Welcome to the new BMG! Take a few moments to poke around, see what’s where. If you’re a registered member, you may well have to log in. I strongly recommend taking this opportunity to update your password to something long and secure. (Macs will suggest and remember passwords for you, too.)
I think you will find that the new site provides a much nicer, more readable mobile experience.
You will very likely find some dead links, some things that don’t quite work, and so forth. Please let us know — some we are aware of, some not, and in any event we are still getting to know the new site as well.
Anyway, enjoy and let us know how it’s working for you.
Please share widely!
So comment subjects are no longer required? Interesting.
Did David and Bob have to sacrifice themselves to save the site? (No disrespect to Charlie and Hester, but I would like David’s legal heft on pending Supreme Court matters, and of course Bob’s humor.)
The navigation is MUCH better. Thank you.
Looks good! Finally the weird “close” button that consistently appeared in the middle of the screen is gone! It won’t be missed.
I seem unable to login using Chrome (v 58.0.3029.81). This works fine while I’m in Firefox.
Similar issue with me. But looks and works well now!
I just wanted to see how well nesting comments works 🙂
Seems like it works OK.
Where does it stop though….
(testing tags blockquote and where the indent/nesting stops…
Looking good!
The new front page layout is nice. Very clean and readable.
I’m not seeing several options we used to have, so I’ll point them out here and you can say if they are pending or if they definitively been dropped as features.
*new* — that is to say, differentiation of what’s new from what was already seen. That was a *key* feature of previous versions as it aided in efficiently following conversations.
User comments — I’ve developed the habit of sometimes going directly to a users comments page, bypassing the front page, to see what they have posted. For instance, if I want to know what Charley last posted, or Sabutai or any of the others I might go directly to their most recent comments and pic up the conversation from there. It doesn’t look like I can do that here… or I’m not seeing how to do that. Sometimes, also, I’d go to my comment page to see if any replies (this is particularly important if nesting/indenting is going to stop after the third or fourth indent/nest… if traffic is high on a particular diary, with the nesting stopped at that level, and some people not in the habit of blockquoting, it’s difficult to know where the replies are directed. Although, I just noticed the ‘notify me of followup comments via e-mail” and so maybe that’s the answer.
I also don’t see ratings knobs for individual comments. I see thumbs up/down for diaries.
I am seeing things that just say “Advertisement” or “blogads” but without any ads. I’m a subscriber so I don’t expect to see ads (and I don’t) but I wanted to know if I can expect to see the word ‘advertisement’ here and there…
That’s my first pass…
Thanks petr. Yeah, the subscriber function, we’re going to look at very soon. That was a custom bit of software on the old site. WordPress has tons of plugins for this very purpose, so it shouldn’t be impossible.
Comment rating is also a nice thing — again, there are off-the-shelf plugins that we may install in the relatively near future. The “new” comment thing may well be a part of that.
Suggestions from the informed hive-mind always welcome!
Nice work – thanks.
Can I open the suggestion box? Here’s one: Comment headers take too much space. The old comment interface was more compressed, and it was easier to read nested comments, also easier to scroll down page. Old comment interface also displayed with a different color the already-read comments. That really helped with the conversation flow.
It appears we can now like/dislike posts, but not rate comments? Can the latter be reinstated? Also, no more titles to comments it looks like?
I posted before reading other comments so forgive the duplication.
Welcome back everybody and thanks for the help in exploring the new site!
Linking in comments doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. Or bolding, underlining or italicizing text.
Based on what petr has above, testing if embedded HTML tags work (petr will be bolded and HTML italicized if those work.
Above, seeing if I can quote the text from jconway
Yep, that works. Good for those of us who know HTML. Not so good for others.
Here’s a cheat-sheet of what to enter (assuming this also works – Tom is right, it would be nice to have a preview):
<i>italics</i>
<b>bold</b>
<u>underline</u>
<blockquote>text</blockquote>
Here’s a test to see if I can insert an image:
Regarding passwords and security, the login process is not done with an https connection, so passwords are sent in the clear as noted by the warning I get from Firefox.
“This connection is not secure. Logins entered here could be compromised”
Also note that the bluemassgroup.com email addresses bounced for me (was having an issue with logging in but figured it out).
Hi Jaisu – our web designer says it will take email a day or two to catch up.
Have to say, I’ve looked into several WP installations and this seems common. Not “good”, just common.
Apparently a known issue.
There is at least one plugin out there:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/verve-ssl/
The best thing to do about this is to get a free certificate from Lets Encrypt and then you don’t have to worry about plugins etc. The whole site can be served over HTTPS with only a small performance hit. Bonus: Google give your page rankings a little boost if you use HTTPS, and also, you will be able to make use of features like HTTP/2, which can provide major speed improvements.
Since your login page is by necessity open to the whole world, I recommend that the editors use the two-factor authentication plugin and enable TFA for their own logins. Users would then have the option to do so if they choose.
I’m not seeing a differentiation between old and new comments. For me, that’s a “must have” feature. Is that coming back?
I’ll certainly look into it. There are a zillion comment plug-ins with tons of functions for WordPress. There seems to be demand for this and comment rating, so I’ll check it out. Always open to suggestions from WP-literate readers as well.
Holy smokes look at all this new content. Wheee
I don’t see any obvious way to preview a comment (maybe I missed it, though).
I use that a LOT.