NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

Well many moons ago there was a discussion about having story commenting on the site....and I put my foot down and brought in "relevant link" commenting but nothing else.

To do that, I had to modify an open source component quite heavily...and keep track of all the changes I had made. I've been very pleased with how the component has worked, despite the fact that it hasn't been updated for some time....in fact I think it's dead in the water....making it increasingly hard to maintain as Joomla evolves.

So then I purchased a commercial component...and then never used it, partly because I was still fixated on only allowing "related links" and because it surprised me in that it was quite limited (I'm hoping for a more up to date version soon but I got swept away with it being on sale).

So...then yesterday I saw an offer to Joomla users of a free version of a commenting system (a ‘lite' version that includes a link to the developer's site)....featuring commenting, great spam protection and more. So I emailed them and got given a copy.

So last night, I started the long and painful journey of trying to hack it to do the things I wanted it to (only "relevant links" etc) and even started to post a question about how to do that in their forum....until a voice in my head yelled at me and said "What the heck are you doing? Why do you always have to alter these things to be your way?!! Just let the people comment for goodness sake!!" (the voice said a few more things but that's between me and my therapist)

Anyway...so as of today, commenting...and commenting the way you wanted it (I think?)

Registered users can comment and can also see their name (and later avatar) published along with the comment. I understand that integration with the community builder (that this site uses) will come soon, so your avatar will appear there also.

Best of all, we can now also allow guest commenting (although I will activate it cautiously and just see how it goes) because they will need to use the spam trap feature that makes them type in one of those clever code thingies that only human's can pick up (I'm told).

All comments are still going to be sent to me at this stage (registered users will have their comment automatically published, guest users will be moderated...and all that may change too if we get too much spam) but it also means that I'll be able to use it to add (for example) the winning user of a contest, rather than logging in to the back end and updating info there.

Old comments have also been imported into the new system (I'm really pleased abut that) and I still really encourage you to hold lengthy discussions in the forum AND to use the commenting system for related links to stories....but at last, you guys get what you want..and I hear a few less voices :-)

Phil

PS...I still intend to hack it a little...but mostly on how the whole commenting system looks :-)

PPS...I'll be adding the option to hide/show the comment area once I've done a bit more testing

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Philip Roy said: July 31, 2006   Votes: +0

	I'll be making minor adjustments but problems can be reported in the forum... http://www.nzmac.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,259/
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a guest said: August 01, 2006   Votes: +0

	That's awesome Phil. I remember that discussion well!! Pleased to see you keep your options open.
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lowededwookie said: August 02, 2006   Votes: +0

	This is very welcome, especially with regards reviews. I don't mind the whole image code thing, it's kept my iWeb based site comments down to only those that are genuine.
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