New Functionality: Integrated Social Media Comments

One of the great benefits of open source publishing platforms is they provide a steady stream of upgrades and improvements. Case in point is the latest WordPress enhancement to reader comments in that integrates social media login options.

What that means is you can now use your WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook account when leaving a comment so no more requiring users to create user accounts or have a Gravatar account in order to display user images etc.

The new interface is wonderfully minimalistic in that you don’t initially see any login fields. In fact, you might get thrown off by the lack of name/email/URL fields.

new comment functionality

No worries, all you have to do is start typing away and the login options appear automatically.

new comment functionality

You can login or enter your accreditation credentials at any point while leaving a comment. If you use one of the social media login options, the system will automatically pull your user info from the respective outlet. In this example, I’ve logged in using my Twitter account.

new comment functionality

Granted, this isn’t exactly new technology but compared to most of the other publishing platforms that provide functionality like this, this new WordPress version looks, feels, and functions quicker with an intuitive experience. All in all, it should provide most readers with a far more convenient way to login via social media accounts when leaving comments.

The last bit of new functionality to cover is the ability to change the default “Leave a Reply” text. At first, it seemed like a no-brainer but the more I think about it, the more I drew a blank so I’m going to toss it out there to readers to see if anyone can come up with a clever replacement for the bureaucratically correct default content.

new comment functionality
*Yawn* What’s better than Leave a Reply?

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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0 thoughts on “New Functionality: Integrated Social Media Comments”

    • I’m not entirely certain by what you mean with regard to protecting your credentials unless you’re talking about about leaving an anonymous comment. If that’s the case, the process remains unchanged in that you aren’t required to login via your social media account, it’s simply a new time saving option.

      At the same time, do make sure you are aware of the comment policy and anonymous comments (via the “blog policy” tab): https://adaptistration.com/about

    • Correct, the login options (social media and manual) appear after you begin typing a comment. I agree that the number of methods out there for connecting accounts can be more than a little frustrating which is why I was glad to see this method stick with the primary social media providers of FB and Twitter. I would have perhaps liked to see it connected to a Google account as well but in this case, less is more.

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