It’s been way too long since we last updated our blog – our apologies for the radio silence. I wanted to share a handy bit of CSS to help you further customize the way your readers can post comments to your site. While we offer a couple of different ways to comment – as a guest or using their Facebook, Twitter, WordPress.com, or IntenseDebate account – there wasn’t a way to disable guest commenting while still enabling Facebook Connect and Twitter Sign-in.

But, as you may know, we offer a super-easy way to add custom CSS to bring your own personal style to IntenseDebate through your Custom CSS page. By adding a handy snippet of CSS, you can hide the guest commenter information fields (Name, Email, URL), which will effectively remove the option to post comments as a guest.

Why is this cool?

I’m glad you asked. Currently commenters that post using Facebook Connect and Twitter Sign-in are considered guest commenters since they aren’t posting with an IntenseDebate or WordPress.com account. The issue is that if you disable guest commenting in your moderation settings by requiring readers to have an IntenseDebate or WordPress.com account, you would remove the options to post using Facebook Connect and Twitter Sign-in, which isn’t ideal.

So without further ado, here’s the CSS you can add to your Custom CSS page to get rid of guest commenting:

#idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-postnav-label,
#idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-m.idc-signup {
display: none !important;
}
#idc-container-parent #idc-container
.idc-postnav-list {
margin: 5px 0 8px;
}

That last little bit adjusts the margin to make up for the hidden fields so there isn’t a gaping space where the guest commenter fields used to be. Feel free to tweak that as you’d like.

Make sure you check out our CSS documentation, along with the rest of our guides to change the font size; text, background, and link colors; width of the comment section; and move the comment box to the top of the comment section.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’ve received a lot of requests recently to move the comment form to the top of the comment section rather than having it at the bottom. We prefer having the comment form at the bottom so your visitors have a chance to catch-up on the debate before posting their comment – that helps cut down on duplicate comments and encourages interaction. But it’s your site and we’re all about customization!

To make it happen, you need to add the following CSS to your Custom CSS page in your IntenseDebate account:

#idc-container-parent #idc-container {
position: relative;
padding-top: 320px;
}

#idc-container-parent #idc-container #IDCommentsNewThreadCover {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
}

For more CSS help, check out our CSS Documentation and feel free to give us a shout at support@intensedebate.com with any questions. Oh, and don’t forget to check out our other styling tips to simplify your comment section design!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

Today we’re excited to announce the addition of not 5, not 10, but 16 new button options for your IntenseDebate comment system. This project has been a long in the making, and these new styles are now available in your Layout Settings page at http://intensedebate.com/edit-site-layout. There are 4 main button styles (apart from the normal text links): Default, Candy, Glass, and Square. Each style features some color and size variations, so you should be able to find something that fits nicely with your site’s theme.

Without further ado, we present the latest from our design labs:

Default

This is our beloved default button that’s in use across all IntenseDebate comment sections. We’ve introduced a twist with some new size variation: you can choose to only show large buttons.

Candy

Candy is the coolest of the cool when it comes to our new buttons. With 12 different color variations (in common colors ) there’s something for everyone. Our personal favorites include White, Light Blue (which is actually IntenseDebate-blue), Orange, and Green. You’ll actually find a similar button design around IntenseDebate.com – that’s how much we like them!

Glass

Glass is the classy choice. Available in White and Black, it’s a slick alternative to our flashy new Candy buttons. Glass buttons are designed to resemble clear or smoked glass.

Square

For those of you that might want something a bit more square, we now offer a variation to the Default buttons which features small rounded corners. It’s perfect if you don’t want your button too big, or don’t want it to stand out too much.

Head on over to your Blog Layout page to check out the new buttons and activate them.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in features

This is the first in a series of articles which will hopefully inspire and help you style the IntenseDebate comment system so it fits better with your blog. We’ve reached a point in IntenseDebate’s history where the basic HTML and CSS classes the comment system is built on is solid, so now you should be able to style it more than ever, without fear of your new styles breaking in future updates.

Styling IntenseDebate: Simplify comment design

If you have a really clean and simple blog, you might find IntenseDebate’s pretty glossy comment headers and rounded corners a bit too much. With just a few simple CSS rules, you can alter the comment header to your own liking. In this tutorial we’ll be modifying the .idc-c-h element, which is “ID language” for “.IntenseDebateComments-Comment-Header”.

How to use this guide
All styles can be added either to your “Custom CSS” box in your IntenseDebate admin panel (recommended, go to Settings>Custom CSS) or directly to your blogs/sites stylesheet.

1. First, we’ll remove the normal background from the comment headers, apply a top border and make sure the padding and margins look good.
   #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-h {
background: none;
border-top: 1px solid #ddd;
padding: 3px 0 0;
}

   Background: none; means we’ve removed the normal background image. If you instead want a light gray background, you could try background: #f6f6f6;!

2. Next, we’ll remove the spacing around the comment elements that make it not align with our new pretty top border. If you add in these CSS elements, you should know how all of the comment contents perfectly aligned with the top border:
   #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-h-inner {
margin: 0;
}

   #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-t,
   #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-b {
   margin-left: 0;
   margin-right: 0;
   }

   #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-b .idc-btn_s {
   margin-left: 0 !important;
   }

3. Lastly, if you still want a special look for the comments posted by an admin, we can apply a special styling to admin comments by using the class .idc-c.idc-admin this class is used for all admin comments posted on your blog.
   
#idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c.idc-admin .idc-c-h {
border-top-color: #c00;
}


   This style will exchange the light gray border we just added for a very fashionable dark red shade.

Tips on styling IntenseDebate:

• When you want to start styling IntenseDebate, and need to know what the elements in the comment system are called, we highly recommend FireBug, a developer extension for Firefox. Using the Inspect feature, you can just click the element you want to style, and it will bring up all the CSS associated by it, including what the element’s CSS class is. Pretty handy!
• Look up the element you want to style, for instance .idc-c-h and then apply #idc-container-parent to the rule when you write the CSS. In this example, you would write #idc-container-parent #idc-container .idc-c-h to style .idc-c-h, the comment header.
• Put your new CSS rules in the Custom CSS box in your IntenseDebate admin panel, located at Settings>Custom CSS.

Make sure you check out our CSS Documentation for a complete list of elements you can style in IntenseDebate with tips on how to modify them, and feel free to let us know if you have any questions.  Until next time!

Posted by Isaac Keyet in features