For quite a while now, Aibek and I have been discussing how to turn Make Use Of into a better site for our readers and one of the areas we’ve been looking at is the comments area. Our long-time readers will know that the comments area has been a bit on the plain side (a bit Web 1.0-ish) so we decided to spiff it up a bit, give it a bit of colour. This is the Wordpress platform after all so why not see what we can do to make Make Use Of a little bit better?
So starting today here are the two initial things that Wez has done
All comments from Make Use Of staff will now have light blue backgrounds. This will enable you to pick out which comments are from us and which comments are from other readers. This is helpful if you’re waiting on a response from the article writer and the article is getting lots of other comments coming in. Having the article writer’s comments highlighted in blue will help you find your answers easier and quicker.
If you have a gravatar at Gravatar.com then it will now appear next to all of your Make Use Of comments! If you don’t have a gravatar then I highly recommend you get one as a huge number of websites now support them. From then on, all your comments will be personalised with your photo, your icon, your cartoon figure, whatever. Put some personality and colour into your Make Use Of comments!
Until you upload a gravatar, your comments will be accompanied by a default image of a stick figure (just in case you’re wondering where he came from!). Say hello to Sticky!
We are looking at some other features such as Digg-style voting buttons but that will be in the future (if at all). We’re rolling things out slowly and testing a few things internally before seeing if they should be on the site.
What do you think of the new features? What would you like to see on the site? Do you have any suggestions for us? Let us know in your new look comments! Oh and don’t forget your gravatar!
(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net
(By) Mark O'Neill is a freelance blogger and professional writer. He is also the managing and publishing editor of MakeUseOf. Check out his personal blog at Better Than Therapy
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Filed Under: Annoucements
Tags: announcements
Good job guyz, comments look a lot better now
Woo, this is exciting!
Comments system looks the same from this end. I wonder whether my Gravatar will appear.
(Nope, no custom Gravatar — maybe it just needs some time)
I can see it - it’s possible you may need to clear your cache and restart your browser for the changes to take effect. That’s what I had to do.
Yup, I see it now. I guess it just needed a little time.
Nice to meet you Gandalf! LOL!
Just havin’ a little Gravatar / FaceinHole fun
Testing …
Looks great! … off to get a gravatar
Love it! Thanks to whoever suggested this initially.
Much better…Thanks!
You know, the gravatars do not disappear when a comment is minimized. It looks a little strange.
This is neat. Good job Wez!
Looks great!
Just added my gravatar…will it appear? Let’s see! Neato…
Grr… I still need an Gravatar/general avatar, but this new system is pretty neat.
let me try~~~
I love it! Looks really good & it’s easier to differentiate between staff & reader comments. Nice!