Hi everyone.
A quick break from our regularly scheduled programming to share some housekeeping news: We’ve just made a major upgrade to our commenting system.
You know how much we appreciate and value your voices, so this is super important upgrade for us.
Our current system needed to go. After 474,185 comments in the past 15 years it was dated, buggy (reply function was always breaking), and it didn’t have any formatting or editing features. We’ve made a few minor upgrades in the past, but this is the largest by far: A wholesale fresh start! We have heard your cries for help and hopefully this new system answers them.
The new system is very highly regarded and is loaded with features and capabilities (we haven’t turned all of them on yet because we want to roll things out carefully to make sure to avoid hiccups). It’s call wpDiscuz and it’s used by tons of sites all over the web.
Here are just some of the features:
– Editing (for up to 30 minutes after posting, and only if you allow cookies)
– Sorting by newest, oldest, and most voted comments.
– Vote up or down
– Easier to read threads/replies
– URLs (links) automatically linked
– “Read more” on long comments
– Ability for admins to close reply threads (useful when two people won’t stop off-topic arguing)
– Subscribe to all comments or just replies to yours (you don’t have to leave a comment to subscribe to them)
– “Sticky” comments: Admins/authors can promote any comment to the very top.
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And there are many other features that give us more control over how the comment section works and looks in general. We’ll be rolling out and testing new features in the coming days and weeks depending on how things go.
I’m super excited for this! I believe so strongly in having a quality comments section and investing to make them work better is part of our commitment to elevating and amplifying your voices. The better job we do on our end, the better job we expect (and hope!) you to do on yours.
Here’s to many more productive conversations!
Please let us know how this is working and what we can do to make them better. Thanks.
(*Special shout-out to our tech partner Bozz Media for making this happen!)
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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