James Bow

Some Comments About Comments

| Disqus Comments

First of all, I’d like to thank you all for your very kind words when we moved Dr. Dawg from his Blogspot, er, spot to his new home. The change has been more difficult than expected, and there’s still more work to come, but it’s good to know that the work done so far has been appreciated. If you encounter any problems, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Just be warned that I might not be able to get to them right away.

I’ve been looking into the matter of commenting. Some users have been having difficulty getting their comments in promptly, in spite of signing in using one of the available methods. I’m trying to see what I can tweak. I’ve also found that there is some confusion on how to sign up for a Movable Type account on Dawg’s servers, on account of the process being somewhat less than intuitive. I’ve created a test user on this site, and these were the steps I took.

  1. Just under the “Leave a Comment” header, click on the link “Sign In to comment”. This will take you to the login page. There you can log in using one of a variety of methods; just select the one you want in the drop-down menu.

  2. If you want to create an account for yourself on this site, using Movable Type, ignore the drop-down menu and click “Not a member? Sign up” on the lower-right hand corner of the box. This will take you to the sign-up screen.

  3. On the Sign Up screen enter in your desired information:

    Username: an easy-to-remember User ID that you will use to sign in.

    Display Name: How you want to appear in your comment header. So “Jane Doe” instead of “janedoe1”

    E-mail Address: a valid e-mail address where we can reach you at. Your e-mail addresses will never be shown publicly or sold. At all.

    Initial Password: a password that you can remember.

    Password Confirm: enter the above again so you can be sure you got it right.

    Web site URL: Do you have a web site? Do you want your name to link back to it? Enter it here. Or not, as you prefer.

    Now click “Sign up”

  4. You’ll then be sent to the “Profile Created” screen, which will tell you that a verification e-mail has been sent to the address you gave. You have to follow the instructions on that e-mail to be able to log into your account.

  5. Clicking on “Return to the Original Page” takes you back to the page that you signed in on. The catch is, you have to sign in again, by clicking on the “Sign in” link under “leave a comment”

  6. In the Sign in screen, make sure “Movable Type” is selected in the menu drop box. Enter in your chosen userID and password and enter. You’ll be returned to the page you want to comment on, all signed in to comment. From there, your comments should speed through the comment queue without moderation.

I have noticed that some OpenID users have had their display names munged. I am looking into the matter and will report back when I have an answer.

I further like to point out that the system considers an individual’s Movable Type, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and et cetera accounts to be separate accounts, and so will require Dawg or I to “trust” your first comments from each of these accounts again and again before they speed through the queue.

I expect there will be a bit more of a period of adjustment, but I’m confident that the edges will get smoothed off before long.

P.S. Because Dr. Dawg and I are sharing the same servers and the same Movable Type installation, one side-effect of registering to comment on Dawg’s Movable Type site is that you also become able to comment without queuing on my own site, though I’d probably have to approve your first comment before unfettered access was granted.

(Update: 9:35 p.m.): The OpenID system of Google and Yahoo seems to be messing up with Movable Type somehow (or vice versa), so that your display name doesn’t appear properly when you login using these accounts. With Yahoo, I’ve been able to recreate this issue. With Google, I can’t, which tells me that the latter is intermittent, and therefore more frustrating. I’ll research and get back to you.

I know this is annoying, but before you write in your comment, have a look at the line of text above, which should say “Thanks for signing in, yournamehere”. That “yournamehere” will be how your chosen display name will display. If you’re seeing a long URL, then something is wrong, and you should try commenting using a different commenting service. Twitter seems to work well.

(Update: 10:07 p.m.): A question to those who have had problems with logging in using their Google ID: under your profile (go to Google.com, log in, click “settings > Google Account settings”, then click “Edit Profile”, do you have your first name, last name and nickname filled in? What is the URL of your public profile (found at the bottom of the page)?

Return to the home page

blog comments powered by Disqus

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by James Bow published on November 24, 2010 8:19 PM.

Manchurian North Korean candidate, 2012? was the previous entry in this blog.

"You think I know f*ck nothing? I know f*ck ALL!" is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Powered by Movable Type 6.3.6