All right…I asked what changes you’d like to see on this site, and you answered. And then I made some of the changes. Most of these changes involve the way comments work, and they came about by my switching over to Disqus (pronounced “discuss”–I assume there’s some cleverness there, but it escapes me). Disqus is a third-party comment management system, and it makes possible the following:
- Subscribing to comments so you can see follow-ups
- “Liking” a post or comment
- Threaded comments–so you can see who is responding to whom. (Recently a comment said “hahahahaha,” and it wasn’t clear whom the commenter was laughing at/with.)
- Editing or deleting your own comments
- Imbedding a picture (or, I assume, other media) in your comment
A couple of inconveniences that will be minor, I hope:
- The first time you comment with the new system, you’ll have to log in again and tell it what you want to be called. My first attempt or two, it was trying to call me by a no-spaces login name rather than my real name. Now it uses not only my real name, but a short bio (which is embarrassing in its own way). All that to say, it may take a little tweaking to get it to act like you want it to act as regards your online identity.
- Text formatting isn’t available in Disqus. But it doesn’t seem to be very available anywhere else either. As I was looking for a plugin that would allow text formatting in comments, the most promising one had instructions in Cyrillic.
The real selling points of Disqus have to do with social networking features that I don’t yet understand. You can login with your Facebook or Twitter profile, and I think maybe you can share posts you like on Facebook easily. In any case, I like the fact that Disqus accomplishes most of what you were asking for in your earlier comments.
I also flip-flopped “Categories” and “Recent Comments” on the right and added a search box.
I hope you’ll poke around with the new comments and see how they work. Maybe some of you are familiar with Disqus and can give us some tips.
Charles Atkinson
I think you can change that with the “Sort by…” drop down menu at the upper-right of the comment section. “Sort by oldest first” will make it look like it used to.
Jess
Yeah! I changed mine right away. At first it was set at “sort by popular now,” which is not a very logical way to sort it if you ask me. 😉 I like the “like” and the ability to stick pictures in. This whole change is like listening to a new artist for the first time. You have to get used to it before you can really appreciate it. But each day I use it I think I like it better. 🙂
Dan R.
Yeah, when I saw that the RR was down for revamping I thought ‘where’s the part where we can comment on the fact that the site is down and being redone?’ Funny how much we get used to the way things work around these parts.
Fellow Traveler
Oh okay. I thought it might have something to do with all the excitement the other day… for which, as y’all are my witness, I remained pretty much as a spectator!
Fellow Traveler
Oops, that comment got posted twice…drat.
Fellow Traveler
Oh okay. I thought it might have something to do with all the excitement the other day… for which, as y’all are my witness, I remained pretty much as a spectator!
Dan R.
Oops, pretend my other comment is out hereStill getting used to this new system :]
sally apokedak
Can we use html?
Loren
Ah! Thanks Charles and Jess. That worked. I’m feeling more sorted out now!
livingoakheart
(Formerly known as Dryad7)It will take time to get used to some of the changes, but it seems that something you did made the site load much faster!
livingoakheart
I’m not sure if this is me or you, but all of the time signatures–two hours ago, April 29, etc.–are showing up in French. This isn’t a huge problem, I can read French, but it is a little odd.So, Is it my computer or something else?
Jonathan Rogers
I’m seeing some time signatures in Spanish…in the “Recent Comments” column on the right. I don’t know what that’s about. But it should broaden your horizons.
Jess
Well, I saw it in Chinese (or some similarly written language). Take that. 😉