I won a free premium membership to WPMU Premium with the 2.0 version of Commentluv and let me tell you, it was one of the best prizes I have ever received! The plugins, themes and support forum were pivotal to getting The ComLuv Network up and running.

Having an account there is pretty much a must-have for anyone considering starting their own blog network on the WPMU platform, the support is first rate and the extra plugin and themes are what makes WPMu such a great platform to work with. My favorite plugin is the Supporters plugin which opens up the ability for you to create your own Typepad style blog network with users becoming “supporters” for your set price subscription which will allow them to have access to premium plugins using the premium plugins plugin (try saying that with a mouthfull of cheese!) and the premium themes plugin.

I’ve got all three (and more) running on The ComLuv Network and they’re already getting me subscription payments that are sent to my Paypal account every month, all I have to do is keep the site growing and provide the things that people want and it should start paying for itself and maybe make some profit before Christmas!

If you’re familiar with WordPress then it’s just a small hop, skip and jump to upgrade to WPMu so you should take a ganders at their site and enter their contest to be in with a chance to win a years premium membership worth $419

All you have to do is visit this page and follow the instructions. Simple!

This is a wonderful talk by Elizabeth Gilbert of “Eat Pray Love” #1 best seller fame. She talks about genius and a different way of looking at it (or, an older way of looking at it). I can’t tell you how nice it was to hear someone else explain something I’ve felt myself. How you get your genius or how an idea/poem/story/invention et al come to you.

For me, it’s code. Or more accurately, algorithms. I’m not a coding genius, far from it! but, I can see a picture of what needs to be done for a particular idea. It’s just a case of finding the right syntax to fit the slots together.

My code comes to me and waits patiently in the corner. Sometimes for days, just poking me gently now and then until I get distracted by something. Then it seeps into my head. From then on, all time stands still and music is made. Sure, I can’t play all the instruments well and my composition may be basic but, a genie comes to play in my head and we always have painful fun learning enough new code so I can get it out of my head before I go crazy.

Watch the video, you’ll know what I’m talking about. All people that create things will understand what she goes on about. olé olé

plus, she sounds really clever, I like her much and I think we should have dinner one day.

phew, I have managed to get back to the pc after a little while away and just in time (well, close) to announce the winners of the PacktPub contest.

All someone had to do was visit the PacktPub website and choose a book they want to win, link to it in the comments and post about the contest on their site.

First winner is Dominique Goh from http://www.dominiquegoh.com/ who wins a WordPress Theme Design book by Tessa Blakeley Silver

Second winner is Kelly from http://www.myqute.com who wins the WordPress for Business bloggers book.

well done you two! I’ll send your email addresses to packtpub tomorrow (just time for you to change your mind about which book if you email me quickly) and they will send you your books as a PDF attachment soon after.

The Contest did start and after my host managed to kill a nasty process eating thingy on the server, we have our first winner!

Witchypoo not content with winning the sneaky quick contest has continued rampaging through the contest blogs and leaving great comments, she ends up back here and wins again!

Look how the win appears in the comment.

The next prize will be available tomorrow but don’t rest your keyboard yet! the more comments you make on the day before the prize is available then the more chance you have of winning!

claim instructions are sent by the system to the email address registered at commentluv.com so now is a good time to make sure that you can receive emails from commentluv.com. You can do a lost password routine and not click the link sent to you to make sure you can receive emails from my server.

I see a lot of bounces come back from peoples mail boxes saying that it’s full, if the claim email doesn’t get through to you then you can’t claim. Check it today!

I spent the entire day (minus a 2 hour trip to the haberdashery <- don’t ask!) coding the final pages and scripts for the contest. I have the prizes up and descriptions entered. I was originally going to do 1 gadget per day for a whole month but I neglected to work in how much it would be to post them all!

I’ve had to drop it down to 2 weeks worth of prizes and threw in some cash prizes too. It will work with all sites that registered for the contest (including blogger and typepad). Prizes will be awarded to the commenters on those sites depending on a complex algorithm worked out by monkeys. Commenters need only to register their url at commentluv.com and enter a profile description to qualify and then they can go off and comment on all the registered sites and maybe one of their last blog posts will come back as a winning notification.

it will look something like this…
JoeBlog’s last blog post…CommentLuv Winner! Comment author has just won a prize
The heart box will show the details of the winner if it gets won.

I’ll get some instructions up today and set it to publish at midnight on commentluv.com.

keep an eye out!

I’m doing some testing with live data for the CommentLuv contest, there may be some extra bits added on the end of the pull down box for debug info for qualified commenters (those with a CommentLuv account and profile entered).

While it’s doing it’s thing so I can see the stats of how many and where etc, it will be doing a dry run for the winners. This little dress rehearsal will choose the winner in the same way it will be done when the contest goes live but instead of returning the notification, it will prepend a dot (.) to the post title.

There are 2 dots to be found and they only appear on the last blog posts of a winner who is qualified and commenting on a blog that is registered for the contest. If you have a last blog post that gets ‘chosen’ for this dry run then CONGRATULATIONS! you win a $20 Amazon gift certificate. You need to contact me so I can arrange to send you the prize (after I confirm the data in the database).

You can see a list of blogs who have registered for the contest here

it’s only for today so there’s not much time left!! get commenting!

A huge thanks to all those that voted for CommentLuv in the WPMU plugin contest. CommentLuv won the peoples choice awards!
US$250 from the team at Bloglo.co.il
US$100 fromTrent Adams
WPMU DEV Premium yearly account

In the spirit of the way CommentLuv gives something back to the blogs community members, I have decided to use most of the cash prize money as the fund for a great CommentLuv giveaway!

The particulars are still being arranged while I collect the money from the prize donors and set up some code and pages to administrate the contest. This should be around the beginning of next week…

the best bit is, to be in with a chance to win you just need to be a CommentLuv.com member and make comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs (latest version 2.5.4). A random comment will get a prize winning notification URL instead of their last blog post and as long as that comment is published with the link then BOTH the owner of the blog AND the comment author win a spot prize of real cash money!!

rules and yadayada will be published near the time the contest will start..

thanks again for voting for CommentLuv. It had nearly 50% of the total vote at the end! awesome.

Congratulations to Yan from thoushallblog.com for winning the 100$ contest for the beta testers!!

He qualified by being a beta tester who provided feedback on the new version when it came out and leaving a comment on the contest post. He was allocated some numbers and if one of them matched the bonus number drawn on the UK lottery today he would get the prize.

here’s his comment allocation

Congratulations Yan, your allocated number 2 came up as the bonus number and you win the 100$.

Let me know you know on this post and I’ll wing your money off to you!

and the results of the national lottery

More contests on the way!

Stay tuned for more contests to do with commentluv where just being a registered member and commenting on an ACL blog could win you a prize.

CommentLuv is now released to the Codex and is officially at final version 2.1. All beta testers need to upgrade their beta plugins because the remote files have changed…

Here’s a list of all the beta testers who helped get CommentLuv to version 2.1 and their allocated numbers for entry into the contest to win the 100$ … if any of their first 3 numbers match the bonus number drawn this Saturday 27th September on the UK Saturday Lotto Draw then they win 100$!

Here’s the twist for all you testers, you have all got 1 number shared with one other person and if it’s that number that wins, you both win 100$ each!!! OMG!!

Good luck everyone and thanks so much for the feedback and help…

You will need to make sure you have CommentLuv version 2.1 running and working on your blog by the draw date to qualify for the prize!

Yan from
http://thoushallblog.com/ was talking about 10 plugins to install
has 1,2,3 and 43 as extra

Sunil from
http://www.bloggerslab.com/ was talking about Great plugins to build a community
has 4,5,6 and 43 as extra

Suzanne from
http://dotcommogul.net/ was talking about flipping out
has 7,8,9 and 44 as extra

David from http://www.yogamatsclothesdvds.com/ was talking about Listening to yoga music
has 10,11,12 and 44 as extra

Dragon Blogger from
http://www.dragonblogger.com/ was talking about how to fix your blogs 404 page
has 13,14,15 and 45 as extra

Lyman Reed from
http://freepdmaterial.com/ was talking about A free PDF for Self Empowerment
has 16,17,18 and 45 as extra

Larry from
http://www.larryhnetka.com/wordpress/ was talking about being On the Road again
has 19,20,21 and 46 as extra

Sire from
http://wassupblog.com/ was talking about Joining the F Group
has 22,23,24 and 46 as extra

Anti Scams Product Reviews from
http://www.antiscams.info/ was talking about the Mona Vie Scam
has 25,26,27 and 47 as extra

Witchypoo from
http://psychicgeek.com/ was talking about Anxiety
has 28,29,30 and 47 as extra

Minadin from
http://www.wheresmydrink.com/ was talking about Sniper in the left tower!
has 31,32,33 and 48 as extra

Chas from
http://www.creative-lifestyles.com/ was talking about Fear of Food
has 34,35,36 and 48 as extra

Rhys from
http://biznz.org/ was talking about Hosting from Hell
has 37,38,39 and 49 as extra

Tata from
http://www.imnotbeautifullikeyou.com/ was talking about Work and Play
has 40,41,42 and 49 as extra

You can download the very latest version at the WordPress Plugin Repository for CommentLuv

On the off chance that the winner doesn’t qualify for the prize because they haven’t got version 2.1 installed and working at the time of the draw then their extra number partner gets their numbers too (so you could potentially win 200$)

You have 4 days to get version 2.1 installed and working, please let me know if you need help to get it working. It should go through ok once you check your settings page after install.

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