We all know that using WordPress is a snip, it is one of the best CMS / publishing tools out there, even for total novices like the people we often train here at Talk About Local.

Last night WordPress announced that they have improved things again by adding, what some might say was a lacking feature, logging in from Facebook & Twitter when leaving comments.

So this means when you share a link from your wordpres site to Twitter or Facebook, people will be able to log in using their ID from either of those services to leave you a comment.  You are also able to stay logged in to each of these identities, so you can switch & choose which one you want depending on the blog you are commenting on.

We have noticed that more of our community activists are using Facebook as a primary platform for their community often backed up with a wordpress site, so this links the two platforms very nicely. Other pluses from this new feature are avatars, if people are using twitter or Facebook IDs then their avatars from those platforms will pull through to display on the comment, so no more, or certainly less of the mystery-man..

This is actually more important than people give credit for. When you are working with community sites, it is about the community and knowing people, having the little grey mystery-man strips that identity away. Yes of course you can sign up and get a gravatar, but when you are dealing with people who are not overly IT literate in the first place, trying to explain the importance of having a little icon next to your name that identifies you isn’t always easy and certainly isn’t a priority. Now with being able to use Facebook & Twitter accoounts in comments, people are going to get their identity back.

I wonder if the next logical step in this is to allow signing up for a wordpress account and blog using the same options of  using your Facebook or Twitter IDs?

Read the WordPress Blog here.

Mike, the Talk About Local technical ninja, has been publishing on the internet for over 15 years and specialises moderation around contentious issues, technical aspects of WordPress and Geolocation of content. Mike ran the nationally acclaimed Pits n Pots website from 2009 -2012 which scrutinised Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

Michael Rawlins

View all posts by Michael Rawlins
Michael's website