Release notes: Dialogue v1.7.5

In our July release of Dialogue, we've made changes to the way the administration controls are displayed, to make it easier for you to manage your site and get to where you need to go.

What's new

New navigation bar

As a Dialogue administrator, you'll no doubt be used to visiting the Control Panel to carry out all of your administrative functions. We realised this could involve you having to make quite a few clicks to do all the things you need, so we've now added new pages for the most commonly-used functions and put these on the navigation bar.

It's important to stress that none of the functions have changed and you are still able to do everything you have previously. We've just updated where your admin functions live to make it easier to negotiate.

The below screenshots will explain where to find everything in this brave new world:

Discussions

In the Discussions page you'll find:

  • The 'edit discussions' function
  • Your results and reporting function
  • The section for opening and closing individual discussions

Moderation

In the Moderation Queue page you'll find:

  • Your moderation queue for moderating ideas (on a 'per discussion' or 'all discussions' basis)
  • Your moderation queue for comments awaiting pre-moderation
  • The function for changing the overall setting of your Dialogue to either pre or post moderation

This should make life easier for your moderators as they will only ever need to go into the 'moderation queue' page now, rather than navigating their way through the control panel.

Users

In the Users page you'll find:

  • The function to search for users by their user name
  • The options for changing the administrative status of a user, such as promoting them to 'moderator'. This section also allows you to remove users.

Site settings

In the Site Settings page you'll find:

  • The tool for changing your site logo
  • The tool to edit the static pages on your Dialogue, such as the homepage and Privacy Policy
  • The tool for making one single discussion your homepage
  • The tool for adding additional questions to your registration and profile edit forms (such as hometown, country etc.)
  • A link to show whether your site is currently pre or post moderated and to take you back to the 'moderation settings' page if you wish to change it

So there you have it, hopefully when you get to play with your new look Dialogue pages, you'll agree that this new arrangement makes life that bit easier. Please do give us your feedback.

What else?

Along with the aforementioned cabinet reshuffle, we've fixed a few bugs, tidied some headings and amended things you have spoken with us about, such as:

We need to talk 'about'...

One of those suggested changes is the name of the "About the Dialogue' page. This is now just called "About' to fit with the standard terminology used in other sites, but also so that we're not prescribing the word 'dialogue' to whatever you may be calling your discussion hub.

More policy please

We've now added links to all policies from the registration page, so people have more chance to read your terms of conditions and privacy policy whilst they're signing up to have their say.