What I need

I need some help to get CommentLuv through it’s last hoop before I can release it to the world at large and my deadline for that is 25th September 2008 – the last day to enter a plugin for the WordPress MU Plugin Contest

That’s where (I hope) you come in. I have the plugin working nicely on a few blogs and the click tracking and stats are showing results for my wee group of test beds but I need a larger scale test… I’ve removed all the bugs that I can see and I’m confident that it wont do any damage because it doesn’t touch the database and most of the work is done on the client side through javascript.

The only interaction it has with the wordpress code is to listen for a single post action, if it’s a single post it puts the correct javascript in the header and that’s it. The majority of the code is the settings page and action hook code.

What you could get

Money! I’ll tell you about the money now before you get bored and miss the rest
$100 dollars by Paypal (or equivalent prize in Amazon or other voucher of your choice) for some lucky person who helps me over the next few days to a week by doing the things detailed below. The winner will be decided by the randomness of the UK lottery on Saturday 26th (1 day after the guaranteed 100 Million Euromillions jackpot which must be won!). I’ll split up the 49 numbers available equally (yes I know 49 doesn’t divide well unless it’s a 7 but we’ll work something out) between everyone and publish them at 6pm, whoever gets a match with the bonus number drawn wins the moolah.

Not just that, part of this is making and receiving comments to see if it behaves on a large scale and for that there will be a list of all those participating viewable only to those participating where you can find blogs that give 10x the luv (see how below) which will increase your traffic/readership/luv rating and more! (obviously, this needs a few people to help, I can’t do it with just 5!)

The technical bits ( )

Don’t worry! it’s not hard, just as easy as installing a plugin and registering your url with the hub site (and dancing naked in the rain).

it goes like this…

For people with WordPress own hosted blogs only

1

Download the beta of CommentLuv (version 10 pre final) and Install.

Download CommentLuv (right click and copy url to use the one click plugin updater if you use it)

If you already have CommentLuv please deactivate it first and then upload the commentluv folder overwriting the existing one and activate it in the dashboard plugins page. Go straight to the commentluv settings page under settings/commentluv and see the bit at the bottom about entering your field ID’s (it sounds nastier than it is).

You can see in your theme’s comments.php what your comment form uses for identifying the form, the name field, the url field and the comment input area. If it uses ID= then use that in the settings or if it uses name= ,enter the value in the settings page and choose “name” as the type.

There are some screenshots here at the Ajax CommentLuv Plugin page over at CommentLuv.com

It sometimes works right out the box because the default ID’s I put in there have worked on a few blogs without any need for changing. It depends on who designed your theme. Other ways to find out are to click and drag over your comment form while you are logged out of your blog and view the selection source (in firefox) or use the developer toolbar to show form information.

2

Register your url at CommentLuv.com

Pop over to my sister site CommentLuv.com and register like you would with any normal WordPress blog. Activate your registration and visit the settings page (http://www.commentluv.com/settings) whilst logged on.

There you can register your blog URL (preferably where you’ll be installing the plugin) and you will be given some code to display a verification image on your blog home page (the page pointed to by the URL you register). Once you place the code on your site you can come back to the settings page at commentluv.com and click “verify”. The site will then visit your url and look for the code.

If all goes well and it can see your site and verification it will be ready to rok (so it says)

Set your feed cache age and if you want see if it can find your feed automatically. If it can’t then you can enter it in manually if you like (although it all works better if your site has an autofindable feed which is standard in wordpress blogs)

Check for your Commentluv member ID and enter it in the box located on the plugin settings page on your blog dashboard, check that click tracking is enabled (ticked) and update your settings.

3

Register at the support forum

yes I know there’s a whole lorra registering going on but they’re all under one roof and not with any shady company and it’s all to do with CommentLuv. There you’ll be able to report any errors or suggestions and I wont need to use some sort of mass email script and email people all the time. gosh I love forums and blogs! emailing is a right pain in the arsebone. I just cannae be bothered with it!, I hate saying the same things and giving the same answers over and over again (except giving links to pages that say the things I’ve said over and over again) but… anyhoooooo

Done!

All that’s left to do is use commentluv by visiting the the blogs who use the new version and see how it plays with others. Return to the CommentLuv site often and see if the stats make sense for what you’re seeing yourself and report any anomalies or strange behaviour at the forum.

Because I will be releasing this to the plugin contest I would love for you to love it and vote for it when the time comes, it might get some more exposure and I’ll be sure to have a permanent part of the about page showing links to the people who help. New users will want to start using the plugin when it’s final as soon as possible and the links page would be a perfect place for them to start clicking through to ajax commentluv enabled blogs. (that could be you!)

Please leave a comment here or at the forum to say you’re participating

The Links:
CommentLuv Beta plugin file
CommentLuv.com hub site
FiddyP Support Forum

Oh how I love it when I’m in the zone! ovidiu from Zice has been helping me with the MU compatibility tests with the new CommentLuv (up to 2.0b r9) and we had some issues because his comment form uses name attributes for some of the fields and the plugin needed to use the ID values.

He mentioned that there are 100′s of themes made available for MU and it would be a pain to have to edit every single one to use ID attributes. At first I thought this was going to be some sort of herculean effort but it turned out my geekness surprised even me when the solution came to me so I have now updated the code to allow users to choose between name or ID for the identification of the relevant fields which should make it much easier for your average n00b to install and use CommentLuv

While I was at it, I improved the look of the commentluv.com settings page for registered users. It should make it much easier for someone to verify their site quickly and start to receive 10x the luv when they comment.

I think I’ll release it to the WordPress MU plugin contest tomorrow or the next day. It seems to be working quite well now on the few blogs that I’ve tried it on. The big test is when the masses start using it, the original plugin has been downloaded over 17000 times at the codex pages on wordpress.org!

You can download the beta version of CommentLuv here

I have a head full of ideas on what to do with CommentLuv and I’m pleased how it has come so far but I think I’m in danger of feature creep with the addition of the click tracking function. I think I shall keep this off by default and label it experimental.

I think CommentLuv is useful for quite a few reasons, one of them is finding great blogs from the interesting title under their comments and it’s nice to see a connection between commenters (I know it’s commentators but you know what I mean). I really would like to see the stats for how many blogs have reciprocal commenters and how man blogs share commenters. That would be really interesting to see, the raw data I am getting now is interesting but when I get a good interface for displaying it then it will be really interesting in w00t kind of way.

I have a busy week ahead and I know I was supposed to release the stable version this weekend but I think there are very few little things left to fix and maybe I can go ahead with the full version next week.

In the meantime, you can download the very latest version which appears to be going quite well here

Download Beta

now compatible with Brians Threaded Comments

Just deactivate the old one, upload the new one overwriting the folder and then activate again. Please check the settings page in the dashboard/settings/commentluv and of course let me know if you get any problems.

Well, I never expected to wake up this morning with jQuery going through my dream…. seems to have had some sort of effect though.. 3 hours after my Weetos…

I have CommentLuv working on a Blogger blog!!!.

see it here http://cl-jskit.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-post-before-jskit-install.html

Only problem is, now the release will be put back a week because I have thought of more options to put in and I need to tidy the MU version a little bit as well as add some pages to the support site. Registrations are going well but some people aren’t registering their url too which needs to be done for them to choose from the last 10 posts in their comment.

slowly slowly catchy monkey!

I must say thanks to the following people who have helped me get the Ajax version of CommentLuv to an installable beta state…

1. tata from imnotbeautifullikeyou.com who was the very first blog to have a installable plugin of ACL – thanks so much for the repeated re-install of the plugin to get it to a semi-working state, it really helped having you reply so quickly
2. Pacuraru Ovidiu from Zice.ro for checking for compatibility with Mu.
3. Jon from Beauty Salon Marketing for finding the kinky slash that threw a spanner in the works. (spanner removed!)
4. Byteful Traveller from Byteful Blog for making the fine looking badge used on the bottom of the comment form

I put the link to the beta version as a reply to a comment on a post from a few days ago and it’s been downloaded nearly 50 times! Either some people are lurking in the background or someone is click happy!

The new version of the Ajax CommentLuv plugin and supporting site are still in early beta but do seem to work. There’s probably some i’s to dot and t’s to cross but that’s what beta releases are all about!

The major feature is it finds the post while the visitor is typing their comment which speeds up comment posting and reduces load on the server as it’s all done on the browser side. It’ll reduce the load on my server to because it’s called with javascript and most ‘bots don’t parse that.

If you feel like being a bit of a tester, here’s the temporary download link. Please give your comments in the support forum if you have issues and I’ll do my best to fix any errors as and when they come.

So I was checking out my performancing advert on Randa Clays’ post about Trying out Google Chrome and I thought I’d give it a go myself.

ummm, could it be any faster? I thought it was obviously taking the piss somewhere. How come my site can load this fast? For the past few months I have been getting quite frustrated with how my sites perform when I load them in Firefox, even so far as to break out IE and use that when I have a lot of posts to write!!

That got me thinking (continue reading…)

I have managed to get AjaxCommentLuv working quite nicely! I’ve even added support for WordPress MU (I think). It works with logged in users who aren’t administrators on the CommentLuv site.

I wonder if I should enter this to the WordPress MU plugin contest? it might get it some good exposure!

Anyone out there with WordPress MU willing to give this first draft a try to see if AjaxCommentLuv works with your multi-user site? if you do, please let me know in the comments..

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I’ve been working on the AJAX version of commentluv for quite a while, I think I have it working ok enough for it to do it’s dry run on a blog. The functionality is fine, I just have to work on the details so it can be installed easily as a plugin.

Now, when you start to type your comment it will go off and fetch your last posts from the feed found at the URL given. It even allows you to choose which of your posts you want included.

It’s still pretty new and a bit clunky but it seems to do the job, if you’re having any issues with it please let me know!

Win your own plugin!

I’ve had some phenomenal traffic and trackbacks to the CommentLuv plugin page since I made it and with all that action it has upped the plugin page to a PR of 6.

Now, I know PR isn’t so widely worshipped as much as it used to be but, PR is like money… it’s not until you have it that you realize that it’s not that important. Unless, you don’t have it and then it seems like everything will get better if only you did have it!

So here’s an idea that could get someone the fame and fortune that comes with writing a new plugin, I’ve written a few custom plugins for this site and I thought it might be nice to run a contest for the chance for someone to be the offical site for the plugin. (beware, I have had literally thousands of comments on the commentluv page! so be prepared to get a ton of your own comments if you win)

The link for the plugin page on the plugins’ dashboard page would point to the winners site.

The winners site will be the ‘official’ place for the plugin so it will be shown in the readme, on the wordpress codex download page and anywhere else someone writes a review of the plugin. If I update the plugin then I notify you and you can update the plugin release page.

The choice of plugins:

(continue reading…)

I’ve had another few days of intensive coding and completed a few plugins that can help with the new theme.

I can’t believe that only last week I was feeling burnt out with coding! All I needed was a little “I wonder if I could …” php demon in my ear and I was off. Everything else has suffered though, I have barely talked to anyone in the past 3 days. I haven’t even answered any text messages! lol. I must be a hermit

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

(continue reading…)