Good news, comments and trackbacks are now working on the blog! I tried to
get comments going yesterday, but making them happen via TypeKey was more work
than I thought. I’ll explain what happened below plus some changes I’d love to
see, in case it helps others.
I know, I know — I should just use WordPress,
as everyone tells me. I did like the program when I tried it in testing things
for the SEW Blog last year, but as I
explained
over there. However, I liked the Movable Type category structure at that time
better. And since I use MT over there, I wanted to stay with what I know for my
personal blog.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to do comments at all initially, because I simply
don’t have time to deal with spam. But I love comments on blogs! Movable Type
has an option where you can let people comment through free
TypeKey accounts and
automatically let those flow through. So I thought that would be a good starting
point. Maybe I’ll still get spam, but I’m hoping having to sign-in to a system
will slow that down.
So I tick off the option under Feedback in the Settings area to make this
happen. I get my authentication token for the site and figure it should work.
But it doesn’t. The forms I’m using from the default template — the "comment
ready" forms as Movable Type’s help files
explain, aren’t working.
Hmm. Hmm. OK, so I do a little searching at Movable Type. I come across this
help file:
Enabling TypeKey on Your Weblog. Midway through that, I discover this:
3.x provides a new tag which will generate all of the required comment
posting logic in your template. You can use this tag to replace your existing
comments form code:<MTCommentFields static="1">
Here’s a thought. A little question mark symbol appears in the Feedbacks
setting area to give you advice about various comment authentication options. It
brings up this help
page. How about mentioning the fact there that for authentication to work,
you’ve got to make this change.
Anyway, I wipe out all — and I mean all — my code about comments and insert
this. Then I try testing. Slick. Now I see this showing up:
You are not signed in. You need to be registered to comment on this site.
Sign in
When I sign-in and return, a form appears. Cool. But then when I try to
sign-in, I’m told my site hasn’t enable TypeKey. Huh? But I got my token from
TypeKey.
Two things turn out to be responsible. Yesterday, the site still responded to
both http://daggle.com and
http://www.daggle.com separately. I used the
former, but the CGI calls still used the www prefix. My token was for the
non-www version, and that made a difference. I’d gotten the token initially by
entering the non-www address manually. This time, I tried using the automated
handshake system. Now TypeKey listed both domains as working.
Back to testing, and still failure! After a little poking around, it turns
out that I needed a trailing slash after the domain name. IE,
http://www.daggle.com/, where you enter things in TypeKey. Despite the
handshake, this wasn’t added.
Testing again, now it works! I’m rewarded with seeing a form on the page
after I sign-in. I can finally post. And so I try, only to return to the page
and see nothing.
Now I assumed that the issue was that thing were getting confused again
because of the two domains. So I pack it up for the night, asking my friend Rob
over at TigerTech, which hosts my blog, if
he’d take a look at changing the CGI calls to use the non-www domain and also
301 redirect any www calls over to the non-www to help avoid any
canonical
problems with Google.
Rob quickly did that, so it was back to testing today. I tried again and
still no comments appearing. What’s going on? What’s going on is that I’m an
idiot. Well, confused, perhaps a little forgivably. Above, I said I removed ALL
my comment code and used that special tag Movable Type uses. I should have only
removed the comment FORM code. I obviously still needed all the other code
controlling the display of comments.
A little work later, and I’m in business. Comments are showing up just fine.
But I still have some annoyances with the system.
First, I can’t control the message TypeKey itself puts in. Remember what it
says to people?
You are not signed in. You need to be registered to comment on this site.
Sign in
How helpful and user friendly is that? I want TypePad to allow me to
customize the message. Since I can’t, I’ve gone the route of saying right above
what TypePad says what I wish it would actually say. Specifically, I do this:
Want to comment? If you are signed into
TypeKey, you’ll see a form below.
No form? Click on the sign-in link below, and you can sign-in or sign-up for a
free account. Sorry you have to use TypeKey, but I use it to avoid comment spam.
All comments currently appear automatically after posting.
Second issue, I can’t control the form and message TypeKey inserts if you are
signed-in. Currently it says:
Thanks for signing in, [person's name]. Now you can comment. (sign out) (If
you haven’t left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site
owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won’t appear on the entry.
Thanks for waiting.)
Ugh. If they are signed-in and see a form, then don’t tell them they can
comment. It’s obvious they can. You’ll only see a form here if you CAN comment
because you are signed in, so lose that text. Plus, I have things set right now
so comments from TypeKey people automatically appear. That means I don’t need
that big hunk of text telling them that comments "may need" to be approved.
Instead, once again, I want to control exactly what TypeKey is writing to my
blog.
Another annoyance is that the form starts off with a URL field, then the
comment field. I want the comment field first. Then I want to explain the URL
field, because it’s not clear what that will do. I want to say, "Fill out this
form if you want to turn your name into a link back to your blog or web site."
Anyway, that’s the story of getting things going. In case you’re curious,
here’s the code I’m using. I probably don’t need all the div classes that are in
there, but I don’t have time to clean it all out, at the moment:
<b><font size="2">Comments</font></b>
<MTComments>
<a id="c<$MTCommentID pad="1"$>"></a>
<div class="comment" id="comment-<$MTCommentID$>">
<div class="comment-content">
<font size="2"><$MTCommentBody$></font>
</div>
<font size="1">
<p>Comment by <$MTCommentAuthorLink default_name="Anonymous"$> <$MTCommentAuthorIdentity$>
|
<a href="#comment-<$MTCommentID$>"><$MTCommentDate$></a>
</font>
</p>
</div>
</MTComments>
<p>
<font size="1"><b>Want to comment?</b> If you are signed into
<a href="http://www.sixapart.com/typekey/">TypeKey</a>, you’ll see a form below.No form? Click on the sign-in link below, and you can sign-in or sign-up for a
free account. Sorry you have to use TypeKey, but I use it to avoid comment spam.
All comments currently appear automatically after posting.
</font>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote>
<b><font size="1">
<MTCommentFields static="1">
</font></b>
</blockquote>
</p>
<MTIfPingsActive>
<div class="trackbacks-content"><MTPings>
<MTPingsHeader>
<font size="2">
<p>
<b>TrackBacks</b><br>
</font>
<font size="1">
Below are other blogs linking or writing about this post:
</font>
</p>
</MTPingsHeader><div class="trackback" id="ping-<$MTPingID$>">
<div class="trackback-content"><p>
<font size="2">
<a rel="nofollow" href="<$MTPingURL$>">
<$MTPingTitle$></a>:
<$MTPingExcerpt$>
(from <$MTPingBlogName$>)
</font>
</p></div>
<div class="trackbacks">
<div id="trackbacks-info"><MTIfPingsAccepted>
<blockquote>
<p><font size="1">TrackBacks appear after approval. Trackback URL for this post
is <$MTEntryTrackbackLink$></font></p>
</blockquote>
</MTIfPingsAccepted>
Also, I should say that there might indeed be a workaround to some of the
issues I have with not being able to control the text. If there are, they just
aren’t things I’ve easily found yet.
