Allow Visitors To Post Comments Quickly
Dec 17th, 2009 Posted in Blogging, Internet, Technology, Web Development | 10 comments »One of my major pet peeves is encountering the message “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.” This happens to me on WordPress blogs fairly frequently when I am entering giveaways. As many of my readers know, I use Texter to make posting my entries a snap. With two keystrokes, I am able to enter multiple sentences and html links. This method of entering is similar to the “Quick Comment” buttons on my own comment forms.
I believe that the majority of a visitor’s giveaway entry time should be spent at the sponsor’s website. After thinking through their initial answer, the extra entries should be like a good medicine; quick and effective. Comparing entries to medicine may seem odd at first, but please consider.
There are thousands of blogs offering giveaways. Many giveaways offer 5 or even 10 entries for creating a blog post mentioning the giveaway. Using an application like “Press This” can make a WordPress article take 2 minutes or less (this is a topic I have in my overflowing drafts folder). I want Cakeblast to be more than a tool to gain entries, but when I blogged about the Mommy-Files Leapster Giveaway (now closed), I was testing “Press This” for possible use on a new blog.
Anyway, upon completing an extra entry requirement, we often need to submit entries into the giveaway that say something like “I blogged #1 (url)” followed by “I blogged #2 (url)” etc etc. WordPress, by default, requires 15 seconds between comments to deter spam. For sites that use an effective anti-spam plugin (e.g. WP-Spamfree), this wait is unnecessary.
Furthermore, the wait time is frustrating if we are trying to submit several near-duplicate comments. It is just as frustrating if we use texter, and take less than a second to enter comments such as “I have your button (url).”
WordPress needs a way to lower the required time between comments under Settings/discussion. I found a way to hack into WP’s core files and change the default, but whenever I update my WordPress installation it would likely change itself back. After doing a little bit of searching, I found a plugin that fit my needs. It is called Smart Throttle, and it was developed for the exact opposite purpose of what I am using it for.
Smart Throttle allows WP bloggers to adjust the time-out between comments. The plug-in was created as a means to decrease spam comment flooding, but the required time between comments can be set to anything the user wants! Now Cakeblast visitors only have to wait one second between comment posts! I did a lot of testing and was unable to post comments fast enough to receive the dreaded “Slow Down” message. Setting up the plugin is easy.
First, go to the Smart Throttle website and download the plugin. After downloading the plugin from the Smart Throttle website, install it and activate as you would any other plugin. Next, click on the Smart Throttle link which will be under Settings in your WordPress dashboard. Then you will be confronted with the Scary Massage “Do not edit unless you know what you are doing. We believe our time out break down is well balanced 
.” If you do not have good spam protection, heed this advice. WP-Spamfree stops bots and if a human user were to flood my site with comment spam I would solve the problem by blocking his/her IP.
I set the time-out rate for less than 10 (< 10) comments at 1 second. For a comment rate (> 10) (< 15), I set it for 5 seconds. For ( >14) consecutive comments, I set the rate at the WP default of 15 seconds. I’m using all the symbols because that is the way they are written on the Smart Throttle page. Click Save Changes, and you are finished. If you use this plug-in on your site, please leave a comment and/or a link back to my site.
If you want to test out the speed of this system on my site, please do not do it on this post. Instead, go to one of my current giveaways. After completing the mandatory entry begin fulfilling some of the extra entry requirements without commenting right away. Put my button on your blog, Fan me on Facebook, follow me on blogger & twitter, copy/paste a quick tweet, and subscribe to my RSS feed or by email.
Once you have all of these entry methods fulfilled, use my Quick-Comment (QC) buttons to enter comments as quickly as possible. If you want the link to your blog/website (where I can find your button) to be clickable, highlight the url and click the “link” QC button. Continue down the list as quickly as you can, and you will discover that at Cakeblast, you are allowed to post comments as quickly as your fingers can click a button.
Once you have fulfilled the extra entry requirements, you will have extra entries into all of my giveaways. Unlike many sites, these extra entries will take mere seconds to claim. I want my visitors to spend their time visiting my sponsors and spreading the word about my giveaways; not wasting time between comments until being allowed to post more.
Out of the thousands of blogs hosting giveaways, I appreciate everyone who stops by for a few minutes to enter mine. I’ll always strive to save my readers time while offering the maximum benefit to my readers and sponsors. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
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