[Tom C.]

Hello. I just newly installed Commentics on my personal blog website. Wonderful script here with no problems. Easy installation. Everything installed smoothly.

I just wanted to share a couple changes I've initially made and possibly consider them for a future release of Commentics.

• "Comments" header changed from <h3> to <h2>. "Add Comment" I left as <h3>.
  
• "No comments" text changed to "No Comments. Be the first!"
  
• Email: Subscriber Notification. Moved "To cancel your subscription..." to last line.
  

Also, I had changed my character encoding to UTF-8 as required (was using iso-8859-1). However, after doing so I had a bunch of little black diamonds with question marks inside them scattered throughout my website pages. This was remedied by deleting each space and inserting a new space.

Only one issue, but not a big deal:
For some reason I can't get my htaccess file to run when saved as UTF-8, but runs perfectly saved as ANSI. When saved as UTF-8 I receive an error 500 code with a bunch of garbage characters as a flag. I have all my documents saved as ANSI, but am using the UTF-8 character encoding meta tag on them. I hope I'm not asking for trouble with this!

Thanks for the excellent script, and am looking forward to the next version. I like many of the changes as shown on Github.

Tom C.
Cleveland, Ohio (USA)

[Steven]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your suggestions, it's much appreciated. I'll consider them for the next version.

I was wondering what you think of the following email subjects. I can't quite decide if they're any good or not.

User

Comments: Confirmation
Comments: Notification

Admin

New Comment: Okay
New Comment: Approve
Comments: New Flag
Comments: New Ban
Comments: Password Reset

[Tom C.]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your suggestions, it's much appreciated. I'll consider them for the next version.

I was wondering what you think of the following email subjects. I can't quite decide if they're any good or not.

User

Comments: Confirmation
Comments: Notification

Admin

New Comment: Okay
New Comment: Approve
Comments: New Flag
Comments: New Ban
Comments: Password Reset

I like these email Subjects. There are only a couple that vary from the existing default. But these are to the point and easy to prioritize when scanning my inbox. I like the briefness of them. Some people do find long email Subjects annoying and distracting. But these short ones are to the point.

One that I have changed is "Comments: Confirmation Required"
I changed mine to: "Comments: Subscription Confirmation"

Also, Admin "New Comment: Approval"
I changed mine to "New Comment: Approval Required"

Also, I don't see any key words in these Subjects that would be flagged as spam.

If there's anything you need help with, I have free time throughout my day.

I couldn't figure out how to write a draft topic/article on the Admin WiKi. A couple WiKi pages are blank that could use a few topics (eg. where to find the <h3> tags).

[Steven]

I like how you've used the word "subscription". I remember not too long ago when one person thought that the email was to confirm that he wanted to post his comment! Adding the word "subscription" should help with this. Similarly, I think "Approval Required" is a good change as it helps to convey that an action is needed.

So, I'm quite happy with these:

User

Comments: Subscription Confirmation
Comments: Notification

Admin

New Comment
New Comment: Approval Required
Comments: New Flag
Comments: New Ban
Comments: Password Reset

Regarding the wiki, I had to disable the registration system a while ago because it was being targeted by spam. I've enabled it now so that you can register. After you register I'll need to approve your account. I'll do that as soon afterwards as I can.

There's one thing that I could use some advice with. What I'd really like to do in the next version is to allow for users to subscribe to email notifications without having to post a comment. I do have an idea of how it would look and work, but it would be good to hear what your thoughts are about it first.

[Steven]

What a nightmare. I had to disable the registration system not long after enabling it because it was getting flooded with spam registrations. It could probably benefit from some sort of captcha. I've set you up manually in the admin panel. You should have received an email.

[Tom C.]

There's one thing that I could use some advice with. What I'd really like to do in the next version is to allow for users to subscribe to email notifications without having to post a comment. I do have an idea of how it would look and work, but it would be good to hear what your thoughts are about it first.

A Comment Topic Subscribe would be a very interesting and unique feature, I believe. I think it would allow a Guest who doesn't want to post a comment keep up with a topic's Comments. Or, someone may have posted a question Comment on a topic, and they'd like to receive an email when the Comment is updated, answered, or added to.

I have never seen a "Subscribe To Comments" on any Comment website without first having to post a comment. This feature is usually only offered by popular forum software, after you register first.

I think it would be an excellent feature. Allowing someone to subscribe to a Comment thread, confirm via email their Comment Topic Subscription, and Comment Reply email notifications giving the Subscriber the option to Unsubscribe at any time. That is something I myself would subscribe to on many websites, if they offered that feature.

[Tom C.]

There's one thing that I could use some advice with. What I'd really like to do in the next version is to allow for users to subscribe to email notifications without having to post a comment. I do have an idea of how it would look and work, but it would be good to hear what your thoughts are about it first.

Actually I did just find one website that allows for Comment Email Subscription without having to comment.
Here' a link: http://dottech.org/17516/block-ads-in-fi...ra-how-to/

The webmaster uses a link (all the way at the bottom of the page) next to the "Post Comment" icon. Just an FYI if your wanted to check it out.

[Steven]

Thanks for the link, it's really useful. It's similar to what I want to do. However I think the link to subscribe needs to be in the comments area, instead of where the form is. This is the very first obstacle for me because the comments area already has a number of items (RSS, pagination, social buttons, star rating etc) so there isn't a great deal of space available. This may not be a big problem for most people because I've noticed that many people disable some of these items (I'm thinking more of the demo where everything is enabled). I have two ideas about this. One is that I could use the middle section between the 'Sort By' menu on the left and the topic on the right. The only issue there is that the topic can in some cases require a lot of space so it might sometimes need that middle section. The second idea is that I could use one of the pagination sections. Either way, I think an important feature that is needed is to be able to move the items around using the admin panel. For example, an admin could move the 'Sort By' menu to where the top pagination is, or move the social buttons to the bottom etc.

Anyway, wherever it is, the subscribe link could consist of an email icon followed by some text such as "Email me new comments". When it's clicked, the script would scroll down to the form and the form would change from being an 'Add Comment' form to a 'Subscribe' form. The advantage of this is that the subscribe form can utilize all of the protection that the 'Add Comment' form already provides, such as the captchas. In the form there would only be the name field, email field, captchas and a subscribe button. The other fields would be hidden by JavaScript/CSS. There would probably need to be some type of limit on how many subscriptions a person can make within a certain time frame to stop someone from continually sending out subscription confirmation emails. In the Manage -> Subscriptions page, it would say whether each subscription was from a comment poster or a guest, so the admin can see how popular the feature is.

[Tom C.]

Anyway, wherever it is, the subscribe link could consist of an email icon followed by some text such as "Email me new comments". When it's clicked, the script would scroll down to the form and the form would change from being an 'Add Comment' form to a 'Subscribe' form. The advantage of this is that the subscribe form can utilize all of the protection that the 'Add Comment' form already provides, such as the captchas. In the form there would only be the name field, email field, captchas and a subscribe button. The other fields would be hidden by JavaScript/CSS. There would probably need to be some type of limit on how many subscriptions a person can make within a certain time frame to stop someone from continually sending out subscription confirmation emails. In the Manage -> Subscriptions page, it would say whether each subscription was from a comment poster or a guest, so the admin can see how popular the feature is.

I like this idea of re-using the same form elements to Email Subscribe Only with no comment. Possibly you can create a division including the "Comment" header and CSS float right the link to subscribe. Thus if there are no comments yet, the subscribe link will still be visible. Then if there are comments, maybe you could CSS float right the subscribe link just below the topic name.

Your idea is an excellent one. Is this correct? If Comment selected, show comment form. If Subscribe selected, show subscribe form. If Comment Form shown but subscribe selected, change to subscribe form.

Also allow admin to configure: "Allow xx subscription with xx minutes per user."

[Steven]

Yeah so basically by default it would show the 'Add Comment' form. If the user clicks the "Email me new comments" link, the 'Add Comment' form would change to a 'Subscribe' form (with no page reload). There would be a cancel link in the 'Subscribe' form which would change it back to the 'Add Comment' form if the user changed their mind.

Another advantage of re-using the 'Add Comment' form is that it won't bloat out the code. For this same reason, it may actually be a better option to use the existing flooding settings, rather than adding additional settings like the "Allow xx subscription with xx minutes per user."

I think improving the email subscription system is one of the keys to making the script as good as it can be. I'd like to eventually add options to subscribe to only specific comments, to admin comments only etc. Even for the user to limit the amount of emails they receive, to choose a daily round-up, or to say that they don't want to receive any emails overnight etc. Before then though, I think allowing guest subscriptions is the very first step forward so that's what I'm focussing on at the moment.