The Red Brick Times

Comments - a continuing saga.

The story thus far: I've been trying to re-establish a comment system that remained based on a type of coding called "php", which is how our previous system worked. The goal was to have something not hackable by spammers and, by continuing with a php solution, keep all of our old comments accessible. Result: ain't gonna happen. A certain few php function calls, ones necessary to make a Blogger oriented comment system work, are so rife to outside exploitation that hosting companies (and really anyone running php on UNIX webservers) are disabling those calls entirely. Anyone who has tried to post a comment recently has seen three errors in the comment window. That's why.

What I've done: tRBT is now using the default comment system offered by Blogger (something we may have done right from the first anyway but it didn't exist then). It seems to work well, offers some additional features that our old one didn't and, as far as I presently know, isn't so hackable. The downside is that only members of tRBT can comment now, so if you're one of those who read/comment without being a member (and I can think of a few) you're toughouttaluck unless you join. We've also lost access to old comments. Sorry. If anybody has a better solution I'm all ears.

I know the comment pages are kind of ugly now. They inherit the same template as the main page which doesn't really work aesthetically. I'll fix that up as I get time.
Posted 8:16 AM by whatley (6) comments

       Comments:

Test 2

# posted by  A. O. : April 14, 2005 10:00 PM
 
Are we a bit testy? Whatever works, works fine! Good work, RW. Thank you.

# posted by  Andy : April 15, 2005 11:21 AM
 
Oh shit oh dear Andy. You happened to leave a comment while I was in the midst of customizing the thing (notice they now toggle on/off under the original post instead of bringing up a separate page). I guess it works. Cool?

# posted by  whatley : April 15, 2005 11:30 AM
 
I like that feature. It is cool. (for many indescribable, probably purely aesthetic reasons) Any other zippy stuff associated with the new comments?

PS-I forgot the file name for the page where the pictures are stored. I wanted to add one for my profile.

# posted by  A. O. : April 15, 2005 12:52 PM
 
Tony - The Blogger comment system offers several options we didn't have before. Notice the little trash can icon under each of your comment(s) in the "Post a Comment" window (bottom left)? It means you can delete your comment if you want, something you couldn't do before. There are other comment related options in the Blogger post environment. Feel free to play around.

Storing pictures for your Blogger profile (I think that's what you're referring to) is done through the Blogger interface.

# posted by  whatley : April 15, 2005 2:50 PM
 
Tony - Oops. I see now why you asked about storing pictures. I didn't realize Blogger doesn't store them itself. Makes sense when you think about it though. I'll email you the info.

# posted by  whatley : April 16, 2005 9:14 AM
 
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