New Comments

We had to go to a new comment system on my blog, because of the glitch that didn’t allow them. If you’re like me, you don’t adjust quickly to changes. But Austin Evick, from our IT department, has very kindly written detailed directions (with pictures!) for us all. Here you go:

Although many of you have already gotten used to our new comment system; some of you are still a little confused on some of the new features so I’ve compiled a little how-to on how to use disqus (our new comment system). If you need to see a bigger version of the picture, just click it.

1. This is where the magic happens–where you write the comment.

2. Login button. This will take you to a dialog where you can login with a number of different login providers. We’ll get to this later.

3. People button…not quite sure what this is really called. It takes you to the community box where it shows you all kinds of cools stuff about all the comments on the blog and all the people commenting.

4. Disqus button. This takes you to your accounts dashboard where you can see all the comments that you have made.

5. This drop down list allows you to sort the comments by either the most popular or by the most recent.

6. This is a comment in case you couldn’t tell.

7. This is a reply to the comment (see point 6).

8. This is where you can like or dislike (yes, we finally have a dislike button) a story.

9. If you want, you can get email updates whenever someone comments by clicking this button.

10. Click this button to reply to someone comment (but keep it nice).

Logging in

1. A list of login providers. If you have any one of these services you can use it to login and comment.

2. If you don’t have any of these services (or don’t wan’t to comment with it) you can create a discus profile instead.

3. This is where you  enter your email/username and password (make sure you have clicked your login provider)

4. Click this to login.

1. If you logged in with Google, Twitter,

Facebook, or Yahoo, you need to click this button to OK the login. Another window will popup asking if you want to login with your account.

Adding a comment

1. This is the are where you will write out your comment.

2. If you want to include a picture you can click this button and upload a pic from your computer. Be warned, though, that it has to be OK’d by an admin before it will show up.

3. Click one of these buttons if you want your comment to also be shared on your Facebook page or Twitter feed.

4. When you’re all done click this to post. Be warned though, if it has a picture of a link it will not show up till an admin allows it.

Your profile

1. You name…kinda ovious

2. The number of comments you have made (this does not include replies).

3. The login providers you link to.

4.The different websites you have commented on (notice how fredericksburg.com and the blogs are considered separate)

Your activities

This lists all of the comments you have made and the  stories you made them on.

The community

This shows a snapshot of the comment activity on the blog.

1. The name of the blog.

2.The total number of comments.

3.The total number of likes.

4. The total number of people commenting

5. The most active commenters

6.The most liked commenters

7. New commenters

Advanced

1. One of the cool things about discus is that you can comment with html. This might be too advanced for some of you (you know who you are)  but I’ll go ahead and discuss it anyway. You can use <strong>,<strike>,<cite>,<blockquote>,<b>,<br>,<hr>,<i> and <q>. For example, say you want to bold a word like grapefruit, you would type <strong>grapefruit</strong>. Notice the second strong with the slash. This tells the browser to stop making the text bold.  Here is a quick list of what you can do:

strong =  This will make the text bold. You can also use <b>… They are basically the same thing (yes, there is a difference between the two but that is beyond the scopre of this how-to).<strong>Hi…I’m Bold</strong>

strike = strikethrough text. This will put a line through the text.<strike>strikethrough!</strike>

cite = a citation. Exactly as it sounds. If you cite a source, you can use this tag to format the citation (because I know that you all properly cite your sources).<cite>citation</cite>

blockquote = a long quote. Use this if you have a quote that spans multiple lines. <blockquote>I’m too lazy to write a long quote</blockquote>

hr = horizontal line. This creates a horizontal line above the tag. To use it just put <hr>. That’s it, you don’t need a </hr> for this one.

i = italics. Need I say more?<i>Hi…I’m in italics!</i>

q = short quote. Use if you have a quote that’s just one line.<q>Hi…I’m a short quote!</q>

This is what everything should look like if you did it right.

Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/spotsygovt/2011/09/26/new-comments/