Turning off comment moderation

If you’re like Atty. JJ Disini or me,
you’d prefer to let your readers leave comments freely without modereation.  With this feature, comments
automatically appear on your blog, without ever needing your approval.

You may now turn off comment moderation by logging in to your i.panel, clicking on “Management” under i.Blog and then “Manage Comments.”  Simply select “no” for “Moderate Comments,” click on “save,” and you’re all set.

Of course, for the privacy and security-conscious, there’s always a way to control content already published in your blog/s.

You can delete or even modify comments through the same “Manage Comments” window (as
well as identify the originating I.P. address or host of the comment
poster).  You can also ban I.P. addresses of errant comment-posters, such as spammers and trollers.

Smilies in your blog post

Ever wonder where the smilies, a.k.a. emoticons went?

It used to be that you can easily insert these:
with a few clicks of the mouse.  But now, that feature is nowhere
to be found.

Well, not exactly nowhere.  We upgraded our text editor to a
“lighter” one for a better posting experience.  The new text editor loads faster and has more easily-accessible
formatting features.  We are in the process of moving the smiley
button back into the editor, but for the meantime, you can always use
the old-fashioned colon and closed-parenthesis method of making smileys.

Some examples:

: and ) together make
; + ) =
: + ( =
: + D =
: + P =
8 + ) =

Tagboard entry management

Fight tagboard spam!

i.PH bloggers now have more control over tagboards.  You can now
have the option of deleting individual tagboard entries, and even
clearing all the messages altogether.

Great news, indeed.  How does it work?

Check out this Knowledge base article to see how to manage your tagboard.

New WYSIWIG Editor

In case you haven’t noticed yet, we have installed a new WYSIWIG
(what you see is what you get) Rich Text Editor for creating or editing
posts.  The new editor features a cleaner, faster, and more
feature-packed interface than the older one.

Users have the option of using the following:

• No WYSIWIG - for the purists who prefer composing entries in HTML code;
• Basic Editor - for those who don’t need advanced formatting options such as colors and insertion of images and links;
• Advanced Editor
  - for the whole nine yards: for one-click insertion of images and
  links, and changing of colors, font size, alignment, and highlighting.

We recommend using Advanced Editor.  Remember, this is a Rich Text Editor, so you can use the usual Word Processor shortcuts such as Ctrl-B for Bold, Ctrl-I for Italicize, and Ctrl-U for Underline.  You can also choose among different colors and styles such as strikethrough, ^superscript, _subscript, citation, and many more.

In case your editor is not set to advanced, simply follow these procedures:

• Sign in to i.Panel and under i.Blog, click “Advanced Blog Options”
• Or can also use the http://yourblogname.i.ph/blog/ shortcut
• Click the “Settings” tab
• Then switch to the appropriate editor under “Options for WYSIWYG_RTE”

Here’s how the Advanced Editor should look:

(click for a larger image)

Another cool feature from i.PH.

Photoblog templates are up