Now with threaded comments!
I like to spend my Saturday nights doing wild and crazy things, like installing blog plug-ins. Yesterday night I installed the Simply Threaded plug-in, which I hope you all will take full advantage of. It allows you to respond directly to any comment on a post, displaying your comment directly underneath and indented, instead of displaying your comment at the bottom of all the comments (though you can still do that too). This is handy because it will allow me to directly respond to people's questions instead of editing comments and inserting my answers in bold text as I have been doing. Here's an example of how it looked when I responded to Jeni's question about Cliff Blox:
All you have to do is click the "Reply" link on any person's comment. Your browser will then jump to the bottom of the page where a checkbox will have appeared with the name of the person who's post you are replaying to. If you are using Firefox, the checkbox is automatically checked. If you are using Internet Explorer, you'll have to check it yourself. (Don't make me explain why, just know that cross-browser compatibility issues like this is why IE makes web developers scream "Aye-eee!")
Now just type your comment like normal and hit the "Post" button. Your comment will then appear indented below the comment you replied to. This feature doesn't work if you hit the "Preview" button. Sorry, not my fault, I didn't write the plug-in. If you just want to reply at the bottom of the post, comment like you always have, or if you already hit "reply" just uncheck the box.
Hopefully this will help make discussions in the comments less confusing. A couple weeks ago there was a kerfuffle when two people used the name "Red" when they replied to a post and someone else commented on what the first Red said, but the second Red thought the person was replying to her and OH MY GOD this is how wars start! So, no more. Please don't be scared to try the new commenting system. It's okay if you screw up once or twice. I'll fix any obvious errors or double posts. Feel free to practice on this post if you want. Enjoy!
Earlier: The fog
Later: Lick the Produce: Scraping the bottom of the barrel
Home: Main index
Posted by PastaQueen on April 6, 2008 at 8:24 PM | Tags: blog, blog maintenance, plug-ins, simply threaded
Like this!
Ad infinitum!
But can it do a fourth level?!?!
Which Red are you? :D
Number one or number two?
Why are Thing one and thing two running around my head now?
OMG YOU USED MY NAME LET'S START A WAR
This will be much better. :-) Good use of your Saturday night... I spent mine cleaning my apartment and starting on a 60-page final project (but soon college will be over FOREVER, so it's okay! lol).
Well, this is entertaining.
Indeed. Entertaining as all get-out!
Wow I'm famous! This is so much fun. Wonderful addition.
Must implement at once!
Nooooo! Movable type only.
Very cool. ;) And far more productive than MY night!
You think your Saturday night was exciting? I went to the gym at 10pm on Friday. I felt SO cool walking back past the bars between the gym and my apartment at 11:30pm all sweaty from my workout when others were all dressed up for going out in the city. Woot!
Obviously you have a sickness! I mean, I'm a crazy runner & log all sorts of exercise hours, but 11:30 is bed time! :)
I think this will be a great addition!
Techie geeks and pet people ~ I'll never understand you. I love you, mind you, but I'll never understand you. And if your techie geek tendencies make my life go smoother, then who am I to complain?! I love my computer for what it helps me accomplish, but I haven't the faintest idea how any of it works...and I don't care to know, either, as long as it keeps doing it. I'm glad you're having fun with this latest innovation!
I totally agree with you!!!
Hmmm... I'm a bit of a techie geek (PQ, you are a role model for me in more than one way, since my geekdom only aspires to the level of designing web pages) and I'm a huge pet person. So do they cancel each other out, and then you can understand me... Like multiplying two negative numbers give you a positive number? (Told you I was a geek... so stop rolling your eyes at the math analogy! sheesh)
Oh, cool, now your blog is one step closer to Drupal. ;-)
This is one of those logically-should-be-an-improvement but in-practice-sucks things. When the comments regularly exceed 100, yeah, as a stopgap while you're setting up your forum software. Otherwise, it's hard to follow new stuff (unless you're an obsessive who subscribes to comment RSS feeds). And the chronological order of the discussion is harder to follow.
You could use an IP address-based avatar system to give people a visual hint that "Red" may not be "Red."
This is so cool! :)
Id so the same with my saturday nights if I could ever figure any of this stuff out...
M.
This is hella cool! Just wanted to mention, I use Firefox and I can't see the styling for the comments ie the boxes aren't there so it's hard to tell who belongs to what comment! I promise I am not one of those anally retentive "YEAH BUT it doesn't in Opera or Zorg4.0" people!
OK the styles suddenly appeared and now I look like a twit. Sorry comrade!!!xx
You're not a twit! The same thing happened to me when I was testing it. I think your stylesheet was probably cached. Refreshing the page fixes it in case anyone else has the same problem.
Neat!
If you do not see your comment, try refreshing the page.
Half of Me is a fascist regime ruled with a benevolent fist by PastaQueen and the macaroni military. Lively discussion is encouraged, but any comment may be deleted or edited according to the whims of your monarch. If you write something nasty, it will be removed, but only after I laugh at you and mock you to all of my friends. Play nice and I won't have to slap anyone with a wet noodle.
Comments are disabled some time after an entry has been posted to help keep the blog on a spam-free diet.
You can try replying to this comment if you want.