By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
Earlier this morning, I discovered that while moderating comments, a small little X icon appeared that I’ve never seen before. After inquiring on Twitter why WordPress never gave me a new feature pointer to explain to me what this feature was, I was told that it came with the newest version of Akismet. On January 5th, 2011 Akismet released version 2.5.4 of their plugin and amongst the changes was the addition of a button that allows site administrators to easily remove the commenter URL. This particular feature is something I’ve become used to using as it’s part of the Ajax Edit Comments plugin. I think it’s pretty slick that this feature is now available despite it not actually being in core. In fact, if you didn’t know any better or forgot that you recently upgraded Akismet, you might think that it was added with WordPress 3.3.1 like I did.
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url |
By Jeffro on December 19, 2011
One of my favorite WordPress plugins of all time WP Ajax Edit Comments, will soon be free again for all to use. According to a recent email sent out by iThemes, as of January 1st, 2012 they will no longer be supporting Ajax Edit Comments as a premium plugin. Instead, the full version will be uploaded to the WordPress.org plugin repository where users will be able to continue using the plugin with free updates. For iThemes customers that have recently purchased the plugin, they’ll have two options. The first is to request a full refund. The second is to receive a six month upgrade to the PluginBuddy Developer Suite which is valued at $100.00.
This is yet another twist for this particular plugin. Over the past few years, it’s gone from a small, free plugin to having a site built specifically for it with paying customers, managed by Ronald Huereca. Soon after, Ajay D’ Souza stepped in as co-developer of the plugin. Then, Ronald joined the team at iThemes which placed Ajax Edit Comments behind their pay wall. Coming back full circle, it will be available again for free.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, commercial, free, plugin |
By Jeffro on December 2, 2011
Comment administration within WordPress has come a long way. As illustrated by Lorelle VanFossen, the comment administration panel these days has 18 different features for comment management. While the current iteration of comment management features are great, there is one particular quick link that I hope gets added in a future version of WordPress. It’s called ‘De-Link‘ and it’s one of my favorite features of the WP Ajax Edit comments plugin.
Delinking Feature Within WP Ajax Edit Comments
I’ve noticed that a large amount of comments that I have deleted or trashed in the past can now be approved after I de-link them as the content is usually related to the post. It’s their way of trying to get a link on the site. I have my own rules for which sites are allowed to be linked to and which are not but if the comment is relevant to the post at hand but contains a bad link, I’ll simply de-link, then approve it. Sure, I could go into the Quick Edit mode within the comment management area and manually remove the links but the method of clicking once sure seems a lot easier to me then clicking the mouse button a few times.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged comments, features, Plugins |
By Jeffro on November 4, 2011
Akismet has started an experimental partner program. Based on the information presented, it looks like this is aimed more at consultants who deal with clients and instead of possibly using their own Akismet API key, they’ll now be able to refer them to Akismet via a special link which indicates the three plans that users can choose from. What caught my eye regarding the different account levels is how they have been structured.
Pro ($59/yr or $5/mo)
For individual sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo.
Enterprise ($550/yr or $50/mo)
For multiple medium size sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo (total).
Corporate ($3950/yr or $395/mo)
For corporate sites, up to 300,000 comments/mo with key monitoring, priority service and annual invoicing.
What constitutes a comment? Are we talking about all comments in general that need to be filtered or 80,000 legitimate comments? A little clarity on that part would be good. Those who are chosen to be part of this strictly invitational program only, will receive $24.00 for Pro subscriptions while Enterprise subscriptions will net them $240.00. I’m very hesitant on calling this a referral program because of the following text presented on the page:
This partner program is intended for use with your existing clients. Linking to your referrer code on the internet, or in any way promoting it to people that aren’t your customers is prohibited, and will result in your being removed from the program. The plan here is to have less spam, not more!
If you’re interested in being a guinea pig for this program, you can sign up here but keep in mind that just because you register doesn’t guarantee you will be accepted. By the way, WPCandy was able to receive 25 openings which may help boost your chances of being accepted.
By far, the most interesting aspect of this entire partner plan is the fact that the links people receive will contain ONLY the plans for which users must pay for. I wonder if this will translate into more paying customers for the service or if users will shy away and either use an alternative anti-spam solution or figure out how to get by using it for free. The only way we’ll know the answer to that is if Akismet shares the data they collected during the beta portion of the program.
Posted in News | Tagged akismet, comments, services, spam |
By Jeffro on March 24, 2011
Over the past few days, I’ve had a couple of people ask me what plugins I use to accomplish my commenting system here on WPTavern.com. I’m not a fan of using a third party system so in no particular order, here are the plugins I use.
Akismet – I’ve had no problems with Akismet taking care of spam comments on this site.
Comment Quicktags Reloaded – This plugin provides the formatting buttons to the comment form.
Filosofo Comments Preview – This plugin enables a live preview of the comment before it’s published.
Subscribe To Comments – Enables users to checkmark a box to receive notifications of new comments
WP Ajax Edit Comments – This is one of my favorite plugins because it provides a very easy way for visitors to edit their own comments. It also has built in support for After The Deadline meaning commenters can spell check before submission. It’s a commercial plugin but well worth the price.
Secret Sauce:
There is one particular feature of the WPTavern comment form that makes it a little unique. For each comment, there is a Reply link. When a visitor clicks this link, something like the following shows up: @Jeffro – The @ symbol as used by Twitter means you’re replying to someone specifically. The comment number is the unique comment ID and will link to the comment being replied to so the conversation is coherent. Last but not least the comment authors name is bolded.
I have Kaspars Dambis to thank for adding this functionality to the site which was originally part of the WP Comment Remix plugin that won the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition in 2008.
Now here is where it gets tricky. This functionality is not part of a plugin but is code that has been added to my child themes functions.php file. I don’t know where you would add this code in your own theme to achieve the same functionality but if someone could use it as a starting point and create a plugin that just does this, that would be cool.
/**
* Custom comment meta. Adds a custom comment reply link.
*
* @since 0.2
*/
function tavern_news_comment_meta( $meta ) {
return str_replace( '</div>', ' [tavern-comment-reply-link before=" | "]</div>', $meta );
}
/**
* Shortcode for displaying a comment reply link. A better solution would be to find a
* script that works within the WordPress comment system.
*
* @since 0.2
*/
function tavern_news_comment_reply_shortcode( $attr ) {
$attr = shortcode_atts( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '' ), $attr );
$out = $attr['before'];
$out .= "<script type=\"text/javascript\">
/* <![CDATA[ */
function addAuthor(\$authorName, \$commentId) {
var \$author = '@<a href=\"#comment-' + \$commentId + '\" rel=\"reply\">' + \$authorName + '</a> -';
document.getElementById('comment').value += \$author;
}
function moveToComment() {
location.href = '#comment'; document.getElementById('comment').focus();
}
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type=\"text/javascript\">
document.write('<a href=\"#comment\" onmouseup=\"moveToComment()\" onclick=\"addAuthor(\'" . get_comment_author() . "\', \'" . get_comment_ID() . "\');return false;\" class=\"reply\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Automatically include a link to the original comment\">Reply</a>');
</script>";
$out .= $attr['after'];
return $out;
}
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, Plugins, system |
By Jeffro on March 22, 2011
Earlier today, I received an email asking me what plugin I was using that allowed for the quicktags to be displayed within the comment form of the site. I love these quick tags as they provide similar functionality as you’ll find within the post writing panel within WordPress. Unfortunately, the original creator of the plugin is now involved with the Habari project and is no longer maintaining it. I did manage to find Comment Form Quicktags on the plugin repository but I’m unsure as to why I’m not using that one as opposed to my current setup. After browsing the plugin repository, it looks like there are quite a few Quicktag plugins available but the one I’m using has been rock steady and still works, even with WordPress 3.1. You can’t find it on the repository though and it’s not available from the plugin authors site so I’m putting the download link here just in case someone would like to take the plugin, fork it, and maintain it on the repository.
Download Comment Quicktags Reloaded
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, Plugins, quicktags, reloaded |
By Jeffro on November 5, 2010
If you use the third-party commenting system Disqus, you’ll want to read the following post by Zemalf.com. In the post, Antti explains that although you can mark comments as spam which are then removed from view in Disqus, the comments are not removed from the WordPress database. Therefor, even though the comments are not in plain view, they show up within the source code HTML that renders the page by Disqus.
Spot a comment from “normal” comments that was spam, removed from Disqus, but still in WordPress database etc… Not a problem, Disqus wouldn’t show a comment removed from its own system and only existing in WP database, would it? YOU BET YOUR SORRY ASS IT WOULD!
Within the comments of the post, Daniel Ha who represents Disqus confirmed the behaviour and noted that it would probably be fixed in the next release of the plugin.
1. When you mark a comment as spam using Disqus, that information is not synced back to WordPress just as you pointed out. At one point, Disqus did do this action, but it proved to be unreliable performance-sensitive.
For example, if you’ve marked a two-year old comment as “deleted”, Disqus would need to constantly scan your 2+ years worth of comments to see which one has to have a synchronized state. It’s no problem for us, but it could prove very problematic for your own database. We’ve since nixed that functionality because of the issues that it caused. We’re currently looking at ways to do this again but in a way that won’t be otherwise damaging.
2. The content in your HTML is retrieved from your WP database. Because your local database still has the comment, it will still be rendered onto the page. I don’t think the current solution is the best, and I’m positive we’ll have a better one soon.
Posted in News | Tagged comments, disqus, spam |
By Jeffro on September 6, 2010
I don’t know about you, but I have a widescreen monitor and I’ve enjoyed having the WordPress administration menus collapsed versus extended. The extra real estate is nice to have with less for me to look at. However, this collapsed menu comes at a price whereas, this menu option does not allow me to see updates for plugins, themes, nor can I see if any comments are being held in the moderation queue. While I think this is a WordPress shortcoming, Scott Reilly has once again created a simple plugin that solves a simple problem. It’s called Notifications For Collapsed Admin Menu. This plugin shows a visual notification by providing a background color on the comment and plugin icons. As a bonus, if you hover the mouse cursor over the icons, a tooltip will show the number of comments or plugins that need to be taken cared of. The following image provided by Scott is a good explanation as to how this plugin works.
If you choose to use this plugin, keep the following note in mind:
As the plugin’s name suggests, this plugin only takes effect if the admin sidebar menu is collapsed. Also, the admin user must have JavaScript enabled.
Also refer to the plugin page for directions on how to change the color that is used for the visual notification.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, menu, notifications, Plugins, updates
One of my favorite WordPress plugins of all time WP Ajax Edit Comments, will soon be free again for all to use. According to a recent email sent out by iThemes, as of January 1st, 2012 they will no longer be supporting Ajax Edit Comments as a premium plugin. Instead, the full version will be uploaded to the WordPress.org plugin repository where users will be able to continue using the plugin with free updates. For iThemes customers that have recently purchased the plugin, they’ll have two options. The first is to request a full refund. The second is to receive a six month upgrade to the PluginBuddy Developer Suite which is valued at $100.00.
Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url | 9 Responses