How To Save Time Commenting On Blogs

By jeffcBlog Comments

One thing I enjoy doing when I browse through the hundreds of news items in my feed reader is commenting on blog posts. However, entering my name, url, and email address each time I want to do so becomes a pain. Taking a page out of a spammers book, I have solved this dilemma by using a Firefox extension known as Autofill Forms. This extension has more features than I know what to do with but I’ll explain how to simplify things down so that you can use this time saving extension to comment on blogs.

Once you install the extension, a default profile will be generated for you. I recommend creating a new profile and call it BlogCommenting. This profile will only contain the rules necessary to comment on blogs. Typically, the fields used on many of the blogging sites across the web are labeled Name, Email, and URL. As you can see from the following screenshot, I already have these fields configured so that when I press Alt-J which is the Autofill Forms keyboard shortcut, it automatically fills in those fields with these configured values.

To add field rules to your profile, check out the How To Add A Specific Field Rule Form Field wiki page for detailed instructions. Once this plugin is configured, blog commenting is as simple as pressing Alt-J on the keyboard and then typing out my comment. I have to mention the fact that this process does not work for every commenting form that is available. For instance, this extension has no effect on the fields presented in Disqus or third party commenting systems. For most everything else though, this extension ends up saving me a ton of time over the course of a year. Combine this with the fact that you can add as many form field rules as you want and you have yourself a real winner here.

This article is an entry for the Perfcast Blogging Challenge as mentioned in episode 5. To have your entry viewed by David and I, leave a comment with a link to your entry on the Perfcast episode 5 blog post. You may be the entry we review on the next episode.

15 thoughts on “How To Save Time Commenting On Blogs”

  1. I frequently use “autofill forms” extension on Mozilla. I have created many profiles which save my lots of time while entering any sort of data not even for comment for other form fields also like address, phone no. etc.

    Thanks for sharing your experience with Autofill form. I also loved a lot…

  3. This ad-on Idea is great. But its not very useful as it fills wrong information at wrong place. I believe Autofilling from Google Tool Bar is better than it.

  6. Thanks for this tip. It looks very simple but if we count all the time we took to fill up the info into comments it will start to appear as significant.

    I didn’t even realize that such a tool was available or useful. Now I see it.

  7. I use an ‘identity’ profile in 1Password to fill in the fields, but only because I use the software anyway.

    As long as it solves the problem, a free solution is always better than a $40 solution!

    1. I use auto fill form extension in Firefox, it save lots of time especially when you are working on many projects on a single browser.

  8. I tried using this, but it still seems to be 2 right clicks and select to choose which form field should be filled in, say for username and email

  9. Right, I know plenty of people who use Roboform for this same exact purpose. But I don’t own Roboform and this extension just seems to work for me. As for Disqus, it’s great if the blogs you are always browsing are the ones who use the service. When you look at the big picture and how many blogs are out on the web, 30,000 blogs using Disqus doesn’t seem that many.

    1. Mostly I used double click to fill the form. It is very easy to use. But sometimes double click leads to open popads in the new tab. So now I will try keyboard shortcut. Thanks for the trick sharing with us

  10. I use Roboform for the same purpose.

    BTW, I like DISQUS better – if you have an account, you’re always logged in on any disqus powered blog.

    No need to autofill anything

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