New Features for Commenters!

New Features for Commenters!

We here at the Skepchick Network love you commenters dearly. Well, most of you. That's why we're pleased to announce a whole bunch of new features that will improve your time here – all these features will be available across all the Skepchick sister sites.

  1. Social Login: You can now use Facebook, OpenID, Twitter, Steam, and a variety of other logins in order to login and comment on the Skepchick Network! Those of you with Skepchick logins will still be able to use them, and you'll benefit from your comment bypassing moderation (provided you have a previously-approved comment). But the new Social Login is a great option for those of you who have held off on commenting because you didn't want to create yet another account.
  2. Subscribe to Comments: You can now choose to receive email updates whenever anyone comments on any particular post, whether or not you've commented! This was a popular feature we used to have on Skepchick that broke during an update. I'm pleased to say that it's back with new features that allow you to manage your subscriptions in a variety of ways. You'll find the subscription option at the end of every post's comments.
  3. WYSIWYG Comment Box: Not good with HTML? No problem! The new WYSIWYG comment box allows you to prettify your comments quickly and easily. And speaking of HTML in comments . . .
  4. Blockquote: It's back! We lost this when we upgraded to our latest look, but we've reinstated it so you can more easily show quotes.
  5. Images in Comments: The WYSIWYG box also has a button that allows you to embed images in your comment! You can't upload them, so you'll have to use Imgur or a similar hosting site if you want to show your own pics, but otherwise it's now super easy to make your point with a pic. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Mad Art Lab commenters use this.

Enjoy the new features, and please let us know if you have any trouble with any of them!

Featured image of a baby tree kangaroo via here.

Rebecca leads a team of skeptical female activists at Skepchick.org and appears on the weekly Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. She travels around the world delivering entertaining talks on science, atheism, feminism, and skepticism. There is currently an asteroid orbiting the sun with her name on it. You can follow her every fascinating move on Twitter: @rebeccawatson.

55 Comments

  1. davew  /  March 12, 2012, 12:42 pm

    Yay!

  2. captaintripps  /  March 12, 2012, 12:42 pm

    *hearty applause*
    I assume this is going to make social sharing even easier?
    What service did you use to implement the social login functionality?

    • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 12:45 pm

      We're using OneAll.com, which I cannot recommend enough. It was the easiest, most helpful plugin I've ever used!

      I took the social sharing buttons down awhile ago because people seemed to not like them. I've been considering reinstating them, though, particularly if people were quietly enjoying using them…

      • captaintripps  /  March 12, 2012, 1:08 pm

         
        I'll have to check that one out. We recently implemented one called Janrain and will probably enable a comment system using Livefyre. 
        Personally I would love the social sharing functionality to be back. Y'know, because I'm SO lazy I can't copy and paste into a new tab. 
        Also, I would love it if you could use their social link plugin at some point so I could hook up my Facebook and twitterz to this account.

        We're using OneAll.com, which I cannot recommend enough. It was the easiest, most helpful plugin I've ever used!
        I took the social sharing buttons down awhile ago because people seemed to not like them. I've been considering reinstating them, though, particularly if people were quietly enjoying using them…

         

  3. Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 12:44 pm

    And here's a sample comment showing you that it works! I hope.

    This is a blockquote.

    And this is an image:

    • marilove  /  March 12, 2012, 2:07 pm

      The blockquote just show as a paragraph (no indentations or anything) for me…  Is it showing different for anyone else?

      <blockquote>Testing blockquote with an actual paragraph.  Lalalala!  It's Monday.  The weekend went by too quickly.  I had Mexican food for dinner last night.  And Frozen Yogurt for desert.  I am craving sushi.  Lalalala testing done.</blockquote>

      • marilove  /  March 12, 2012, 2:08 pm

        Ooooh so I can't use actual tags.  Bah!  Let's try this again:

        Testing blockquote with an actual paragraph.  Lalalala!  It's Monday.  The weekend went by too quickly.  I had Mexican food for dinner last night.  And Frozen Yogurt for desert.  I am craving sushi.  Lalalala testing done.

         

        • marilove  /  March 12, 2012, 2:08 pm

          Yeah, it just shows as a normal paragraph; no indentation or anything…

          • marilove  /  March 12, 2012, 2:11 pm

            It's fixed now!!! :)

          • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 2:14 pm

            Hooray!

    • tayla  /  March 12, 2012, 4:48 pm

      awwww and its not even Friday

  4. Bjornar  /  March 12, 2012, 12:44 pm

    Neat, neat, neat

    neat

    Except if I want just one word bold and try to turn bold off, the cursor jumps to the start. But I can always apply markup after I've written a bit… 
    Bau

    • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 12:49 pm

      Testing the bold issue mentioned …. hmm, that's weird. It allows me to continue typing for a bit and then jumps back to the bolded word. That is very odd. It seems to jump back only when I use backspace the first time after using the markup.

      Apologies for the random bolding as I test this out. Thanks for the heads up! I'll try to find a fix.

  5. benjaminsa  /  March 12, 2012, 1:01 pm

    This is great, thanks : D hope it is easy enough to moderate, and approving comments won't be a pain. Image is Nemesis // by Sam Nielson.

    • benjaminsa  /  March 12, 2012, 1:03 pm

      the bold on great, didn't work for me,

      • benjaminsa  /  March 12, 2012, 1:05 pm

        Yeah still not working (this is all in bold).  Feel free to delet all of this.

        • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 1:06 pm

          You're right, I'm having trouble getting bold to work as well. Troubleshooting time!

  6. Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 1:05 pm

    This is a test of bold.

    This is a test of italics

  7. Brian G  /  March 12, 2012, 1:11 pm

    This is a test of bold
    This is a test of my cooking skils
     
    EAT THEM PANCAKES

    • Siveambrai  /  March 12, 2012, 2:05 pm

      *squee* That had to be some of the cutest pancakes ever. Although it would make me feel really bad about eating them.

  8. Brian G  /  March 12, 2012, 1:13 pm

    Well the bold didn't work, but the pancakes sure did!

  9. vexorian  /  March 12, 2012, 1:20 pm

    Openid login does not work, at least not with myopenid.com. This is what I get:
     
    If you use OpenID delegation, please make sure your delegation information is set to <a href="https://www.myopenid.com/help#own_domain">these values</a>.
     
     

    • benjaminsa  /  March 12, 2012, 1:45 pm

      I got that error for my openid on a different site, so that may not be skepchick specific.

      • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 1:55 pm

        Hmm. There's nothing I can do on my end to fix that, as far as I can tell, but I'll let AllOne know in case it's something they can fix.

      • vexorian  /  March 12, 2012, 4:21 pm

        Then I guess it is an All Login thing. Further sabootaging the internet into getting centralized and controlled by our benevolent facebook and google overlords.

        • rebecca1  /  March 12, 2012, 5:28 pm

          FTR, I've just logged in via my own OpenID (using Vidoop) and it works perfectly.

  10. Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 1:49 pm

    I've fixed the problem with bold text not showing up!

    boooooooooooooold

    • Jacob V  /  March 12, 2012, 3:18 pm

      Mmmmm, or not. But anyway the changes are very appriciated!

      • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 3:21 pm

        Does it not work for you? It's showing up just fine for me on Chrome for Mac.

        • JimB  /  March 12, 2012, 6:19 pm

          I don't see some of the markup in Firefox 10.0.2.
          Don't see bold. And blockquote just makes a seperate paragraph.
          Viewed this page in IE8. Bold and blockquote show.
          And this is on WinXP.

        • Jacob V  /  March 12, 2012, 6:36 pm

          Hmm, couldn’t see the bold when using Firefox on my laptop but it’s all working now that I'm at my work computer.    

        • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 6:53 pm

          OK, thanks for the feedback, you guys! I didn't think to test on Firefox. I'll try to figure that out this week.

  11. Paula G V aka Yukimi  /  March 12, 2012, 2:27 pm

    Great ^__^

  12. punchdrunk  /  March 12, 2012, 2:41 pm

  13. punchdrunk  /  March 12, 2012, 2:53 pm

  14. Jim Baerg  /  March 12, 2012, 3:01 pm

    You've got at least one person who didn't want yet another password to keep track of. I'll probably have comments on Skepchick in the future. 

  15. punchdrunk  /  March 12, 2012, 3:07 pm

  16. Rei Malebario  /  March 12, 2012, 3:21 pm

    Yay!

  17. Rei Malebario  /  March 12, 2012, 3:23 pm

    And I now see it looks as if he's flipping the bird. He isn't. If you look closely, that's his index finger, not his middle finger.

  18. mrmisconception  /  March 12, 2012, 3:34 pm

    I have a ancient computer setup here at work so it is not working.

    Let’s see if the spacing will work at least.

  19. Rei Malebario  /  March 12, 2012, 3:37 pm

    If typing HTML is something that I'm actually pretty familiar with as a result of spending much of my time at work doing precisely that, will that still work <em>I wonder</em>. <strong>We shall soon learn! </strong>

    • Rebecca Watson  /  March 12, 2012, 3:47 pm

      Sadly no, but I'll look into a way to allow an option for people to handwrite their HTML.

  20. lunascottage  /  March 12, 2012, 3:41 pm

    New to here and I love wysiwyg. We used to be on Vox (before it went under) and it was SO user friendly and aesthetically pleasing as well. Kudos.

  21. Blotzphoto  /  March 12, 2012, 5:17 pm

    Yay! I love FB logins, it improves the quality of the ads that follow me around the internet! Completely worth the lack of privacy!
    also

    Here's a bullfrog.
     

  22. lactosefermenter  /  March 12, 2012, 6:33 pm

    • lactosefermenter  /  March 12, 2012, 6:37 pm

      Pardon the test.   My computer skills aren't great so I wanna know what I'm doing before the posts count.   These are my dogs, Alex (right) and Elsie (left).

  23. seraphymc  /  March 12, 2012, 9:06 pm

    Wow, the steam login works! Nice inclusion!

  24. OpenIDUser  /  March 13, 2012, 2:03 am

    Sweet! I have to Skepchick Network account but I'm usually too lazy to log-in and comment.

  25. dizzi90  /  March 13, 2012, 3:57 am

    Sweet stuff. I love using my Google ID.

  26. pieceofme  /  March 13, 2012, 4:16 am

    It's nice! it's in french (which is good, I am French)
     
     

  27. Otoki  /  March 13, 2012, 12:36 pm

    Things.  Also stuff.

    LALALALALALALALALALALALA


     

    • Otoki  /  March 13, 2012, 12:37 pm

      Yeah this is fucking sweetness.

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