A reader who logged in using their reader account can leave a named comment — a comment with that reader's named attached to it. An example of a named comment is shown below:

If the reader provided a URL when filling out the user information for his or her account, the name attached to the comment is linked to that URL, as shown in the example below:

A reader who has not logged in is not known to the system and is therefore anonymous. Comments left by these readers are marked Anonymous and appear on the blog when viewed from the web as shown below:

Alternatively, an anonymous Reader can enter contact information on the comments form in one or more of three optional fields:

       o Name

       o Website

       o Email (Information is not visible on the blog)

If information is provided, the comment display on the blog shows the commenter's name (in italics) and website. Inside the Publisher Control Panel, comments from anonymous Readers are displayed followed by the phrase “(commenter only)” to distinguish them from authenticated users.

If anonymous comments are allowed, the system will try to ensure that only people are 'writing' to your blog by displaying a captcha ("completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart"). The captcha has a grey hatched background with black lettering. The following message “Type what you see on screen in the field below" is displayed above the input validation field for the captcha. Users can enter their response in uppercase or lowercase.

This is also true for two other pre-conditions; when it is a trial blog and if the Publisher has enabled it for all comments.

A reader who has logged in also has the option of leaving an anonymous comment, by clicking the Post anonymously checkbox when entering a comment:

For details concerning how to enable or disable anonymous comments, see the Spam Protection Settings section of the Setting Blog Publishing Defaults chapter.