Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Further Improvements To Blogs

In a previous post, we announced three major improvements to the functionality of Nature Network’s blogs: customisable banners, blogrolls and better comment formatting. Those features are now in the latter stages of testing, and we’re giving a handful of bloggers access to the test server to try them out.

We’d now like to highlight a second wave of improvements that will follow hot on the heels of the first.

  • We’ve fixed single sign-in for the blogs, so you should be able to move from blog to blog without being asked for any passwords.
  • We’ve added times to the date stamps on blog comments.

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  • The author and date of the post is now visible at the top of the blog post.

time and date under post title.png

  • We now have a better ‘share this’ toolbar to replace the current ‘bookmark in Connotea’ one.

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  • Cosmetic changes to RSS feeds.
  • The ‘Policy’ tab has been removed
  • The slightly confrontational text “Please keep your comment brief. Excessively long or offensively phrased entries will be edited.” has been changed to “Please read our Community Guidelines”, with a link.

In addition, we’ve been testing a stats package to give bloggers a better idea of their readership. This is looking good, but is a lot more complex to weave into the mix than the changes outlined above. Please bear with us while we find the best way to do this.

As always, feel free to raise any questions either in the comments below or by emailing network@nature.com.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Bob O'Hara said:

    Thanks for the update. I was wondering what Grrl was blathering on about, so I guess she’s in the select group.

    Now I’ve got to work out what he hell she was on about when she mentioned titanium and rings. It sounds expensive.

  2. Report this comment

    Matt Brown said:

    Sounds like she’s building some kind of cyclotron in your basement, Bob.

  3. Report this comment

    Mike Fowler said:

    I thought you guys were already hitched, Bob. Did you forget something important at the crucial moment?

    Thanks for the improvement update. I guess I should really post this over at the Forum, but in case I forget:

    It’d be great to still be able to see the original thread while previewing one’s own comments.

  4. Report this comment

    Eva Amsen said:

    It’s so confusing to have a screenshot of a comment in the middle of the post: Are these the comments already? No, I’m still reading…

    Anyway, this looks good! I look forward to the changes, and trust the test users to give useful feedback.

  5. Report this comment

    Lou Woodley said:

    Quick update:

    Don’t forget to keep checking the feedback on the new blogging platform forum for updates.

    We’re now looking for more testers of the new features so that we’re sure they’re what you asked for before we put them live. To register, please see here.

    I’m also double-checking that everyone is receiving email notification when someone comments on your blog. Can you please report your experiences here so we don’t miss you out when fixing this.

    Thank you!

Comments are closed.