Hey everyone,

As you can tell from this post’s title, I’ve switched to a new commenting system for the blog, and I’m hopeful that this will make conversations on the blog a lot more fun to navigate!

Also, this feels timely, since a number of you let me know that the edit button for comments has stopped appearing for you. Not to worry, my friends! This new commenting system has a built-in editing feature, so you’ll be able to edit your comments for up to 15 minutes after posting them, just like the previous one.

The new commenting system is fairly easy to navigate instinctively, but I thought I’d highlight a couple of things, just to make it even easier for everyone.

How to edit your comment

Once you post your comment, you will be able to see a “settings” sort of wheel at the bottom right corner of your comment, when you mouse over it. If you don’t mouse over it, you won’t see it. When you see it upon mousing over it, just click on it, and the “Edit” option will appear.

The default setting for the editing duration is 15 minutes, just like our previous editing feature. 😊

How to add a spoiler tag

As you can see from the above screenshot, our new commenting system comes with a Rich Editor, meaning that you can format your comments much more easily now, woot! 🥳 (Update: I’ve now enabled the Rich Editor for mobile, do let me know if you guys have any issues with using it!)

I thought it would be helpful to explain how to add a spoiler tag, using the new Rich Editor. All you have to do, is type out your spoiler, then highlight it (like you would, if you were selecting some text for other editing options like underlining), then click on the “spoiler” button, which will then automatically add the spoiler formatting for you.

After you click “Post Comment,” your spoiler will be hidden like in the following screenshot, and all anyone needs to do to read it, is to click on it. Pretty neat, yes?

I thought that would be particularly useful for a drama discussion site like ours. 😊

You can now add pictures!

You’ll notice that in the bottom right corner of your Rich Editor, there’s a little picture icon there. All you have to do is to click on it, in order to share a picture with your comment. That’s something we couldn’t do previously, so I’m pretty stoked about that!

Other features

If you need the specific link of any comment, just mouse over the top right of the comment, and you’ll see the “link” icon. Clicking on that will copy the comment’s URL to your clipboard, so that you can easily paste it where you want it, eg, in a new comment.

You can also navigate comments in a couple of new ways. The comments still appear newest first (unless I pin a comment, which I can now do, YESSS!). However, as an option, clicking on the little yellow lightning bolt will take you to the comment with the most reactions (thumbs up &/or thumbs down), and clicking on the orange flame will take you to the hottest comment thread, ie, the comment with the most number of responses. Pretty nifty, yes? 😃

Edited to add:

You can subscribe to new comments on the post, or new replies to your comment, by clicking on the little Subscribe button above the comment box. Edited to add: You do not need to make a comment in order to subscribe to comments. You can just click on that little green button on the right, after selecting what comments you’d like to subscribe to.

Edited AGAIN to add:

1. Following other users

If you are WordPress user, you can now follow other commenters on the blog, ie, you will be alerted when the followed user posts on the blog.

If I wanted to follow Lehar, all I’d need to do is click on that little icon that appears under her profile picture. That will turn the icon orange, which means my follow is successful. To unfollow, just click on that icon again, which will turn it gray, indicating that your unfollow is successful.

2. User mentioning is enabled

What this means is that you can mention / tag other users in your comments using the @nickname method. Previously, this didn’t do anything except add clarity to our comments sections, but now, this will actually trigger an email notification to the mentioned user. Updated to add: You do need to be signed in via one of the sign-in options, in order for the tags to work.

I’m sorry for the multiple edits, guys. I’m learning about this commenting system as I go. 😅 If I find out anything else that’s cool, I’ll update the post again!

Edited AGAIN to add:

Managing your content and settings

You can manage your subscriptions to comments, as well as your follows, and easily find other comments that you’ve made, by clicking on that little person icon next to the number of comments. You will find this directly under the comment box, and before all the comments start.

..And that’s about it!

The rest of the Rich Editor should be fairly easy to navigate. Have fun exploring it, my friends! I hope you enjoy the new tools that are now available to us! ❤️

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments, and we’ll figure it out together!