Please let me interact with your blog post!
3 min read
I love my RSS reader. It's the first thing I reach for when I'm "catching up." As I'm reading through my list of feed items, I often come across blog posts that do not give me any way to interact with the post!
Here are some options in the order of my own preferences.
Webmentions #
The gold standard is webmentions (opens in a new tab). If I can send your site an interaction, directly from my site, that's the best option. I rolled my own self-hosted RSS reader, based on the look and feel of Feedbin, but I built in the ability to send a webmention like (opens in a new tab) or comment (opens in a new tab).
If you look up in the upper right corner, you can see BurgeonLab does support webmentions, so I can click the like or reply buttons directly from here, and that sends the webmention. This is one of my favorite features on my reader.
Reply email link directly in feed #
Ok, so not everyone wants to mess with implementing webmentions. It's fiddly and kind of hard to understand, so I get it, but I see several people putting the Reply email link directly in their RSS feed item. That's also really cool and convenient!
Kev Quirk (opens in a new tab) does this perfectly. If you can't support webmentions, then this is a very close 2nd!
Reply email link at the bottom of your post #
Ok, so not as great as webmentions or links in the feed item, but still not too hard to reach for if I really want to send some feedback. I personally prefer an email over a comments form, but I'll take either.
I've seen many implementations of this, but it's basically just a mailto link that prepends Re: to the post title.
Social media links to the blog post #
People, myself included, syndicate their blog posts to social media like Mastodon, where discussions can happen. Replying via email or replying to the Mastodon post are both OK in my mind.
Contact page or form #
Bleh. My least favorite way. You're really making me work for it now. I have to click through from my RSS reader to your website and then to your contact page/form?! No. Why do you hate feedback, bro?!
Or don't do any of these things! Everyone can blog however they like, so if you don't like what I'm suggesting, well then just ignore it and keep it moving. Or click the conveniently located reply email link to tell me I'm full of crap... or send me a webmention!
Also on Mastodon (opens in a new tab) Bluesky (opens in a new tab)
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