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
Highlighted comments from Make Use Of staff:
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.
Show your gravatar!
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
Tagged: announcements
