Hikari Titled Comments
Hikari Titled Comments plugin enables each comment to have a title, so that commentators can give a subject meaning to their comments.
- Introduction
- Features
- ScreenShots
- Download
- Donate
- Installation
- Preparing your theme
- Upgrading and Uninstalling
- Support and Requests
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Versions
- To-do stuff
- Thanks
- Related Posts
- Comments (36)
Introduction
One of the best features Drupal has and I miss in Wordpress is the possibility to set title to comments.
With a title, we can identify the comment subject, it can be resumed to a phrase. Comments become more similar to articles and aggregate more value.
I like to see comments as mini-articles. The post being the main article and comments being mini-articles that extend the main one. Now with title, Wordpress comments are a bit closer to that approach.
Features
- Comments titles are stored as comment metadata.
- It's easy for themes to add support the plugin, being the support optional and when the plugin is not available the support just remains hidden.
- A simple function prints the comment title if there is one, or prints nothing if current comment doesn't have a title.
- Comments titles can be edited from admin comment edit page.
ScreenShots
- A normal comment without a title
- The same comment, now with a title/subject
- Exemple of a comment form with the title input text
- Edit Comment Admin Page, with the title metabox
License
Hikari Titled Comments, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
To view a copy of this license, please visit Creative Commons (http://creativecommons NULL.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3 NULL.0/)
© Copyright Hikari (http://wordpress.Hikari.ws), 2010
If you want to redistribute this software, please leave a link to this post together with it and mention me as its author
Parts of this code are provided or based on ideas and/or code written by others
If you want to extend the plugin features, please contact me so I can add your work to my official release.
Download
You can follow Hikari Titled Comments updates and older versions at Wordpress.org Plugin Directory (http://wordpress NULL.org/extend/plugins/hikari-title-comments/), or you can get the last version from the direct link hikari-title-comments.zip (http://downloads NULL.wordpress NULL.org/plugin/hikari-title-comments NULL.zip).
Donate
There are also several ways you can show your appreciation:
- blogging about it
- linking it from your site (without using rel=nofollow )
- browsing the site sidebars
- suggesting it to your friends
- visiting other posts thru the site and adding valuable comments
- saying thanks on comments
- offering codes that add new features
- etc, use your imagination
Installation
Hikari Titled Comments requires theme modifications to be used, unfortunately there is no way to insert titles to comments without editing the theme. But first let's install it.
It requires at least Wordpress 2.9 and PHP5 to work.
You can use the built in installer and upgrader, or you can install the plugin manually.
- Download the zip file, upload it to your server and extract all its content to your
/wp-content/plugins
folder. Make sure the plugin has its own folder (for exemple/wp-content/plugins/hikari-titled-comments/
). - Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress admin page.
There's no options page at the moment. You can go to Edit Comment Admin Page and try to edit any comment, and the title box will be there so you can add title to existing ones. But now it's time to edit your theme to have them shown and let your visitors set titles to their new comments.
Preparing your theme
There are 2 steps you do to add titled comments support to your theme. First you include the title to your comment building code, second you include an input text to your comment form so that users can submit the title.
First thing you must do is find your comment building code, your search starts in your theme's file comments.php
. If you don't have experience editing themes, you may need help. The person who developed your theme is the obvious first suggestion.
Since Wordpress 2.7, themes use the function wp_list_comments()
to print comments, with support to threads, pagination, etc. This function has a parameter called callback, that points to a theme function that has the comment code.
For exemple, in wp_list_comments('style=ol&type=comment&callback=prefix_comment')
, the comment function is prefix_comment
. Now you must find this function in your theme, I like to have it in comments.php
itself, but many tutorials say to move the function to functions.php
, just look around.
If your wp_list_comments
doesn't have a callback parameter, you reached a dead end, your theme uses Wordpress's default code and it can't be edited. You'll have to design a comment layout for your theme to be able to give a title to your comments. It's not hard or complex, but if you are reading this and don't know what to do you'll need to read a lot and learn a bit before proceeding.
Ok, you've found your comment building code. There is no specific place to add a title to your comments, use your imagination. I like to see comments as mini-articles, or extensions of the post. Generally titles come on the top of the article, followed by the author and the article's date, and then the content.
Once you choose where the title will go in each comment, I tell you that not all comments have titles. Your old comments don't have, and commentators are not required to use a title (at least for now). So you must have in mind that a title may or may not be present, both layouts must look good and be XHTML valid.
The function you use to add the title is function hkTC_comment_title( $comment_id=null, $before=null, $after=null)
. If $comment_id
is empty, it will try to find global $comment
. You can also pass any text to be used before and after the title, probably some HTML tag to surround the title text, these string are not escaped so pass them in the final format they'll be sent to browsers.
If current comment has a title, the function will print echo $before.$comment_title.$after;
. If it hasn't, the function will just return without doing anything. Here's the final code I use in my theme:
1 2 3 | <?php if(function_exists('hkTC_comment_title')) hkTC_comment_title($comment->comment_ID,'<h2 class="comment-title">','</h2>'); ?> |
Nice! Your theme is ready to print titles to your comments, now you must let your visitors submit them! Your next stop is in your theme's comment form, also inside comments.php
. Again, your creativity will tell you where to include the text field, I've chosen just above the comment textarea, with a header to say it's meant for the title.
There's nothing much to say here, it's a simple input text that's added if the hkTC_comment_title
function exists. The function isn't used here, but we test it to assure the input text is only included if the plugin is activated to receive its parameter. Just make sure you don't change its 'name' and 'id' attributes.
1 2 3 4 | <?php if(function_exists('hkTC_comment_title')) { ?> <h3>Comment Title</h3> <input type="text" name="hikari-titled-comments" id="hikari-titled-comments" tabindex="4" value="" /> <?php } ?> |
And that's it! Now you are ready to aggregate value to your site's comments!
Upgrading and Uninstalling
If you have to upgrade manually, simply delete hikari-titled-comments
folder and follow installation steps again.
If you wanna deactivate the plugin, just use the option in plugins page. Your theme will keep the new code for titles, but it will remain asleep while the plugin is not available.
In future version I'm gonna include an option to delete titles metadata from database.
Support & Requests
If you want to request any new feature, leave a comment on this post explaining it with as many details as possible. I can't assure it will be added, but if it is viable, I like it AND have the time, I'll do my best.
If something seems to not be working and you need help, first read the FAQ and then leave a comment explaining what's happening. If you need to post a picture, please link it instead of using an img tag.
Please, don't ask me to add comment title support to themes, in this case ask the theme author.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Isn't there a way to use comment title without editing my theme?
Unfortunately no. The only action hook that Wordpress offers as default for themes to have in comments is
'comment_form'
, that normally is added below the comment textarea, it doesn't offer enough flexibility. And also there is no way for a plugin to include title to comments.In reality, it could be done, but these 2 elements would hardly fit to themes layouts, you'd have a lot of trouble styling them, so it's much easier to just edit the theme.
-
My theme uses Wordpress default comment building, it doesn't have the callback function, can I add title to my site comments?
You can, but you'll have to create that function. If you're using the default code, your comments are already simple, so just search the Web for a tutorial teaching how to create it. Then you'll be able to add title to your site comments .
-
I use a free downloaded theme, I know nothing about HTML or CSS and the theme author doesn't provide support, can you help me do it?
I'd love to be able to help, theme authors usually finish their themes (that are all identical and only change the CSS), publish them, never update and don't support their users that link to their sites. But it would require a few hours examining the theme, and even more time if its comment code is very different from standard, or some work if it uses Wordpress default comment code.
Many themes also have damn ugly code that is pratically unreadable (if you've never read themes codes, believe me, I've already used a theme that was pretty looking in the browser but its code almost made me suicide its author!).
Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it. You of course can contact me if you find a bug or have any trouble that may involve my plugin code, but please don't ask me for themes support.
-
Can I add title to old comments and edit title of comments after they are created?
Yes, just go to Edit Comment Admin Page.
Go to the admin page where you see a list of your site comments and click the edit option (not the quick edit!) for the comment you wanna edit. In the page that will open, below the comment textarea there will be a box with an input text containing its current title (or empty if the comment has no title). Edit it as you want and save the comment :)
-
Can I have a usage exemple?
Sure, just leave comments below saying what you think about having titles in comments :)
-
Does the plugin have security protection? Does it filter submited title? Can a hacker or a spammer use it to gain control of my site?
When a registered user edits an existing comment's title, wpnonce is used against the plugin filename AND this comment ID, so Wordpress controls security regarding somebody trying to force a comment title change. A user also must have permission to edit a post to edit its comments' titles.
For a new comment being created, I've used no special security measure. If a user or visitor is allowed to create a comment, he is allowed to give it a title too. I let Wordpress manage permissions to add new comments, if it's not allowed Wordpress will simply not trigger the action that Hikari Titled Comments plugin uses to create the title. There are also spam protection plugins that deal with permissions to add comments.
Now, regarding what a user can use in a title (add a link to it for exemple), I've used the filter
wp_filter_kses()
to control it, it's the same filter used in the comment body. In the same way Wordpress works, if a user has'unfiltered_html'
permission, his comment body and title are not filtered, and if he doesn't have this permission the filter is used.And if you also use the Hikari Email & URL Obfuscator plugin, it will obfuscate any link that may exist in a title :)
With these measures, I belive comment title is dealt in a similar way comment body is, I don't believe comment title must or should have deeper control than comment body. But if you think it should be done differently, just add a comment, with title , with your ideas and concerns .
Cangelog
- 0.02 - 13/03/2010
- Fix: removed code to delete comment title when a comment is deleted, Wordpress core handles deleting comments metadata by itself.
- Fix: fixed a bug where all titles were deleted when a comment without title (or having its title deleted) was editied. Update ASAP to not have your titles deleted by the bug!
- 0.01 - 05/03/2010
- First public release.
Known bugs
- none ATM
To-do stuff
Here are my ideas that I wish to implement in the future.
- Add title automatically without requiring theme edition
- Make quick edit feature edits title too
Make Recent Comments widget show the comment title when it's provided(implemented in Hikari Enhanced Comments)
Thanks
Thanks to Wordpress developers who developed comments metadata. Comments is a strategical feature for interactive websites to interact with their visitors, and should receive more attention. I've long wanted to have titles in comments, and now it's finally possible!
Thanks to Drupal devs that implemented so many great features, that slowly are coming to Wordpress. We need diversity, monopoly only plaster the progress.
And of course thanks to all of you that use my plugins, come to my sites and take something useful from it .
I dedicate Hikari Titled Comments to Chiih-chan, my kawaii great frient ^-^
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participateghhh
I Love these comments with flagsresearch
Titles & Flags
information
Yeah, I prefere titles, but I like these flags too ^-^
To have flags and titles, together with Titled Comments you must use Hikari Enhanced Comments plugin too .
information
Having problems with integration
This looks like a great plugin, however I am experiencing issues adding the function for adding the comment title. I was able to get the code inserted for the form however. Everything gets hung up with wp-comments-post.php.
The basic comment information is being added but it appears that the title is not being stored, nor can I access the titles. Lastly when I view my comments it is only showing a list of comment that are supposed to have titles. The originally stored comments are no longer accessible.
I am using a basic install of 2.8.4 with very minimal ( to no) customizations. Please help, I hope its a simple fix. Thanks.marketing
name attribute
Hello.
I’ve visited your site and indeed you have a "Subject" field on your comment form. But it’s using a
name="subject"
attribute.For the title field to work, it must have
name="hikari-titled-comments"
, if possibleid="hikari-titled-comments" name="hikari-titled-comments"
. It’s the name attribute that the browser uses to set the parameter’s name that’s sent to the server, and it’s the parameter’s name that is used by the plugin to gather the comment title.Try changing your input’s name and id and see if it works .
Here is the testing site
Thanks for your reply, however the website where I have this installed is : http://kmbackup.com/hello-world (http://kmbackup NULL.com/hello-world)
The comment field has already been applied but I am experiencing the same issues as I mentioned previously. I hope that clarifies everything.information
working tests
Ok, in that site it’s right :D
Let’s try a few tests then.
If these don’t work, then there’s something wrong with plugin installation. I never tested it with WP 2.8.4, but I don’t see anything stopping this version to work.
Try totally deleting plugin files and reinstalling it, see if you can get admin interfaces to work with comment titles, and when it works then you see if theme is properly customized.
Your theme is very customized and it has some strange code, it doesn’t seem to have space in each comment for its title. Make sure you are using
hkTC_comment_title()
function on it to print titles.feedback
Plugin in not working
researchI just tried uninstalling the plugin. When this happens I have full functionality of my edit-comments.php. When the plugin is activated again. I lose the ability to manage the comments. In addition, there is no title that displays in the interface.
After installing the upgrade to 2.9.2 it appears that everything is working now. Not sure why that makes a difference but everything looks perfect after the upgrade. Thanks for all of the great plugins. I hope this others find this plugin and support issue helpful.homepage
2.9 required!
participate
Ahh!!!
Hikari Titled Comments requires WordPress 2.9!! It uses comments metadata and this features isn’t available in 2.8!
Really sorry, I should have noted when you said 2.8.4 but forgot about it! Normally my plugins require 2.8, but this one requires 2.9!
If you use the plugin on 2.8, everytime it tries to access comments metadata it breaks WordPress, because the function/database doesn’t exist.
I plan adding PHP and WP version checks to all my plugins, once it’s done they’ll just inform that current version isn’t supported and shutdown graciously :)
Sorry again for my mistake, and tnx for testing 2.9 and fiding the problem!
homepage
Automatic Subject in replies: RE:XXXX
Dear Hikari–
Thanks A LOT for your very useful plugin! I have two questions for you:
1) Is it possible to pass parent subject to the reply. For example, if the parent comment has subject "Test", the reply automatically has subject "RE: Test" (and the user can change it, if the user wants);
2) Is it possible that when a user edits a comment, the Subject text field appears above rather than below the comment body?
Thanks!
Eugene
homepage
Requests
Yeah I also love it :D
1) That can be done… but it’d need to be a request for a new feature. And I’m damn busy, I already have pending requests and I’ll be out of home for a few weeks, and IDK what will happen later… maybe my time in PC will be 0 for some months.
And also, I don’t see much real need for that feature. Comment titles would get underused if we have a lot of Re: titles. It’s better if each comment has its own, unique, title, ppl would even be discourage to set a real title if a Re: one is already there. For replying comments pointing to the comment they are replying, we already have threaded comments feature that deals with it.
2) I’d really love if that was possible, indeed I wanted title field to go below URL field.
But that’s not possible :( Only way to add new fields to pages like Edit Comment is to use metabox, and plugin metaboxes are forced to go below core ones. Since I developed Hikari Titled Comments I worked further on metaboxes and maybe that’s possible with some hacking. I’ll try to do it and enhance the title field in the future :)
Past months I was dedicated to develop plugins I needed and last month I was publishing some of them. I have a lot of enhancements to do on all of them, I’ve been learning a lot and oldest plugins are outdated and their code isn’t top quality. I have a lot of things to do, and time is getting rarer. But I’ll do it :)
Validation of the title form
research
Thanks, Hikari, for your reply. I use discussions for teaching for more than a decade and automatic refiller of title is a very good idea for human interactions. I wonder if you can share your idea how to do that — major steps — and I can try to develop it myself and share if I'm successful. What do you think?
By the way, I just want to share that I managed to add validation of the title form. First, I added the plugin "Comment Validation " from http://bassistance.de/wordpress-plugin-comment-validation/ (http://bassistance NULL.de/wordpress-plugin-comment-validation/) and then I added
to the comments.php description of the title text input:
It's very simple and works really well. This prevents people to leave empty title…
Possibilities
Nice! Tnx a lot for the required feature! :D I’m gonna take a look on it later! I don’t want it in my site (I don’t like blocking comment creation), but I wanted to implement it and didn’t know how!
For implementing the Re: feature, you must find out the comment parent, to know its title. That can be done getting its parent using the field
$comment->comment_parent
then processing it as you want.The problem is how to do it, since WordPress’ threaded comments feature allows comment form to move freely among comments… If JavaScript is disabled it’s easy, on every request to reply a comment you get the desired parent and create the default title. But when it’s done by JavaScript you must do it by JavaScript too, and
comment-reply.js
doesn’t support hooks.I’ve had the need to execute custom code when comment form is moved and I’m gonna develop hooks for that code allowing anybody to hook its events, but I didn’t have time to develop it yet and when it’s done I’ll still have to create a patch suggesting the enhancement, pray for them to accept it and still wait the patch be committed… I doubt that will be finished in 2010 :(
Currently, the title input field is responsibility of the theme, Hikari Titled Comments only captures submitted form and verifies if it has the title parameter. So it would still require a new function to print possible default titles inside the input, and require themes to be updated to use that function.
WordPress 3.0 brought the new function
comment_form()
, making Core build the comment form, with options to add new fields to it, that will make it possible for any plugin to add custom fields without theme intervention, in themes that support Core’s comment form. But of course I still need to learn the new feature, implement it, and themes must be updated to usecomment_form()
.Another option is, when a comment is created, set its default title when none is provided. That’s much simpler, but it may be intrusive creating titles that commentator didn’t provided. Some forum engines do that, but they allow poster to edit his post after being created… WordPress doesn’t allow commentator to edit a comment after it’s sent. Anyway, the feature can be provided and each site admin choose to use it or not.
The function
postingComment()
handles comment creation, if a title is provided it creates the metadata, and if none then it does nothing. It’s a matter of adding anelse
statement and setting a default title based on$comment->comment_parent
. That’s by far the easiest solution.The problem is that in a few hours I’ll leave home and only be back on saturday, to stay only until sunday and leave again. And IDK what will happen after that, so I’ll be unable to update the plugin in the near future and even unavailable to approve and reply comments in middle of week.
But I’ll be back, someday ^^
participate
Old-fashioned threaded discussion forum on WordPress
Dear Hiraki and everybody–
Thanks for the encouragement and useful info. I cannot believe myself but I've managed to solve the problem and designed successfully passing subject from the parent posting. Even more, in the process I developed an Old-fashioned Threaded Discussion Forum on WordPress — my initial goal. Granted, my solution is probably VERY "dirty", local, and opportunistic. My main way of designing was to try to turn emerging problems into opportunities for my overall design of an Old-fashioned Threaded Discussion Forum on WordPress and I've learned a lot. Before presenting my "saga" (that ran yesterday into 3am), let me provide several disclosures:
1) My overall goal was to develop an Old-fashioned Threaded Discussion Forum on WordPress that still used by many forums including by Microsoft. I use webs for teaching and my experimentation shows that these "messy" forums fit the best human ecology of communication when people can in charge of changing themes.;
2) I'm very new in php, WordPress, and MySQL. My very light programming background is in MS SharePoint, JavaScript, and MS SQL server. thatandaannnnnnddddkkkkaaakk
3) I wonder if my "quick-and-dirty" solution is based on exploitation the theme I use — "Prosumer 1.9.1 " that supports thread and nested comments. I do not how much one can generalize it to other themes. Also, I'm sure that my solution is not elegant and probably laughable for a professional. But it works.
Step1. By placing the cursor on the comment Reply links, I have notice that the variable Replytocom passes the Comment ID. As little as I know PHP, I now that it is very easy to pass variable via link using
$_GET['replytocom'];
statement. However, the problem was that when I click in the Reply link, for some reason the link with the Replytocom variable did not appear in the URL address window and thus, the statement did not work.Step2. I have notice that when I deleted the
<div id="respond" class="comform">
statement from comment.php, the Reply link appeared in the URL and I could pass the Replytocom variable to php variable $replyID that I created$replyID=$_GET['replytocom'];
— placed it just above the script initating the Reply input area in comment.php. Deleting the statement above created the new problem: the Reply input area was always on the bottom of the page and not after the parent comment to which it would be a reply. I spent some time searching for a solution until I realized that it was blessing for my overall goal of creating Threaded Discussion Forum rather than a problem (see Step 4).Step 3. As soon as, I got the parent comment ID in the
$replyID
, I could place it in Hikari’s beautifully desinged input field for his Subject text window (that he calls "Comment Title". Here is it:I want to apologize to Hikari and the whole community because I had to destroy some of Hikari’s script, namely:
I did not know how to embed my new php script into overall php script created by Hikari (I like that he set to check if his plugin exists!). Probably it is very easy but it is above me now….
Please, notice that I added "RE: " to the parent subject as in Old-fashioned Threaded Discussion Forum (and emails) it is done. I also used the conditional statement
if ($replyID!="") {
(see the script above) to add the parent comment's subject ONLY when the Reply link is hit.Step 4. I suddenly realized that the fact that the Reply input window remains always at the bottom of the page was good, not bad. I did not like how it was below all nested postings so a user may be confused and not see well the original comment that he or she was replying anyway. However, when the Reply input window is down, how can the user see the parent comment? Since I kept the parent comment ID in the $replyID variable I started learning WordPress function syntax, which is VERY user-friendly and intuitive, to create the parent comment posting. I decided to include the parent comment' Subject, Avatar, Author, Date, Time, and Text:
It worked great!
Step 5. Finally (but it took me some time!), the remaining problem was that after a user clicks Reply, the focus of the page remained where the parent comment was and did not go to the Reply input windows, located on the bottom of the page. Actually, Reply link had this ending:
Replytocom=XXX#respond
(where XXX is the parent comment ID). The bookmark #respond did not work after I cut the<div id="respond" class="comform">
statement. Initially I wanted to use this bookmark to pointed it for the Reply input windows at the bottom of the page BUT for some reason, unknown for me, it did not work leading to problems with the script. I suspect that it is used by some hidden scripts. Anyway, I decided to create a new bookmark that I called "post" for thebeginning of the Reply input windows:Then I decided to capture the URL of the page, updated the new bookmark #post and reload the page:
Folks, do not be scared by this script that I stole from the Internet! I googled on "Getting the current full URL in PHP" and on "Reloading The Page". I placed this script just before the script above.
And that is it. I also use the Collapsible Comment Plugin to make my forum.
I hope that I did not bored you with my "saga" and solution that people who are interested in Old-Fashioned Threaded Discussion Forum on WordPress can use…
Eugene
Wordpress as a forum
wow that was epic! :P
I didn’t fully understand what you did, but I’ll try to help…
Step1: where’s that link? probably it’s using JavaScript to move the comment form instead of sending a request to the server, and in that case of course PHP won’t receive it and page won’t reload. That’s what I said, the same thing may be done by JavaScript or PHP, so we’d need to implement it twice… or disable
comment-reply.js
.Step2:
<div id="respond">
is a WordPress standard and can’t be removed. It’s the div that surrounds the comment form, andid="respond"
is used bycomment-reply.js
to find the comment form and move it.Instead of removing the div, you should just not enqueue
comment-reply.js
and it would work ;)Step3: As I said, title input field is currently the theme’s responsibility. The code I provided is just a suggestion on how to do it and can be changed as needed. Testing if plugin functions and classes are available before using them is a "design pattern" that we should always follow ;)
You could do the following to implement your code:
Note that
hkTC_comment_title()
already echoes the title and returns nothing, so you don’t need to and shouldn’t echo/print that function. It also has more parameters that you can use to make its use more confortable.Step4: that’s really a problem, I think Kubrick is the father of moving comment form to the end of a comment, below all its nested comments, and not immediately below the comment that’s being replied.
When Threaded Comments was added to WordPress Core and the feature was implemented in Kubrick, it seems their idea was to put comment form in the place the created comment would go. That highlights and valorizes the Threaded Comments feature, but it confuses commentators that are more interesting in just commenting, and not see how geek is the feature.
They get confused when comment form is moved, and it’s much more useful to have the replying comment on sight then seeing where their new comment will go when created. When using a reply feature, we wanna see the comment we’re replying, we’re not worried with the site layout and where our comment will live its life.
The reply link is generated by the function
comment_reply_link()
. It receives an array as parameter (seeing on the code now I remember that Kubrick doesn’t implement comments markup, it just uses WordPress Core’s, so it’s Core’s fault), and one of possible parameters is'add_below'
, that has the HTML id that will be used to put comment form.I won’t explain it in details, but you can just create an area in the bottom of your comment layout and give it an id, add this id to
comment_reply_link()
‘s parameters and comment fom will start being moved below the comment it’s replying to, above all nested comments, and not at the very bottom of the comment and below all nested ones. You can test clicking reply links in my site and you’ll see the effect, I implemented it properly on my theme ;)Step5: like I said, #respond is WordPress standard and must be present in all comments areas. You broke the standard, had problems because of it and had to hack stuff to fix it. Never do that, you’ll end up with more problems in the future :P
Having a forum in WordPress is very desired. phpbb has a feature that we can create blogs and each post automatically creates a topic in the forum area where visitors can comment and talk, but post and topic are in separated areas and just link each other. There’s also another forum engine that treats first topic post (the op) as the main text and all subsequent posts as comments to it, and even leaves the op in top of all pages of the topic.
ppl that have a lot of comments wanna merge them all together, having commentators talking as if they were in a forum, with the post and all its features being the op and comments as remaining topic posts. I’ve even seen commentators calling WordPress sites as forum because of the amount of comments.
I’ve never admin a forum, but maybe bbPress or buddyPress has features that can enhance "comments as forum posts", replacing comments to forum posts and effectively turning WordPress posts into forum topics. If they don’t have, that feature should be implemented, with real threaded posts as we have threaded comments and so on.
I’ve been working on enhancing comments features to make them more post-like while keeping comments’ strictier security. Titled Comments is one of these features, Hikari Enhanced Comments has a package with a few more, and I have some more features to implement and publish. Recently I updated my theme to show commentators info (country, OS, browser and handheld).
With all these features together it would just be a matter of designing a proper theme with a layout that would ressemble a forum to have a real "WordPress as a forum" look & feel, or having a forum managed by WordPress! :D
feedback
Check Out the SEO Super Comments Plugin
marketing
Interesting thread. Just started playing around with your plugin to incorporate it into my premium theme (Talian 5, though I'm rebranding the name in the next update).
I've got your plugin working in my next version (just on my development server) and have been using a customised version of another plugin called SEO super Comments (by Vladamir Provolic: he makes some really good plugins) and been trying to pull the comments titles into the output of the SEO Super Comments output. No joy so far, can't seem to pull anything directly from the commentmetadata table!
My customised version (heavily hacked and only works with Talian) use the first X number of words from the comment as the title element of the comment post. What I want to do is take the comment title from your plugin as the title element for the comment posts created by the other plugin and after reading this thread it kind of fits in with what you were discussing.
I linked to the Talian support page which includes over 400 comments. If you look at the bottom of reasonable size comment you'll find a link to the comment posts. I'm going to try to pull together your comment title on those pages along with the RE: concept above.
Will drop a comment if I get it working. When I release the next version will be using it on the site I linked to and will have thousands of Talian theme users potentially using it (will have it as an on/off option rather than on by default).
Your comment editor wouldn't let me paste some text I copied from a PHPMyadmin window. Got a security warning so typed it. Same issue with select all the text of this comment and copy, in FireFox used Edit >> Copy to copy the text (like to keep a copy of my comments on others sites: really sucks when you type something and a browser crashes or a spam filter deletes your comment :-)).
David
Interesting dude, I’m happy my pluing is being useful.
Keep us updated about your progress. Unfortunately I've been low on time and can't help you in your project, but I hope you are succeeded.
You can use the function hkTC_get_comment_title($comment) to retrieve a comment's title, then process the string as you like.
gl :)
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I got it working as I wanted, see it in action at http://www.stallion-theme.com/stallion-seo-theme-comment-title-feature (http://www NULL.stallion-theme NULL.com/stallion-seo-theme-comment-title-feature)
There's a test comment (quick review of your plugin) uses the comment title as the title element etc.. for the output of the SEO Super Comment plugin.
Haven't tried to code in the re: concept yet, might not in hindsight as will add RE: to the title element of those comment pages which has no SEO value.
Sent you a backlink from the above page and left your copyright info intact with the plugin file.
BTW speaking of links, you should look into removing nofollow from your site and any plugins you develop, nofollow deletes link benefit. I noticed a fair number of nofollow links on your site (have a FireFox extension that puts a line through nofollow links, an SEO consultant thing:-))
David
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Very nice, I loved your theme. I suggest, instead of using paragraph with strong, use a header element, it's more Semantic.
It would be interesting to add Re: title for new comments. I personally wouldn't use it but it seems some sites would benefit from it.
I also verify nofollow links, indeed I have a yet-to-be-published plugin that highlights it, but it doesn't matter because my plugin obfuscates all links. My idea is in the future, when I have the time, develop a JavaScript plugin that would make all links marked as nofollow to open in another tab. If you notice, my posts are XHTML 1.1 valid (ols posts aren't, and a couple plugins make all pages not valid, but my theme is and my posts are, I'm making new content be so that when I have the time to fix the issues I won't have to bother with new posts…), so I can't use target=blank on them, that's why I wanna replace this feature by a JavaScript implementation.
It's sad I need to have a cheap full-time job to live, I wanted to dedicate 100% to WordPress and software development in general, I'd earn much more money if this activity could be a stable job.
But gl in your project, tell me if you finished it and if you want I can add the future to my plugin :)
Really sorry for not being of much help.
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I went with strong on the markup so very little SEO benefit was used on the comment titles. Ideally headers (H*) which have SEO value would be left entirely down to the site owner, whether to add content to them. Although some think strong has SEO value, I'm not convinced and it it does will be minor relative to headers. Suppose I could use a style to give them no SEO value at all (probably will now).
Nofollow is a major problem for WordPress users, each nofollow link no matter how it's generated wastes link benefit.
I noticed the nofollow links in your links widget, each one wastes link benefit, then there's all the nofollow attributes added to comment links!
I've solved the problem in my theme, I use form button styled like text links. also use various WordPress filters to remove nofollow links from comments etc… The only nofollow links my theme hasn't removed are those added by the site owner (I assume you added the rel attribute via the links menu) and fully formed HTML links in comments. I use a filter that blocks WordPress converting a link with no HTML into an HTML link, so that solves some of them, but not the fully forme dones. On my sites I remove them manually because they waste so much link benefit.
Few weeks back managed to persuade one of the WordPress developers to remove the nofollow attribute from the Reply to comment links, so in WordPress 3.1 that will be millions of nofollow links removed from WordPress sites. One week later found a theme level solution as well :-)
I have a lot of theme customers using autoblog plugins (automated blogs from Amazon content etc…) and they generate a lot of affiliate links which are nofollow. Javascript is the way to go for hiding them (what I do with next release of my theme).
It's more than possible to make a living from WordPress, I have a business online (SEO consulting), but also make money from using WordPress which would be enough money to give up a day job and the WordPress money is more a hobby than something I do to survive from.
David
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Header has no SEO value. It's about Semantic.
And look closer, all these links are obfuscated. They exist only when JavaScript creates them, so whether or not nofollow is in them, search engines can't see them :) My intention is really to not allow search engines to see those links, only humans on browsers should be able to indentify their URL.
Just read how I do it: Hikari Email & URL Obfuscator
I was making some good money from WordPress consulting, but it's not reliable, anytime I can stay long time without any client and no money. A stable job here pays me very low but the money is always coming, and in some time I'll try to get a bigger salary.
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Headers almost certainly have SEO value, I've ran hundreds of SEO tests over the past decade and though headers are a difficult one to test, the tests suggest they have value.
I had a look at the obsfucator plugin page and if it works sounds interesting, I use a bit of advanced javascript and CSS to hide affiliate links etc… from search engines, but it does mean a percentage of non search engine visitors don't see the links (they just see the anchor text). I don't know of a 'good' way to show javascript hidden links to real visitors without using cloaking. I just incorporated the javascript into my theme as have alot of people using it who autoblog.
Are you using the obsfucator plugin on this site? I used Chrome with Javascript turned off (saw your message about javascript being used on the site etc…) and when viewing source there are standard html links with nofollow attributes which if Google sees them the way I see them they delete link benefit.
Unless you are using some form of search engine specific cloaking (which is generally a bad idea to serve Google someting your other visitors don't see) it looks to me like javascript isn't acting on the links.
Links to look at:
Twitter, Posts feed, comments feed, comment reply links and links related to comments (author link etc…).
These all have nofollow links (there's a lot of them) that are deleting your link benefit!
I'll takea look at your plugin, see what it does as if it works would be something to work alongside autoblogs potentially.
Take a look at any page under http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/ (http://www NULL.google-adsense-templates NULL.co NULL.uk/) with comments and check out author links, they are form buttons, Login links are form buttons as well. I have URLs like the the one I just pasted above not being converted to links (stays as text) and have turned nofollow off links of full html links within comments off and then delete any added by visitors. This way I can still add full clickable links from comments that aren't nofollow and if a visitor adds a link I'm happy with I won't replace it with the text version of a link. It's all dealt with at theme level.
There are no nofollow links on my sites and I create quite a lot of sites with affiliate links off them and wouldn't send a link to an affiliate.
BTW you are having the same issue I had with my theme on sites with deep threaded comments, the width of the comment becomes quite narrow. I had to reduce the padding/margin of each comment to fit more in. You have quite wide margins between the threaded comments.
David
Well my plugin obfuscates links pretty well. They are built by JavaScript when available and by CSS when not, and I don't see spammers and search engines doing the mess to build them in the near future. For visitors with JavaScript enabled, unobfuscated links have all features of normal links…
I just forgot to say (or you didn't read it plugin info fully :P ), internal links don't need to be obfuscated so they aren't by default. Just try searching for links pointing out of my site (and a few that I whitelisted) and you'll see them working. It's easier to just try the plugin with your own tests. Of course I'm using it on this site, I developed it just to be used on my sites! :D
My point is that links I don't want search engines to see doesn't matter having nofollow, because they aren't seen at all. And links I don't obfuscate are as I want them to be.
Are you saying that adding nofollow to internal links isn't good? I don't remember adding nofollow to them, but as I've read it's irrelevant. I use a lot of internal links in my texts, because I make posts about a subject and then everytime I talk about that subject I just link back to that post, and use relevant keyworks on the link text. These links I'm sure aren't with nofollow because I use my Hikari Internal Links to build those links.
I just suggest you to not add those features to a theme, making them "theme level". Themes are meant to be visual only, oriented to build HTML. Any feature not visual related should be implemented in a plugin. WordPress offers enought filters to allow plugins access relevant content and change them.
And yeah, I allow 10 nested levels in this site, and threads like this one get very deep. But I also had already the need to go up some levels to keep replying, so I can't reduce the nesting level. And I also like the current padding/margin because nestings must be evident in threads with many mixed comments.
The problem is that I designed my theme on a 1680×1050 monitor, and now most of the time I use it in a 1600×2560 monitor so my theme is optmized for large monitors. And I want it like that, because I hate themes that don't take benefit from high resolutions. It's just not so confortable for narrower monitors, but for them the plugin still lets sidebars to be hidden ;)
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i noticed that after activating this plugin, comments do not appear instantly on the page. a refresh is needed before comments appear. is this a bug?
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I doubt it, I see no reason for comments not appearing.
Most often the plugin works only in its metadata, it does no modification over original comment’s content. Only place where it modifies some core comment data is in edit-comments.php, where titles are appended in the begining of their comment_text.
I see no reason why a comment would stop appearing. But if you have any guess of what may be happening give me some clues and I’ll try to fix :)
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Dear We celebrate your job, thanks but
we want add auto closed comment date not a
Comment Title / Subject
commenters wll be choose their own comment close or delete times.
how we can entegration with your plugin
thanks for your reply
Regards
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Tnx :)
I suppose you are talking about my Titled Comments plugin, so I moved it here.
Your request is out of the scope of this plugin. You’d need a way to pick a date (JavaScript can handle that), find out how comments are closed then create a cronjob to do that when the time comes.
But hey, comments aren’t closed separately, it’s posts that are closed for new comments. Wouldn’t you me thinking about allowing commentators to edit their comments for some time then block the feature?
thanks quick reply
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Dear Hilkari,
very simple
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commenters wll be choose when close their own comments.
Regards
ok, but what do you mean with a closed comment?
By default commentators can't edit their comments after submit, so what exactally changes when a comment is closed?
Anyway, I've said how to implement the date and how to submit and store it, and how to execute some action when that date arrives. Now it's a matter of implement the "comment closing" feature :)
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one day / there day / one week / one mounth ...
can be choose comment owner.?
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Well, yes. You can use a JavaScript datepicker or some combos to let user set a date, then pass it in comment form and capture it with a plugin :)
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CAN U PREPARE * FOR US ?
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I still didn't understand what exactally you wanna do to each comment for closing it… and I never worked with JavaScript datetime.
If you wanna hire me we can talk in ICQ or MSN or another IM software to explain me in details what you want to accomplish, and I search for a JavaScript solution. Otherwise I apologize but I won't develop your request in the near future :(
I added you in my msn but didn't see you online, I also mailed you in the email you use in comments and also no answer
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thank you
marketinghi there,
thanks for all the great info on your site.i was using joomla for my site http://www.ubunifucapital.com (http://www NULL.ubunifucapital NULL.com)
but i am thinking of switching to wordpress.i am looking for any information i can find on wordpress
thanks for all the helpful infoparticipate
tnx!
hehe tnx :)
But I barely have time to maintain my plugins. I wanted to add tutorials teaching stuff that I learn while developing. I hope when I have my theme and my plugins finished I’ll have some more time to spend building content!
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