13 comments:

  1. I don't seem to have the option of going back to the old interface when I click on the gear icon. There's nothing in the list that mentions the word 'interface' at all.

    I know readers have trouble sometimes with the word verification, but on the whole I haven't had many complaints about it. I guess my poor readers will just have to put up with it unless I find another way of removing it.

    Speaking for myself, I don't have much trouble with it. If I can't read it I just keep clicking until I find something I can read!

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  2. Well, I am very happy that you have managed to sort this. I suppose it did make it more difficult for those with eyesight which is not as good as it once was. Also many would find it annoying to keep on looking for a word verification which is readable.

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  3. Helene, thanks for the tips. I can appreciate some of the 'features' that Blogger, give us. I know they queue us to 'check out' new changes - but until something is mandatory, it's easier to skip the important details until it becomes a problem.

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  4. The new word verification things are definitely awful - I can barely read them. I've never had word verification, and I've never had a problem with spam yet, thankfully. (Hoping I won't start getting tons of spam now that I've written that!)

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  5. Glad your have it removed. Now only if the new Blogger would allow WP commenting.

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  6. Helene, You really went after this with a vengeance, and I really appreciate it. You are so nice to write this post explaining to others how to remove that incredibly annoying word verification. I am no longer commenting on blogs that require this because typing in the comment and my information takes long enough.

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  7. Added insult to injury: typing the word verification 3 times to get it 'right' so it is accepted and
    then getting a message that one must be 'approved by the owner'!

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  8. Thanks for all your comments, glad I could be of help to some of you. Bernie: I don’t know why you can’t see the ‘Old Blogger Interface’ option on the gear icon menu, on my blog it is the second bottom choice. If you really wanted to find out about this you could post a question on the Blogger help forum, there are lots of very helpful people there answering questions.

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  9. Hi Helene: Great post! I took word verification off a few weeks back at Jen's (Muddy Boot Dreams) encouragement. I still have comment moderation on, so I'm not getting spam, but people don't have to type in those crazy codes. This is a very helpful post!

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  10. Helene, the second last option when I click the gear symbol is - revert to Blogger profile. Even when I choose this, then the second last option on the gear symbol is - connect to Google +.

    I can't find any way to bring up the option you mention.

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  11. Bernie: I am not sure why you can’t see the ‘Old Blogger Interface’ option on your gear menu, difficult to say why when I am not sat behind your computer :-)
    The only thing I can think of is: are you using an old version of Internet Explorer? If so, try using a different browser, like Mozilla Firefox or Chrome, log in to your blog and see if you can then find the option on the menu. Internet Explorer is not a very ‘Blogger friendly’ browser…alternatively, if you don’t have any other browsers already installed on your own computer, instead of downloading and installing a new browser, try logging into your blog when you are visiting friends, family etc and see if you can do this on your blog via someone else’s computer. Might do the trick, or not, it’s the only thing I can think of. Next step would be the Blogger forum I think.
    Good luck!

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  12. Hey - thanks for that. I find these things very annoying and had no idea that it might be on mine too. Your step-by-step guide worked perfectly - at least I think it did - have to get someone to check from another source!

    Thank - Ian

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  13. Thanks so much for figuring this out for us Helene! I was able to follow your directions very easily, and thankfully got rid of that annoying word verification on my blog.

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