Meta Stuff

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 Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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55 Comments

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

    1. 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…

      1.  
        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…

         

    1. 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>

      1. 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.

         

  2. 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

    1. 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.

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

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

      1. 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.

        1. 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.

        2. 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.    

  3. 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. 

  4. 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.

  5. 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>

  6. 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.

  7. 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.
     

    1. 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).

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