Category: World Wide Web

Just an implementation note…I recently spent several hours researching and trying out comment engines. The various hosted systems like YACCS can be quite nice, but when their servers slow down it slowed my site down. There are some nice PHP systems, but that was a learning curve I wanted to avoid. I ended using SnorComments2, a simple little Perl-driven system. Set up was painless, it doesn’t require any additional Perl modules, the interface is highly customizable, and it even has its own little admin interface.

Within Tinderbox, I set up a Boolean attribute for notes that let’s me turn on comments or not for each note.

Because the Noisy One values your opinion he asks, should Noise Between Stations offer you, my dear visitor, the ability to add comments to each post? Your answer here. (Survey closed.)

Update: The survey revealed 75% in favor. Comments included:

…you might find them annoying after awhile, and after awhile you might find that you are writing more for the audience than yourself…and after awhile you might start to filter your own writing.

Too many cooks spoil the soup. If I wanted to read others’ comments, I’d read their weblogs. Buck the trend and keep NBS comment-less…

Let your thoughts stand in splendid isolation, i’ll link to them then we can all argue over at my place…

Of course! finally!

On occasion I’d like to bat around an idea here, but I don’t want to change the nature of what I originally wanted NBS to be, so I plan on putting in comments sometimes.

It’s funny when I see a high-traffic site link to something interesting on a lower-traffic site, and in so doing ‘stealing’ the community by hosting comments regarding said link. This isn’t my reason for wanting comments here, but it’s worth observing.

There’s a sidebar on your blog and it too is a blog. But it’s simply a list of links. And the list is powered by your visitors. They stop by and, like a coin in the metal box at the cathedral, leave you a link. The metal box in this case is a text box with a ‘Post it’ button. No seperate pages, no passwords, nothing else. The page refreshes and the link is added instantaneously.

(I kinda like the cathedral metaphor, because the donations benefit all future visitors)

I’m sure this is a quick scripting excercise, but is anyone already doing this, or does the script already exist?

Testing, testing…great, this seems to work. As threatened, I’ve moved my blog from Blogger to Tinderbox. As a first step I’ve simply replicated all the current functionality, so you shouldn’t notice much difference. Links should open in new windows these days.

Gradually I’ll be using all the goodies of Tinderbox to do fun new stuff here, and will explain the reasoning behind the move. But I need more time.

I haven’t had the chance to test my layout with all of the usual browsers, if you see something odd please let me know.