Add Bluesky Comments to your Website!
For those of you who use the Bluesky social media network, I've added a nifty little feature to embed Bluesky comments on your website!
Note that this is not a complete integrated commenting system like our other FastComments or Disqus options where people can comment directly on your website pages; the Bluesky comments are simply displayed on your pages, and if people want to comment they must do so on the Bluesky platform. But this is still a neat way to show the Bluesky interactions on your blog post pages.
You can see a live example of how this looks on one of my blog posts here (scroll to the bottom to see the comments).
Here's a screencast showing how this works:
Assuming you already have your Bluesky account set up, here are the steps to start embedding Bluesky comments on your website:
Step 1: Enter your Bluesky username in the admin
In your WideRange admin panel, go to Settings > Comments and enter your Bluesky username in the "Bluesky username" field, and Save.
* You do not need to have other integrated commenting enabled; you can display Bluesky comments on their own. Or you can use both!
Step 2: Assign a Bluesky post ID to the corresponding blog, gallery, or photo in the admin
You must first add the blog, gallery, or photo to your website, and create a corresponding post on Bluesky. So if it's for a blog post, you'd write something on Bluesky about the subject of that blog post and maybe add a selection of photos from the blog post. Or if you want the comments on a single photo page, you'd just post that photo on Bluesky.
Once that's done, you can get the Bluesky post ID by clicking on your post in Bluesky, then in the browser address bar, you will copy the 13-digit id code (numbers/letters) at the very end of the address. That is the ID code for that specific post on Bluesky.
Back in the WideRange admin, you will edit the corresponding blog, gallery, or photo, then paste that Bluesky ID into the "Bluesky ID" field. You can also enter this directly into the blog, gallery, or photo data table via the "quick edit" in the Bluesky ID column on the right side of the table.
Once you have entered the Bluesky post ID to the corresponding blog, gallery, or photo, you will then see the Bluesky comments show up at the bottom of that page on your website! (You may need to refresh the page first).
Some tips for Bluesky posting
If you want to post on Bluesky about a blog post on your website, there are two ways you can do this:
1) The simple "link post" way is to paste the blog post address into your new Bluesky post and it will automatically create a link preview with the title and preview image from the blog post.
2) A slightly more elaborate approach is the "gallery post" method where you upload up to 4 images to the new Bluesky post. This creates a square grid gallery display for your Bluesky post. Then you can still include the link to your blog post in the Bluesky post text.
I have found that the second method will typically garner much more attention and interaction than the first method. I think people on social media have very short attention spans and generally can't be bothered to click out to another website unless they are enticed to do so. By posting a small collection of 4 photos in your Bluesky post it's more likely that you'll catch people's attention and perhaps motivate them to click your link to see more.
I hope all you Bluesky users enjoy this new feature for your website! By the way, you can find me on Bluesky here!
