David Raynes

As you may see if you look at the comment pages on this site, you can now reply to a specific comment and it will be displayed as such when you submit your comment.

So, CommentThreads is working now. I just need to clean it and ExtendedComments up before releasing them to the public. Should only be a couple more days. Until then, here is the template code I am using on my site to display the comment threads, just to give you a taste (edited slightly for display purposes):

<MTCommentThreads>
<MTCommentThreadsIfFirst><ul></MTCommentThreadsIfFirst>
<li><div class="comment">
<a id="c<$MTCommentID$>"></a>
<h4><MTCommentTitle use_default="1"></h4>
<div class="posted">
<p class="posted">&raquo; <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1" 
no_redirect="1"$> at <$MTCommentDate$>:</p>
<p>[ <a href="<$MTCGIPath$><$MTCommentScript$>
?__mode=preview
&entry_id=<MTEntryID>
&parent_id=<MTCommentID>
&static=1">Reply to this</a> ]</p>
</div>
<$MTCommentBody$>
</div>
<MTCommentThreadsRecurse>
</li>
<MTCommentThreadsIfLast></ul></MTCommentThreadsIfLast>
</MTCommentThreads>

ExtendedComments and CommentTitles are coming along well so far. I am still working up the preview portion of the comment system, but as long as you just go ahead and post, it is working just fine. Once I get preview working, CommentThreads should follow up shortly afterwards.

Update (at 1:40 on 06/08): Okay, so I got preview working now. I was expecting it to go quickly, but not that quickly.

Recently, I have been talking with Imajes in #joiito about the port of a site to MT. This site currently has a threaded comment system, and he was looking to see if it was doable in MT. Currently, the only way to do it is via a hack, MTThreadedComments, but I thought there might be a better way to do that, especially after all the experience I have gained while working on the SubCategories plugin. So, I am going to announce the following plugins:

• ExtendedComments
• CommentTitles
• CommentThreads

ExtendedComments

ExtendedComments, as a replacement for mt-comments.cgi, will not be so much a plugin as it will be a platform for plugins. The idea here is to give plugin authors a way to add functionality to the comment system without having to write yet another MT::App class.

I envision something like the following being used in a plugin to add a handler for a new argument to the ExtendedComments cgi script:

rayners::ExtendedComments->add_param ('param_name' => \&handler);

CommentTitles

CommentTitles will provide what you would expect, titles for comments. Mostly, it is to duplicate functionality of the MTThreadedComments hack, as well as to provide me with a very basic plugin with which to test ExtendedComments.

CommentThreads

Here is the fun part. CommentThreads will provide a threaded comment system for MT users, without having to resort to patching the core files.

All three of these are still very much in the preliminary planning stages, so any and all feedback is more than welcome.