you are right, people dont have the option without a steem account to leave a comment and I have removed the old comments section completely. Actually I removed it well before I introduced steem comments because I was getting to much spam. lol having to sign up for steem seems to be a deterant for spammers on my blog anyways. However I also changed the format of my blog. before it was just an educational post with no real reason to interact. Now on each post I add an activity with data for people to copy and I put in some questions for people to answer and then the following week I update the blog post with a video tutorial working though the practice activity. Its all still really new and I see people are click to sign up with steem. When I do the harder launch, fingers crossed it will work out.

Lol I get you about the topic, javascript and PHP mess with my head too. its not for everyone and I guess thats why my email list is successful, people don't sign up to it unless they really want the content.