Whatcha Say — Commenting 2.0

Idolator Staff | May 3, 2010 5:30 pm

Hey guys,

We’re excited to introduce an awesome — and way overdue — improvement to our commenting system. But before we get to the details, we just want to say thank you for coming to Idolator every day. Thank you for making this place as fun as it is. We’re honored to be able to produce this site for you, and to join you in bushwhacking through the weird and wondrous world of pop.

So, here it is: You have been coming up with some truly amazing insights into the news (check @Maria and @Lovely in the Christina/Gaga thread here or @Callie in the Ke$ha thread here for some of our recent favorites). That’s why we’ve taken some big steps to change — and, we believe, improve — our commenting system. PLEASE READ the details below:

Here are some of the new/improved features you’ll see:

* Threaded replies. You can now reply to specific comments. Replies will appear underneath their parent comment, indented. You can even reply to a reply. * Avatars. Quickly and easily customize your avatar by using Gravatar or uploading an image directly to your profile. (You must be a registered user — so why not get to it?) * Images in comments. To embed images in comments, simply paste in the URL of an existing image (it must be freely accessible by a Web browser). For example, you can upload an image to Flickr and put the URL of the image (not the Web page it’s on!) into a comment. (If this still sounds tricky, see the step-by-step instructions below). * Ratings of comments. Like a comment? Give it a thumbs up! Hate a comment? Give it a thumbs down. * Profile page enhancements. Track the comments any poster has made on Idolator.com (including yourself) on that user’s Profile page. * Register/Comment using Facebook Connect. Use your Facebook account to register, log in, and comment – we’ll import your Facebook Name, profile picture, etc (with your permission of course.) Just a couple other things to keep in mind: * You may still comment without registering or creating a profile, but you’ll need to enter in a valid email address and name. * All existing comments will be preserved. * If you subscribe to the Idolator RSS, you shouldn’t have to change a thing. Here’s a step-by-step how-to on embedding images in comments: To get an image to display in comments, you need to link directly to an existing image somewhere on the Interwebs – not to a Web page. This typically means you’ve uploaded the image to either an image hosting service such as PhotoBucket or Flickr, or even to your own Web site. You can also find images on Google Images or other Web sites, put please try to refrain from posting copyrighted images. The image must be one of the three most common formats, and the URL will therefore end with one of these extensions: .jpg .gif .png So, for example, if you want to embed the Idolator heart image that appear at the top of this page in a comment, you would simply paste in this URL on its own line: //idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/idolator_heart.jpg

You would NOT want to paste in the URL of the Web page, though: //idolator.com/5495352/whatcha-say-%E2%80%94%C2%A0commenting-2-0 You can typically find out the URL of an image by doing the following: IE: Right-click the image, then click Properties to view the Address of the image. Firefox: Right-click the image, then click View Image Info. Chrome: Right-click the image, then click Copy Image URL. Thanks, and happy embedding. Let us know if you have any questions! Go ahead—give the new commenting system a whirl, and send any feedback or problems to contact@idolator.com. Thanks again, The Idolator Team

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