Organization
The update to the admin panel has seen better organization with settings. Settings are more specific to a category. Right now, there is a Disqus 2012 section of the admin panel, there was already a section, but was less obvious. You can see my site's settings, as well as the more organized areas, in the two images below.
Advanced
The new "Advanced" tab in the admin panel shows advanced settings for your website. Those settings include:
- Default Avatar
- Akismet additional spam filtering (I recommend NOT using it; Disqus already has great spam detection and Akismet is known for detecting false positives, trashing user reps such as mine!)
- Thread categories
- Delete site from Disqus (although it says that deleting is disabled, you can still click the button last time I checked. Disqus has yet to explain why they are disabling the feature though.)
I'm not sure that the default avatar should be considered an advanced setting, but that is my opinion. Screenshot of my view below:
Filters
The filter section of the admin panel contains settings for filters. Currently, the filters on this page are the restricted words filter and the blacklists/whitelists. I have blocked out my blocked users, to protect their identities (although I probably should to let you all know). The images below can assist you in what I see.
Moderators
The moderators tab is the same. All it does is contain moderators for the site. You can choose from two permissions for moderators, one to just moderate comments, and the other to edit comments and settings. I don't really think I have to show a picture of what it looks like, but if you ask I'll post one.
Discovery Tab - Biggest update!
The Discovery tab is the section of the admin panel that has recieved the most update. It now gives you full control of discovery on Disqus 2012. You can choose from these settings, from lowest level to highest level:
- No discovery box on your site
- Discovery box displaying at the bottom of the embed with only organic traffic
- Discovery box displaying at the bottom of the embed with organic and promoted traffic (Promoted Discovery)
- Discovery box displaying at the top or bottom of the embed depending on what Disqus thinks should happen. This the greatest setting level.
If you took a careful look at Disqus 2012 recently, you could see the new code put in place for the discovery box to be on top, as shown in the web inspector below.
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| Click image to view larger |
When in the discovery tab, you also have something new: previews. When you select a certain form of discovery, you see a preview image of what will be reflected on your site. When you hover over a specific section, it will show a little box that explains what you are hovering over. Here is a few images showing the previews.
You also have the other options, which are the boxes where you put in your PayPal email address and a blacklist box to blacklist advertiser domains. Currently only PayPal payments are supported. If you look, you'll see that I only have organic discovery displaying. Techman's World is not looking into advertising right now, but I'll be sure to let everyone know when I am ready.
Here are some images. And yes, the organic discovery box is actually modified results from the Disqus blog. Guess visiting their blog all the time and looking at discovery really does pay off.
And if you do have discovery enabled, you should be able to view discovery analytics. I can't access this feature though, as all it does is redirect to the moderate section. I'm not sure if enabling promoted discovery does a difference, but organic discovery is enough to view analytics. Hope Disqus explains this to me, unless they are planning on adding Discovery analytics to their VIP package, which is priced based on what you want.
If a site has promoted discovery enabled, you'll notice it. You'll see two different columns with listings. And the box is much taller. You also can't close the promoted discovery box, but you can close an organic discovery box. I'm not sure yet if the promoted discovery box display's consistently yet, as Disqus did say that they were waiting until they are fully ready to start running promoted discovery. I know for now that all sites run the organic discovery box if it is enabled right now.
