Comments on Blogs

Thanks for the link Dave.

Um - in case you don't get to creating this feature in CMS in time, can I ask a question about these two 3rd party scripts?

If you set up a section to use this with, how is the third party script going to 'attach' a series of comments to a particular record in a multi-page section? Is that going to be straightforward? I'd have thought it would be necessary to insert into the MySQL table to get this to happen.

I'm not that good with MySQL and PHP though so I may be talking through my hat. [:)]

I actually haven't work with that particular script, but I've made some before. Typically how they work is you have some unique identifier for each page and the program uses that to know which comments are associated with which records.

So you might have an identifier of "tableName-recordNumber" which could be "news-3" for record 3 in the news section.

So you probably have a hidden field you create with that and then a PHP include or something like that to include the comments.

It probably has it's own mysql table and manages that itself. You might just want to give that script a try in advance to cover your bases. I know the consulting guys here can install it pretty quick so I don't think it's that hard to setup.

Hope that helps! :)

HI,

I am just about to launch my CMS site and comments would be really good right about now. Do you know if this might be added any time soon?

Yours hopefully

Hi Thomas,

It's one of our top priorities but we don't have an estimated completion date yet. So it could be a while longer.

Hi,

It's been a while now so I just wanted to check and see how comments is coming along. Is this something that will be a plugin?


[:)]

Hi Thomas,

That one's on the back burner right now and we haven't had time to revisit it lately. I do have some sample code for adding a record that I can give you if you wanted to experiment with creating an add comment form, though.

Let me know if that would help (or alternatively we can also do a custom comment setup through consulting if needed).

Thank you Dave,

Unfortunately I am not a programmer so I do not think I will do well with the code. I have been looking around for 3rd party scripts and have been generally disappointed. I know you guys would do a great job.

I'll keep looking...

I've been following this thread as this is also something I have a need for. I don't want to have a stand alone blog outside of cmsBuilder like I currently have.

However someone mentioned using a third party solution called ScriptMill which is free but not as full featured as I want (i.e. Captcha support). However a little research and I found several products that can attach themselves to any page on your site and do about everything a blog's comment section would do for $25-30. If comments are the only negative you have with cmsBuilder I guess I wouldn't let it hold me up. The only downside I can see to using one of the add-on solutions is you have to log in to a second control panel to manage the process, although the one will let you decline posts via a link in the notification email.

Here's what I found so far:

http://www.gentlesource.com/comment-script/

http://www.phpjabbers.com/post-comment/

http://www.adriantnt.com/products/comments_script/

(I'm still evaluating and haven't picked one yet, so any feedback on these would be appreciated).

Thanks sidcam,

I spent hours looking through all the scripts I could find.

There are a number of features that I wanted:

1) People not having to log in (there are enough places you have to log in already)
2) CAPTCHA or other antispam protection
3) Easy administration
4) Possibilities to vote, agree, reply etc. for users.
5) Bonus features, like the ability to post images or an avatar.

I actually ended up with a 3rd party hosted comments system.

http://js-kit.com/comments/

The reasons for this are:

i) Easy admin
ii) Really easy installation
iii) Sign on as a guest or log in (although I think the list of sign in options might confuse some of my visitors)
iv) Add photos & avatars
v) More features: Easily posting emoticons and even youtube videos.

Also a big plus is that it is free (although I am prepared to pay for a good system).

I do think that CMS builder needs an integrated comments system, perhaps as a plug in? If you look around at other systems it does seem to be the biggest, most commonly used feature missing (oh, and a contact form). In my opinion it is much better to have everything together rather than add on separate systems and admin areas.

Have a look and see if it is something you might be able to use.
[:)]