Topics covered here include:
Accessing the administration panel
Administration panel functions
Enabling pre-approval of comments
Receiving email notifications for new comments
Enabling the report abuse feature
Locking comments: What does that do?
Administrative Sorting
Accessing the administration panel
Those of you not using the comments service will need to have an administrative username and password set up in config.php, before you can access the administration panel. This was covered in the set-up instructions, here.
If you are using the comments service, your username and password has already been set up for you.
To access the adiministration panel:
- Go to your web site using your browser and find any video which has the comments plugin loaded into its menu bar.
- Click on “Comments” in the menu bar to open the comments plugin.
- Click on “Edit” at the top of the comments panel.
- Enter your username and password.
That’s it. Now you are in the administration panel.
Administration panel functions
A view of the administration panel is shown below.
Stats Displays statistics for both the current video and for all videos.
Statistics include:
- number of comments
- pending comments
- spam
- locked comments
- video open/closed for comments
Logout Logs you out of the administration panel.
For the current video The following functions apply only to the comments for the video which is currently loaded into the player.
Moderate comments Moderate comments for this video.
Approve pending (non spam) Approve all comments which are currently awaiting approval and which are not marked as spam.
Close comments Close this video for comments. Users will not be able to post comment to this video.
Open comments Open this video for comments. Users are allowed to post
Delete pending comments Delete all comments for this video which are currently awaiting approval. This includes pending comments which are marked as spam.
Delete spam Delete all comments for this video which are marked as spam.
Purge Deletes all comments associated with this video and removes this video ID from the comments database.
For all videos The following functions apply to all videos.
Moderate comments Moderate comments for all videos.
Approve pending (non spam) Approve all comments which are currently awaiting approval and which are not marked as spam.
Close comments Close all videos for comments.
Open comments Open all videos for comments.
Delete pending comments Delete all comments which are currently awaiting approval. This includes pending comments which are marked as spam.
Delete spam Delete all comments which are marked as spam.
Purge Deletes all comments and completely resets the comments database.
Purge Selected (Enter IDs below) Deletes all comments for each of the selected videos, and removes those videos from the comments database. To use this function, enter a list of video IDs that you wish to purge from the database. A single space should separate each videoID. When you are finished entering your list, press the Purge comments button.
Enabling pre-approval of comments
We recommend that your video comments require administrative approval before they become visible on you site. However, if you do not have the time or inclination to approve comments, you may designate all your comments as pre-approved, which means that they will go live on your site immediately after being posted.
To enable pre-approval, do the following:
1) Open FCPlayer/plugins/comments/config.php with a text editor.
Note: Those of you using the comments service need to access your config.php file online, at http://www.fastcatsoftware.com/comments/config.php.
2) Find the line which says:
//Do comments require administrative approval before going live. 0 – yes, 1 – no.
define(’COMMENT_PREAPPROVED’, 0);
3) Change to:
//Do comments require administrative approval before going live. 0 – yes, 1 – no.
define(’COMMENT_PREAPPROVED’, 1);
Receiving email notifications for new comments
When you elect to receive email notifications for new comment posts, you will be sent a report, for each comment, which contains the author info, the comment itself, and links which will enable you to either approve of delete the comment.
To receive email notices when a user posts a comment, do the following:
1) Open FCPlayer/plugins/comments/config.php with a text editor.
Note: Those of you using the comments service need to access your config.php file online, at http://www.fastcatsoftware.com/comments/config.php.
2) Find the line which says:
//Notify by email when a user posts a comment (you must fill out ‘ADMIN_EMAIL’ above to use this feature)
define(’NOTIFY_POST’, 0); // 0–do not notify 1–do notify
3) Change to:
//Notify by email when a user posts a comment (you must fill out ‘ADMIN_EMAIL’ above to use this feature)
define(’NOTIFY_POST’, 1); // 0–do not notify 1–do notify
4) If you haven’t already, enter the email address where you would like to receive the notices. Find the following line and enter you email address:
define(’ADMIN_EMAIL’, ‘yourEmailAddressHere’);
Enabling the report abuse feature
If you elect to use the report abuse feature, your site users will be able to flag abusive comments, and you will receive email notifications when such flagging occurs. Contained within these emails will be the comment author info, the comment itself, and a link which will enable you to delete the comment if you so choose.
To turn on the report abuse feature, do the following:
1) Open FCPlayer/plugins/comments/config.php with a text editor.
Note: Those of you using the comments service need to access your config.php file online, at http://www.fastcatsoftware.com/comments/config.php.
2) Find the line which says:
//Use the report abuse feature (you must fill out ‘ADMIN_EMAIL’ above to use this feature)
define(’NOTIFY_ABUSE’, 0); // 0–do not notify 1–do notify
3) Change to:
//Use the report abuse feature (you must fill out ‘ADMIN_EMAIL’ above to use this feature)
define(’NOTIFY_ABUSE’, 1); // 0–do not notify 1–do notify
4) If you haven’t already, enter the email address where you would like to receive the notices. Find the following line and enter you email address:
define(’ADMIN_EMAIL’, ‘yourEmailAddressHere’);
Locking comments: What does that do?
Locking comments prevents them from being deleted under any circumstance except for the “Purge” operation.
Administrative Sorting
After you log in as an adminstrator, go to “moderate comments”. Now you are in moderation mode. When in this mode, you have a few more option for sorting the comments.
Click on “Sort” and you will see the following:
The “Pending (non spam) first” option orders the comments so that those awaiting approval are first. In addition, it groups the pending comments by the video they are associated with. This is helpful when moderating comments for all videos.
