A lot of readers have been asking lately about the new commenting system, and so here's a short guide to setting yourself up in our comments section here on WoW Insider.

Our new comments section will not only remember all of your personal information, but they'll also let you use an avatar of your choosing, and even reply to and moderate others' comments. First things first, you've got to get set up with a password. To get one, you simply leave a comment as a new user, putting your name and email in the comments form (under "New Users" below). Then, you'll get sent a message to that email address, with a password (usually random letters and numbers) to sign back in. Come back to the site, and now leave another comment with your email, and the new password (under the "Current Users" title in the comments section), and you're good to go.

The next thing you'll want to do is set up your profile, and you can do that by clicking on your name in the comment that you posted.

Update: Hopefully this is working for everybody. Lots of people are asking why we do it this way, and I've got a short answer and a long answer. Short answer is "because this is how Blogsmith does it, and we're run with Blogsmith." Longer answer is that the system was designed, I believe, to be quick and easy-- enter your info as a new user, and you get your password and account set up for you. Enter your info as a "current user," and you never have to click another email again. We are listening to your feedback, so if you have ideas, we're all ears (and of course whatever we come up with has to be implemented by our coders, so thanks for being patient). But for now, this is how it works, and hopefully everyone has their situation figured out. Thanks again for reading!

Once you click your name, you'll be taken to your Blogsmith profile page. Blogsmith is the engine that all Weblogs, Inc. blogs run under (including WoW Insider, Massively, and all the other blogs in the Joystiq family). That's why you'll not only see WoW Insider comments there, but also any other comments you've made on other Weblogs, Inc. blogs.

Just log in with your password under your name, and you'll be able to change your password to whatever you want (much handier than the random string that you get at first), edit your commenter profile, and even upload your own custom commenter icon (we posted a few suggestions here, but you can use any 64x64 picture). Fix all that up, remember that password somewhere, and congrats! You are now a professional commenter on all the Weblogs, Inc. blogs-- your profile and icon will appear whenever you comment on any of our blogs.

And don't forget about our moderation system, too-- you can use the red and green buttons near each comment to moderate that comment down or up (the three stars near each comment are the ratings scale-- three stars means a great, interesting, funny, or insightful comment, while no stars and a dimmed comment signals a troll, contentless, or unnecessary comment). The exclamation icon next to the moderation icons is a reporting button-- hit that on a comment that is offensive, spam, or otherwise tasteless, and our bloggers will be notified that there is a comment that needs to be deleted or otherwise dealt with. There is no limit to how much moderation you can do, so moderate away-- your input makes our comments section better.

Thanks for reading, and thanks very much for commenting. Hopefully this will answer the questions that you're all having about our new system. We very much appreciate all the input that we get, either in the comments section or on our tipline, so don't hesitate to contact us if you've got feedback or insight on what we're posting. Thanks for reading WoW Insider, and enjoy the site.

Tags: blogsmith, comment-moderation, commenting, current-users, new-users, profile, tutorial, weblogs-inc, wow-insider

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Insider Business, Odds and ends