FiddyP

CommentLuv has been doing really well since I launched the 2.0 version and updated the support site.

It got used by John Cow for a while which caused a flood of registrations and even influenced a few more bloggers to give it a try. John has since stopped using it in favour of his own CommentMilk (ever the original marketer) which adds all sorts of fields to his comment form for things like keyphrase, twitter url etc all of which can be integrated into CommentLuv by adding a page to the support site and no need to worry about when WP2.7 uses a new comment form format for (say that 3 times fast!) when they integrate IntenseDiscussion.

Suffice to say I’m not worried about the cow competition with authority blogs like Caroline-Middlebrook and HowToSpoter.com using CommentLuv to great effect as well as the literally thousands of fine blogs installing it every week and the millions of hits to the remote script each month prove it has quite a wide reach. Even more so when Typepad CommentLuv goes into production!

The CommentLuv.com site is approaching 1000 registered and confirmed users after just 4 weeks of operation with over 150,000 calls each day to the remote script from the thousands and thousands of blogs using CommentLuv. The heart info box introduction has been responsible for doubling the amount of registrations each day and more than a thousand unique users each day hovering their mouse over the heart to see what else the comment author has been up to and what they look like.

All these new users have put the plugin through absolutely every conceivable permutation of options and theme integration and as a result, version 2.5.4 is the most powerful yet and working on more blog hosting types than ever.

Now the plugin is ‘sorted’ to my satisfaction I can start to work on the ‘back end’ features like the support site and info box as well as extended member features like adding to the list of your last 10 posts with an option to display your twitter url or use a keyphrase…

This is what I need your help with, do you need these things? do you even want them?

CommentLuv has evolved from a simple plugin I created just for myself to a fully fledged site and community plugin about to be released on typepad, blogger and more because of one reason,
YOU wanted it! it’s all your fault for sending me comments saying thinks like, “thanks!” or “this is great!” so now you need to tell me what more you want… I’m perfectly willing to give it, but first some questions I have..

1. Would allowing your users to show their chosen keyphrase instead of their last blog post be helpful to you?
2. Would you want to show your twitter url instead of one of your last blog posts?
3. Do you think it would decrease the value of CommentLuv if it showed more than just last blog posts?
4. Would you rather just have extra information like Twitter, facespace, mybook etc in a profile page at CommentLuv.com and have the button on your own blog link to it?

I have my own answers to these and they are no,no,YES and YES..

But, I think these answers are important to find out from YOU the user, it’s your blog that CommentLuv gets installed on and it’s your comments that get the link added. Let me know what you want or don’t want with CommentLuv and I’ll zig-e-zig ah it!

I’ve been too lazy to transfer my holiday photos from my camera since I cam back (because then everyone will crowd around my computer and ooh and ahh at every.single.picture – even the ones of a thumb obscuring the lens) instead though, I have bitten the bullet and finally got around to creating some Mysql tables for the remote script that does the fetching of the last blog post for commentluv plugin users.

What does this mean? ..
it means that I can create a site for people to register their blog url and with that :

• set a default cache timeout for speedier processing of their comments on blogs that use the plugin.
• define a default RSS feed url to be used for their domain
  (will also make retrieving a little quicker)
• define a default link and anchor text to be used
  (useful for pointing to a particular post in the past on comments you make on commentluv sites or if your feed has an error)
• choose to use default link and anchor text instead of your feeds last entry
  (useful for when you go on a comment campaign)
• make your last blog post links open in a new window
  (on sites you comment on)

Other things I will be able to do with the upcoming commentluv site now I’m using a database to store data..

• Show you the last 10 blogs with commentluv that you commented on
• Show you the last 10 comments with a last blog post made on your blog
• Show the top 10 blogs that comment on your blog
• Show the top 10 blogs that you comment on (that have commentluv)
• Show which blogs have commented on you that you haven’t commented on
  (thanks to Bobby Revellian who requested something to keep a track of which blogs he has commented on and which blogs he needs to comment on. I know it was literally half a year ago bobby but it’s taken me until now to learn enough stuff to make it possible!)
• probably a lot more…:-)

If there’s more things you’d like to be able to do with commentluv on your blog or features you’d like to see for a commentluv site please leave a comment here and let me know… (btw.. I am using a new version of commentluv on this site that uses the new remote script and database, if you get any issues with comments going funny please let me know on the contact page)

..oh, one more thing… ajax commentluv is a little more improved, it can now work with almost any blog that allows you to edit the header of your theme! .. it’s still a little way off from a release but it seems to be working well … stay tuned!