If you’ve been trying to comment on a WordPress blog and you’ve come across this message:
You must be logged in to comment with that email address.
It appears to be a problem WordPress hosted sites are having at the moment. There is a thread on WordPress about this, but the WP guys themselves haven’t commented or said they’re working on anything.
Personally I suspect it’s not an error, or a problem of any kind, but instead some anti-spam security they’ve enabled to prevent people from spamming websites with comments using certain email addresses.
Anyhow, if you’ve seen this message today or yesterday, or your website’s visitors have reported not being able to comment, this is why.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
what is the solution?
Seems that anyone using an email associated with WordPress does need to log in to comment, but what they’ve neglected to tell people is that it includes Gravatar as well. There’s a thread here: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/problems-commenting
On further investigation it means you do indeed need to log in to WordPress.com with your Gravatar details, which it turn means you can’t paste a website link in the comment field (nice one WordPress).
It’s their way of cutting down comment spam. I suggest using a different email address when commenting on sites hosted on WordPress.com.
Just happened to me, good idea gone wrong in my eyes.