X-Comments
X-Comments is my very first plug-in for WordPress. In fact, it's my very first experience with PHP and MySQL. I've been running it on my site for about a month now and so far I've had absolutely no problems. The plugin is most definitely in an early alpha phase but there are a couple sites running the plugin and I've gotten no negative feedback so far. Anyways, I've created this page to chronicle future releases of the plugin so bookmark this page and check back often. Without any further adue, I will get on with the details of the plugin…
What Does it Do?
X-Comments creates nifty little links on your sidebar that direct your readers to your comments on other sites.
How Does it Do it?
Magic. Not exactly, but as far as anyone but you is concerned, it is magic. Whenever your site is accessed, X-Comments looks for a specific variable. If that variable is there, then that site will be tracked. Magic.
No Really, How Do I Use it?
It's very easy. The next time you post a comment on someone's site, tack a short variable string to end of your site's address. The variable you are going to use is the letter, 't' and the value you are going to use is the “nice” nickname you use on your site. For instance, when I'm leaving my address on other sites, I enter it thusly: http://dailydoseofdave.net/?t=dpb That's it. Once your comment is published, simply click the link to tell X-Comments that this is a site you want to reference. Don't worry. X-Comments only tracks links that YOU click. Whenever anyone else clicks the link, they are taken to your site just like normal. When you click the link however, you will be directed to the X-Comments section of your Administration Menu. From there you have the option of Approving, Editing, or Deleting the reference. Approve the comment and it will appear on your sidebar. You're done.
Comment Previews - So a simple reference link isn't enough for you? Me either. In fact, getting a preview of the comment was my goal when I started this plug-in. There are currently two ways to get the Preview text. The first requires you to manually cut-and-paste your text. This can be easily done by 'Editing' the X-Comment in your Admin Menu and pasting the text in the Preview text box. That text will now appear in the sidebar. The second is to use the 'Get Preview' button that appears whenever you Edit an X-Comment in your Admin Mneu. This process will NOT work for most sites and could possibly be a little 'buggy'. I wouldn't recommend trying to retrieve the text from any site NOT powered by WordPress. This is a major feature for future versions of X-Comment and I'm working on refining its functionality now, but at this time it is really only meant to be used with other WordPress sites (should work for 1.5 & 2.0). You do not have to have Previews for X-Comments to function properly. If you don't want them, just don't add them.
How Do I Install it?
There are three steps
- Download the plugin and extract the
X-Comments.phpfile to the plugin folder of your WordPress site and activate it. - From the same .zip file, extract the
wp-x-comments-show-more.phpto your site's root folder - Add the following code to your template's sidebar file.
<?php if (function_exists('get_external_comments')) { ?>
<li><h2>My X-Comments:</h2></li>
<ul>
<?php get_external_comments(); ?>
</ul>
<?php } ?>
Release Notes
- .10a - Released 2006 01 22 « Newest
- New Features:
- “See More” – A link has been added to the end of the X-Comment references in the sidebar that directs users to a new page that lists all Approved X-Comments.
- Comment Previews – Previews of your comment will show in the sidebar frame and in the new See More page. Populating the Preview text requires a manual cut-and-paste for most sites however a ‘Get Preview’ button in the Admin menu will attempt to retrieve the text from other WordPress sites. See the updated section, ‘How Do I Use It’ above for more information
- Options Menu – When you go to the Options section of your Admin Menu, you will now see an X-Comments tab. The only option currently available is to set the number of X-Comments that appear in your sidebar. Default is 5 and the minimum is 1 (duh).
- Comment author can now be changed to a different user which is quite pointless really
- Fixes/Changes
- Times are now displayed relative to your timezone settings in WordPress
- ‘External Comments’ tab in Manage section of Admin Menu has been changed to ‘X-Comments’
- Now checks for existence of CURL functions before using them to extract the title tag from a new link. If the CURL functions do not exist, the URL is copied over in place of the title.
- Add/Edit frame now has a Cancel button
- Status messages appear for successful Additions, Approvals, and Deletions
- Probably more I can’t think of right now…
- New Features:
- .091a - Released 2006 01 11
- Added a feature to check for a logged in user whenever X-Comments is run. This prevents most of the ghost/shadow links that appear
- Whenever a new reference is added to the database, you are immediately directed to External Comments section of your Administration Menu
- Now runs under the 'init' hook rather than the 'wp_head' hook
- Now uses the user_nicename field to handle special characters
- .09a - Released 2006 01 08
Known Bugs
The plugin doesn’t work exactly as intended with blogs that have pop-up or separate pages for their comments. Actually, the plugin does its job perfectly, it’s just that when the user follows the link to read the comment, they’ll be directed straight to the comment page and will not be able to see the blog entry itself. It’s not a huge issue as most of these pages have links back to the original post, but oh well… the purpose of this plugin is to display your comments, not other blogs.
Features in Development
- Clean up of code to adhere to WordPress standards
- Refine the code behind the Previous and Next links
- Add a count to the External Comments label similiar to the Awaiting Moderation label
- Add the ability to Unapprove an entry
- Add the ability to Ignore all incoming links from a particuliar site, domain, IP, etc…
- Allow users of the site to have different permissions for Approving, Deleting, Posting, etc…
- Add the ability to Approve an entry when Editing or Adding
- Add the ability to detect updates on linked pages and filter these references to the top of the list
- Add the ability to setup known sites within the database so more information can be pulled over (site name, actual post name, comment preview…)
- Create a statistics page: rank sites or posts by number of comments, etc…
- Improve/Expand the 'Get Preview' functionality
And Finally…
If you run into a bug, have a feature request, want to join the mailing list for version updates, or just want to say anything positive/negative about the plugin, please post a comment below. If you do want to be on the mailing list, just say so in your message and leave a valid email address in the box provided. It won't get published on the site and I'll never use it for anything other than notifying you of version updates. Thanks!
January 12th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Very neat! Does this require WordPress 2.0?
January 12th, 2006 at 8:04 am
(Heh, if I keep typoing my website in the URL section, I doubt X-Comments will work for me.)
January 12th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Nope, WP2.0 is not required however it should work if that's the version you're running. Trust me, I've made a couple typos entering the address myself. That's why the variable name got shortned to one character!
January 13th, 2006 at 6:14 am
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January 13th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
still working great here! Good work Dave!
My favorite part about this plugin is that is serves to remind me where I've commented on stuff, and for blogs that don't have comment notifications, I can find it again really easily.
January 14th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
I'm glad it's working out for you MeeCi. The keeping track of sites you've commented on is kind of a nice side-effect feature of the plugin. I'm working on a way to build upon that feature so that whenever new comments are posted, an Updated tag will appear on you're site. That way you'll know when to check back…
January 15th, 2006 at 2:55 am
leave it me to goof it up…
here is the error message I'm getting…
WordPress database error: [Table 'granteng_wordpress.wp_extcomments' doesn't exist]
INSERT INTO wp_extcomments VALUES ('','http://disciple-now.blogspot.com/2006/01/nice-meeting.html#comments','','Nice meeting',NOW(),'',1,'','','')
Where did i screw up?
January 15th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Grant, it sounds like another plugin may be conflicting with the function in X-Comments that creates the table necessary to store all the links. I would sugget deactivating all plug-ins and then reactiveate X-Commetns. Test to see if it works and then re-activate all your other plug-ins. If that doesn't work there may be a permissions error with your connection to MySQL. Let me know what happens.
January 15th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
dave, in this query:
$query="SELECT * FROM wp_extcomments WHERE extcomments_Approved_By '' ORDER by extcomments_Approved_On DESC LIMIT 5";can I change DESC LIMIT 5
to 10 or some other number?
January 15th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
awesome dave!! deactivated all, activated X-comments, then reactivated…so far it's all good!! Great plugin…I'll be sending some traffic your way!!
January 15th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
MeeCitee… Absolutely, in the next release I'm going to make that an option but for now, you can change it directly in the code.
January 15th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Glad that worked for ya Grant. Maybe I should consider renaming that function in a future release… hmm…
January 17th, 2006 at 9:45 am
[...] Lo pueden bajar de Daily Dose of Dave. [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 11:49 am
[...] X Comments - See “My Thoughts Elsewhere” in the sidebar? Those are the comments I’ve left on other blogs I’m reading. I’m loving this one. [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
[...] Mange har i forvejen en lille oversigt, p de indlg der sidst er kommenteret p ens weblog. Men det her plugin gr skridtet videre og fortller lseren, hvor weblog-ejeren sidst har kommenteret henne. [...]
January 18th, 2006 at 5:02 am
Uh, what's wrong with this picture?
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: curl_init() in …/www.winnicott.it/blog/wp-content/plugins/X-Comments.php on line 70
January 18th, 2006 at 8:38 am
X-Comments uses the CURL functions designed by Daniel Stenberg. These functions must be installed by your host server for the plug-in to work correctly. I'll work on a way for the plug-in to work w/o the CURL functions however it will be with limited functionality. If you have a host with pretty good support, direct them to http://us2.php.net/curl and suggest they install the CURL functions. I'll have an updated version of X-Comments out this weekend that contains this “fix” as well as a few other features. Thanks for letting me know about the problem!
January 18th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
I'm getting the following error:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, ]
CREATE TABLE wp_extcomments ( extcomments_Id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, extcomments_URL text NOT NULL, extcomments_Site_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Post_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Time timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, extcomments_user_ID bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Count int(11) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Approved_By text NOT NULL, extcomments_Approved_On datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', PRIMARY KEY (extcomments_Id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1
The error appears at the very top of my plugins page immediately after I activate the plugin. I tried deactivating and reactivating all plugins, but to no avail. I get the following error as output on my sidebar:
WordPress database error: [Table 'geoff_wordpress.wp_extcomments' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_extcomments WHERE extcomments_Approved_By '' ORDER by extcomments_Approved_On DESC LIMIT 5
January 18th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Let me fix the error messages above, to compensate for encoding:
The latter error message should read:
WordPress database error: [Table 'geoff_wordpress.wp_extcomments' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_extcomments WHERE extcomments_Approved_By <> '' ORDER by extcomments_Approved_On DESC LIMIT 5
Thanks,
Geoff
January 18th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Geoff, the 2nd error makes sense. Since the table doesn't exist in the database, the query to get the information fails. The problem is with the first error message. It appears as if MySQL is not accepting the CREATE table script. I wonder if there is a version conflict. Can you find out which version of MySQL your host is running? Other than that, we can try to create the table manually through phpMyAdmin. I would be willing to walk you through the process if you would like… I noticed on your site you've had some db issues. Maybe this is your hosts fault???
January 18th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Hi Dave,
Yes, I've had problems a-plenty with my host when it comes to MySQL.
In any event, the version of MySQL is 4.0.25-standard.
I do have access to PHPMyAdmin, although it got cryptic when it asked me to create each row.
Thanks,
Geoff
January 19th, 2006 at 12:04 am
Geoff, check your email. I sent you some SQL to try and run from phpMyAdmin. We'll get this working one way or another!
January 19th, 2006 at 2:30 am
This plugin is awesome! Can't wait for future versions of it!
January 19th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Hrmm, perhaps I spoke to soon. When I click on the link http://irgeek.net/?t=Pablo it just takes me to my main index page. I tried adding an external comment manually and it gave me no errors and inserted nothing. I'm using WordPress 2.0 … anyone else have a similar problem? I'm not getting any error's, it's just not doing anything.
January 19th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Pablo, I'm running X-Comments on another site that is WP2.0 and not having any problems so this is a little concerning to me. Can you verify you're running v.091a of X-Comments? Have you looked in the table in MySQL to see if the records are being added?
January 19th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Hi, great idea for a plugin - not had chance to use it yet, but this is definitely something that will be useful to keep track of where I've commented. Will post back any feedback once installed, and will blog about this plugin on my own site if it's as good as it sounds.
Cheers,
Rob
January 19th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Not pretty good support from my host: I'll be waiting for the update.
January 19th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
dpb: I am using .091a, at least … that's what the plugin file says. I cheecked and it is in fact not adding any records, there is actually no table created at all. Is there something special I have to do in order to 'initialize' the plugin? I looked through the plugin but it looks like it is supposed to automagically set that up. Also, the management page for X-Comments looks way outa whack, the two entry boxes go way off thee side of the page. Are they supposed to do that?
January 19th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Nope, Pablo, it shouldn't be doing that. I'm looking into this but am coming up clueless so far. It sounds like some of the code isn't running completely. If you don't mind, try deactivating all your plug-ins, activating X-Comments and see how it works. You can then, of course, re-activate everything else. I'll see what kind of info I can't dig up. Are you getting any kind of error messages anywhere on your site?
January 19th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
I disbaled all the plugin's and activated it, I then get this SQL error when trying to create the table
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, ]
CREATE TABLE wp_extcomments ( extcomments_Id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, extcomments_URL text NOT NULL, extcomments_Site_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Post_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Time timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, extcomments_user_ID bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Count int(11) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Approved_By text NOT NULL, extcomments_Approved_On datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', PRIMARY KEY (extcomments_Id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1
January 19th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Pablo, this is killing me. You're the third person with this problem and I can't figure out what's causing it. I do, however, have a solution. I'm going to email you a bit of SQL that you can copy and paste into phpMyAdmin to create the X-Comments table. If you're not comfortable doing this, let me know and I can walk you through. This has worked for Geoff and Jimbo above. Check your email in a few minutes…
January 19th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Well, I'm not sure which plugin caused the plugin to not load up properly, but turning them all back on has not affected it. In case anyone else has the same problem and you want to cross reference our plugins to try and narrow it down the list of the ones I use can be found at http://irgeek.net/about/plugins/ … again, awesome plugin. If you need any help with it, let me know =)
January 19th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Hey Dave,
Quick note: When I manually add a link to X-Comments, It plugs in a date of 2006-11-20 9:00:00 pm initially, and 2006-11-21 2:00:00 am after it's been approved. Any guess as to why?
Is there any way to change the time to be inline with my blog? Also, is there a way to have the date (not just the time) posted next to the link?
Thanks again,
Geoff
January 19th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
One more thing…
Is there a way to have the X-comments link directly to the comment in question, rather than simply to the page?
For example, I currently have a link on my page (http://www.geoffball.ca/blog/). I'd like it to link to http://dailydoseofdave.net/x-comments/#comment-372 rather than simply http://dailydoseofdave.net/x-comments/.
Just a thought.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Geoff, in the version of X-Comments coming out this weekend, the timing issues will be corrected. As for showing date and time, X-Comments shows the time if the reference is from the same day. It shows the date if the reference is not same day.
As for the time change, there are two times stored. The time the comment is added to your site and the time you approve it. If you wait to approve a comment, you'll see a difference. Anything approved immediately after adding shouldn't vary by more than a few seconds.
Oh yeah, the comments reference… it all depends on the URL in your browser when you click the link. If you're on a link that references the label of the comment (ie #comment-372) then that will be sent over to X-Comments. You can always edit any URL that comes over.
Hope this helps!
January 22nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm
I updated to version .10a and the function call doesn't display any of my external comments anymore. I checked and they are still on the admin interface. Any idea why it might be doing that?
January 22nd, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Never mind I figured it out, the plugin doesn't put a default value in $xcomm_return_count so it was grabbing 0 of them. Might want to fix that and send out a .11a =)
January 22nd, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Pablo, that's odd. I installed it on another blog to test before releasing it and had no problems. Must be an upgrade specific problem. I'll check the code and correct it. Thanks for the head's up!
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Yeah, from what I saw in the plugin it looks like it doesn't run the initial script like it does on a fresh install, perhaps an upgrade function that will check a wp option for a version number and do certain upgrades if it is less than the version of the script running.
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Hate to just be reporting a bunch of bugs lol, but whenever I click the generate preview button, it just refresh's the page with the entire form blank, like it's not passing the information in the form on to the next page as it should, or the form is not grabbing it as it should. Also this isn't new with this version, but it has never redirected to the admin page when I click the ?t= link on someone elses page, just takes me to the front page. I looked at this code however, and can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work. Anyone else have that problem?
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:54 pm
I'm still using 0.09a. Haven't had a chance to look at the new alpha yet.
I thought that clicking the ?t= link is supposed to take you to your own home page. That is just there to log the click to Xcomments, right?
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:02 pm
As of version .091a it is supposed to redirect you to the X-Comments management page so you can easily approve the comment.
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:12 pm
That's strange Pablo. It will only take you to the admin page if it's the first time that you've clicked the link on that site. Once the referring URL has been stored, it will just take you to your main page. If the comment preview is not returning a value, it's one of two things. 1. The site is not a WordPress site. 2. The server hosting the site is preventing robots or programs from accessing the pages. That's the case with one of the WP sites I comment on. This feature is very simple at this point and I'm working on advancing it but I suspect it will not work on most sites.
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:40 pm
It's not that the generate preview is not returning a value, clicking generate preview just clears all the fields. Doesn't even keep the fields filled in that it already has. I suspect it is supposed to do this?
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:20 am
The new release is good, but it doesn't seem to present the CSS properly.
See here for an example.
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:22 am
Geoff: What I did was throw the page in the theme directory, edit the file including the wp-config.php so the path was correct, and set up a wp page with that as the template. You can see what I did at http://irgeek.net/x-comments/ … if you would like any of the code I change just let me know.
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:26 am
Thanks, Pablo. I'll take a look at that.
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:41 am
Pablo, I would love to know the code changes
I've never worked with templates (obviously, I'm still running the default) so I wasn't sure how that would work on other sites. Please share any info you have on the subject!
As for the 'Get Preview' clearing everything out, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work when the preview text is not retrievable. I need to work some status message / usability features in there, but like I said, it's very alpha at this point.
Thanks for all your comments/suggestions/help!
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:45 pm
I'm having trouble with your plugin's use of the nicenickname. Specifically:
WordPress database error: [Table 'DATABASENAME.wp_users' doesn't exist]
SELECT ID, user_nicename FROM wp_users
and
WordPress database error: [Table 'DATABASENAME.wp_users' doesn't exist]
SELECT wp_extcomments.* , wp_users.user_nicename FROM wp_extcomments, wp_users WHERE (wp_extcomments.extcomments_user_ID = wp_users.ID ) ORDER BY extcomments_ID DESC LIMIT 0 , 30
These appear on /wp-admin/edit.php?page=X-Comments.php, and I suspect this is because the prefix I use is not wp_. I set it to something else to accomidate a second WP install within the same database.
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Ah, that's exactly it. I didn't even think about that when I wrote the plug-in. What prefix do you use if any at all?
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:53 pm
dpb: if you so a global $table_prefix inside the function and replace wp_ in your script with $table_prefix it will grab whatever table prefix they set wordpress up with.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Yeah, I realized that value was stored in there. I'm making note of this for the next release (which is looking like the next couple days at this rate)… once again, Pablo, thanks!
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 pm
I have several wordpresses going, so I gave each one a prefix according to its user's name. I'm glad to hear that it doesn't sound like these errors are too terrible. Thanks for making this plugin, by the way!
January 24th, 2006 at 1:04 am
in my site nothing appears. so i'm testing in your site.
my test site is http://nonull.com/monologue/
January 24th, 2006 at 9:13 am
HI I do the official translation of WP for Italy and I was interested to make your plugin fully internationalized and with italian locale, I noticed the actual version is partially internationalized and missing the load_plugin_texdomain function at the start of the files.
If you are interested to develop the plugin in the I18N way, I can help you, making the acutual versione fully internationalized so future version you will develop will be based on a strong base for locale.
Let me know, contact me at my email at: steagl@wordpress-it.it
Thanks
January 24th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Error message:
WordPress database error: [Table 'jsveron23.wp_extcomments' doesn't exist]
SELECT COUNT( extcomments_Id ) AS modcount FROM wp_extcomments WHERE extcomments_Approved_By =0
What I do?
January 24th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
jsveron23, It sounds like the setup script is not creating your database. Try de-activating all plug-ins. Activating X-Comments. Test that it's working. And then re-activate everything. That should work for ya and if not, ugh… let me know and I'll look into it.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:08 am
I was try. But It's not working.
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, extcomments_user_I' at line 6]
CREATE TABLE wp_extcomments ( extcomments_Id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, extcomments_URL text NOT NULL, extcomments_Site_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Post_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Time timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, extcomments_user_ID bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Count int(11) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Approved_By text NOT NULL, extcomments_Approved_On datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', PRIMARY KEY (extcomments_Id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1
T.T
January 26th, 2006 at 4:07 am
Thanks and I shall expect you next Version.
January 26th, 2006 at 4:26 am
[...] Oggi vi presento un altro plugin per WordPress (dopo l’apprezzato Xinha), utile a risolvere uno degli annosi problemi dei blogger: come riuscire a ricordare i blog in cui si è lasciato un commento, per seguire l’evolvere della discussione.Nella prima versione di questo blog (su piattaforma Ublog Reload) risolsi questo problema in maniera "artigianale": creai un box che modificavo manualmente, aggiungendo link ai blog che commentavo.Un "workaround" che funzionava, ma… non molto pratico, direi. Quando ho migrato a WordPress mi sono trovato ad affrontare lo stesso problema. Ma… ehi, questa soluzione non mi va più bene, e quindi per un po’ ho rinunciato a tener traccia dei miei commenti.Peccato che "sentivo" mancasse qualcosa.Ma un bel giorno (non molto lontano), ecco che arriva l’illuminazione (o meglio, il plugin): X-Comments per WordPress.Ok… ma… che roba è? E come funziona?Semplice: basta scaricare il plugin, installarlo ed attivarlo dall’apposito pannello di controllo.Successivamente dovrete inserire una blocco di codice che richiami il plugin (di solito questo codice va nella sidebar) e vi permetta la visualizzazione dei blog che commentate.Tutti quanti vi chiederete ora: "Ok… ma come cavolo fa il plugin a sapere che blog commento"?Magia… No, scherzo… è tutto molto semplice: quando commentate un blog, di solito lasciate un link al vostro; non dovrete fare altro che modificare lievemente il link che lasciate, inserendo una variabile.Esempio: normalmente quando commento un blog lascio un link a http://www.giovy.it; adesso, con X-Comments attivo, aggiungo al mio link la variabile ?t=[nick che usate nel vostro blog], e quindi il link che lascerò sarà http://www.giovy.it/?t=Giovy. Appena il mio commento sarà pubblicato, non dovrò far altro che cliccare su questo link; automaticamente verrò indirizzato al pannello di controllo di X-Comment nell’area di amministrazione del mio blog, dove dovrò solo "approvare" il link cliccando su APPROVA. Fatto.In tempo reale il link comparirà nella sidebar (o dove avete deciso di mostrare tali link).Ovviamente funziona SOLO se clicco IO il link; se qualche altro "visitatore" dovesse cliccare il mio link "modificato", verrebbe portato semplicemente al mio blog. Probabilmente è molto più complicato a dirsi che a farsi, e se avete già "messo le mani" nei plugin di WordPress, dovrebbe essere un gioco da ragazzi installare X-Comments.Potete vedere il suo funzionamento nel box "Blog che commento", nella colonna sinistra, in fondo. Buoni commenti! x-comments, wordpress, plugin, blog, comment [...]
January 29th, 2006 at 6:33 am
I hate to be the bearer of bad news yet again, but I have found another bug … the use of htmlspecialchars() when grabbing the title causes things like » to be stored in the database as &raquo; and return as &raquo; when returned. Perhaps a special function instead of htmlspecialchars to just convert the quotes and the <>'s
January 29th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Are there any screenshots of your admin interface and how it displays the results?
January 29th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Pablo, not a problem man. Thanks for letting me know. I'll look into it. Haven't had the time to work on it this weekend like I planned, but I'll do my best to address it in the next release.
Jon,
No screenshots but for the most part, it looks just like your Manage Posts tab in the Admin Menu. I never really thought about posting screens of it but if you think it would help, I'll put them up. You can always activate the plug-in and check them out w/o worrying about it negatively impacting your site. The actual comments only appear when you add the function to your sidebar template.
February 4th, 2006 at 3:10 am
I don't suppose that you could post the SQL here on your blog so that rather than all of us having to post and say “HELP, IT'S POPPING UP SQL ERRORS!” we could just copy and paste it?
I could probably figure out the SQL and craft my own statement, but I'm lazy at the moment.
February 4th, 2006 at 6:05 am
Hi there!
I just installed version 0.10a on my WP2.0. It didn't create the table, so I grabbed the “create” script from the plugin and created it via phpMyAdmin. Most likely the reason it didn't create was because my version of mysql HATES the 'default' attribute without an actual value OR because it had zero clue what to do with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP for the extcomments_TIME field. Version is MySQL 4.0.25-standard. Annnyway, so I got the table created and went to test it. So I enter the url with the ?t=nicename and submit, then click on that. It returns me to my blog homepage rather than the admin, however it DOES insert the record into the database. From here, nothing. Nada. Any ideas? Keep up the great work!
February 4th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
moonbatty, here is the SQL I've been sending people with errors:
CREATE TABLE `wp_extcomments` (
`extcomments_Id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`extcomments_URL` text NOT NULL,
`extcomments_Site_Name` text NOT NULL,
`extcomments_Post_Name` text NOT NULL,
`extcomments_Time` timestamp NOT NULL,
`extcomments_Preview` text NOT NULL,
`extcomments_user_ID` bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0',
`extcomments_Count` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`extcomments_Approved_By` text NOT NULL,
`extcomments_Approved_On` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
PRIMARY KEY (`extcomments_Id`)
) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
Melissa, interesting problem. I'll have to dig into that further…
February 4th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Oh trust me, I am the QUEEN of “interesting problems”. I'm going to poke through the code a bit now that I'm actually awake and see if I find anything. I recreated the table, based on your previous response to moonbatty, just to make sure I've got everything exactly as it needs to be.
February 4th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Hi again. Ok I've been looking, and basically for some reason, it's just not redirecting. Database is being written to, nothing is erroring. Just not redirecting. For me, this is fine, I'm perfectly happy to have it work that way. My question is, I have a blog on wordpress.com that I mess with, and I've been making comments there to test x-comments with. It's storing the title with all those nice ampersand based character codes strewn throughout. Also, there is no site name stored in the site name field. Both site and post name are stored together in the post name field. Again, not a problem for me, but I figured I'd let you know!
February 4th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Melissa… Yeah, that's kind of the way it works right now. It pulls the info from the title tag and plops it into the Post_Name field. I haven't figured out a way to logically parse Site and Post yet. I created the database before I got into the actual functionality of the plug-in so a couple fields aren't exactly being used right now. I'll look into the redirector problem and hopefully have a fix by the next release.
February 4th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Probably isn't a good way to parse, since there's no way to know exactly how each individual blog owner will set things up. I'm trying to figure out if it doesn't like my nickname…
Thanks for the quick response!
February 5th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Man Dave … right on the heels of your awesome and needed plugin is coComment. Basically it's a web service that does exactly the same thing, perhaps a little more … it's in closed beta right now but there is a review of it.
February 6th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Yeah, a friend showed me that last night. Kind of dissapointing as I was thinking of something simliar. They use bookmarklets to track your comments rather than the site variable… Maybe I can get xcomments.com up and running before they finish their beta!
February 6th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
If X-Comments doesn't flip your car, then coComment will.
February 6th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Andrei, ok… flipped cars. yeah… that's what this is about.
February 6th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Hmm. coComment looks interesting, but I'm really big on having full control over what I'm putting on my blog. Not sure that I want to be counting on a 3rd party for content. Plus the idea of having to remember to hit a bookmarklet prior to commenting is just really offputting to me. Dave, you keep up the great work you're doing.
February 6th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Yes, ma'am
February 6th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Melissa, you don't have to do anything. Install Greasemonkey (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org), and install the coComment script (http://sw.quotionmark.com/gm/Automatic-coComment.user.js) and click on the Install button that shows up in Firefox.
Then forget that coComment will receive every comment you make from now on.
February 6th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Andrei, if I used Firefox, I absolutely would be using Greasemonkey. I tried Firefox for several months and found it to be exceedingly slow compared to Safari, and I'm running a fairly new iMac. If I could figure out why Firefox runs so slowly on the Mac, it'd be a whole different story, but it was slow enough that it was wasting time, and as a freelance web developer, I couldn't deal.
February 9th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
The problem with coComment is that their service relies on them supporting the blogging platform that the site you're commenting on is using. Therefore, if the site is using something obscure or the owner has written their own…well, it won't work (yet, anyway). The bookmarklet is a little lame as well, plus I'm having trouble with my Greasemonkey install so I'll stick with this plugin for now. Great job!
I've also been getting those damn errors in the WP plugins area. I tried your SQL but it didn't work, so I resorted to creating each row manually…I need to brush up on my SQL sometime.
February 14th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Thanks Dave, it seems to be working now.
Great little plugin. I gave coComment a whirl, and couldn't stand it. Your plugin is great.
February 14th, 2006 at 7:13 am
[...] Update: Meh. Cocomment was ticking me off. I’ve switched to Daily Dose of Dave’s X-Comments It doesn’t have any silly limitations on what blogs I can successfully comment on, and it doesn’t force me to use someone else’s wonky template. I just have to twiddle with my own template a bit until I’m happy [...]
February 14th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Dave, after using your plugin for a few short commenting-posts, I wanted to tell you that it absolutely blows CoComment out of the water. It is easy to use, allows me to comment on ANY blog easily, and I can edit what is displayed with the greatest of ease, and even decide after the fact which comments I want to be shown/not shown, or update the URL to reflect the post and not a haloscan comment box, or whatnot.
Thank you. It's a great little plugin.
February 16th, 2006 at 12:53 am
不知道行不行啊？
February 18th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Very nice…
One of the best plugins I've seen for WP for a long time.
February 18th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Argh - it seems to fail at my site.
I use WP 2.0.1 but when I click the link I come to the frontpage of my blog and not to the administration like I was intended to. I've tried to disable all of the other plugins but this dowsn't solve my problem.
Is this a known bug or should I start searching for the bug in my WP installation?
//Hermann
February 19th, 2006 at 3:27 am
Hermann,
Make sure that the address you use when you comment is the same address you use when you administer your site. Ie: when I type http://moonbatty.com/blog, I'm prompted to log in. When I type http://www.moonbatty.com/blog I'm not prompted to log in. So were I to enter the non-www format into the comments box, the plugin wouldn't work because my WP install wouldn't recognize that I was logged in.
Or… you could have a different problem.
That's just the most simple thing that I can think of.
February 19th, 2006 at 7:43 am
I've tried with http://www. and without http://www. and both times I come to the frontpage. And both with www and without I have autologin, so I should be logged in.
February 19th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Hermann, can you check and see if the record is being added to the db? If it's not, then there may be a problem with the 'nicename' being sent. If it is, then we're probably talking about a new error. Let me know, and I'll look into it.
February 19th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Well, the url of the comment and the time of the comment is listed en the wp_extcomments table. But the rest is empty.
February 19th, 2006 at 8:38 am
Sounds like the plugin is failing at attempting to extract the title information. When that fails, the rest of the script fails and that's why you're not being redirecting. I'll look into that today and see if I can't find the problem. Sorry for th hassle but thanks for reporting it!
February 25th, 2006 at 1:40 am
all I'll say about that OTHER service is that the box it places on your webpage is UGLY with a capital “U”.
Dave, I love the look of your plugin. Thanks for your work.
I'm having trouble getting it up though. Many of the same issues everyone else had. It didn't create the table….I tried to use the code from the plugin itself and like Melissa, it didn't like the Current_timestamp….
I downloaded the latest version of your plugin. Any direction? Thanks in advance!
February 25th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Slick plugin… I just ran away from coComment. Not that it was bad, the applet looks like Hell on my site.
Thanks,
Chris
February 25th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Another observation… Can this be used to comment with Flickr?
February 25th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Hmmm… I have been commenting on other sites and notice that my comments are not showing-up on my site anymore. Any ideas?
TIA,
Chris
February 26th, 2006 at 12:13 am
Chris,
1- are you clicking on your link after you submit the comment? That's what the database needs in order to recognize your comments.
2- are you approving the comments that are in your database? They need to be approved before they show up on your main website. (They'll be in the X-coments management area)
3- are you sure that your “nice name” is the bit that you typed after the “?t=” ? (copy and paste it from the nickname” field in your user information.
4- if you go to blog.maltese.net directly, does your cookie work and are you logged in? If your cookie is for something different like http://www.maltese.net/blog then you'll have to log in at the address that you use for blog commenting, otherwise you won't see the X-comments interface.
February 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Moonbatty…
1 - Yes
2 - Now I can
3 - It is correct
4 - is what may be my problem. Apparently, when I go to http://blog.maltese.net, I am never automatically logged-in… Never was, actually. I always have to click on my Login link.
February 26th, 2006 at 10:29 am
I've deleted all of the cookies for my site. I'll give it a go again and let you know, as I think that they were the problem. Clicking on this post will be my test.
February 26th, 2006 at 11:05 am
I finally just created the table manually versus trying to copy and past the sql code. It created the table okay - now I'll just have to wait and see if it picks up the comments correctly
February 26th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
created the table manually and everything is activated - no comments showing up.
Any suggestions, anyone?
thanks
February 26th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Fine, I just installed your plugin that seems to be very, very cool. I hope more bloggers appreaciate it, because it is, in my humble opinion, THE alternative to the blogrolls nobody sees.
Thanks for your idea, thanks for your work!
February 26th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
By the way, I installed, activated, and clicked, but nothing appears…
February 26th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Could you teach me what is really the “nice” name I have to use in my variable? Why don't you make it just configurable in the options panel?
Thanks.
February 27th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Stefan,
Are you following the steps *exactly* as Moonbatty cites, above? That was my problem in getting posts to show. I wasn't clicking the link.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Stefan, did you try the SQL from this comment?
February 27th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Janio, the nicename is stored in the wp_users table of your database. It's one of the default fields created by WordPress whenever a user is set up. It basically replaces spaces or special characters with dashes. Take a look at the table, and you'll see it.
I like your idea of being able to choose to use the nicename or a user defined variable. I'll look into implementing it.
This next release is gonna have a crap ton of new stuff/fixes in it!
February 27th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Janio- If you log into wordpress and go into the admin area (dashboard), then click on the “Users” tab, you should see your profile (or you may have to click on “Authors and Users”, locate your username, and click Edit). Your “nice name” will be under “Nickname” usually.
That should work if you don't feel like digging around in the database.
February 27th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Chris - yes clicking the links. Dave - yes. I had to manually create the table and the fields. For some reason when I tried to copy and paste the code and run the SQL, it wouldn't work. I am closer to it working I think though. I just noticed that there is also an x-comment tab under my “manage” tab. It wasn't there before. It looks as though it allows me to edit or approve comments.
I'll click this link once I submit to see if it works
Thanks!
February 27th, 2006 at 11:22 am
How id you make out Stefan?
February 27th, 2006 at 11:24 am
This is so weird. I just replied to Stefan's comment and clicked on my name above the post. It brings me to the front page of my blog. It doesn't open the moderate page, nor do I get the “ok page moved here” message. What is the deal?
February 27th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Hi, friends.
The problem was the following: I typed my addres as http://sarmento.org and so on, but it would only work if I type http://www.sarmento.org and all the other stuff.
Right now I have deleted all the entries from the database, but I found two weird situations.
First, the plugin was not able to identify the post I had commented to (I tested using another blog of mine, WordPress based too).
Second, the link “see more” that appears beneath the entries on the sidebar causes a PHP error.
I'm using WordPress 1.5.2.
Thanks for all your support!
February 27th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
The error that occurs is:
Warning: extract(): First argument should be an array in /home/.nefertiti/janio/sarmento.org/janio/wp-includes/functions.php on line 1813.
February 27th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Chris - when I click the link (and I'm clicking on my name, is that right?) it takes me to the front page of my blog but I'm not logged in. No comments showing up. I'm not doing something right. I may just wait for Dave's updated plugin and try it again.
February 27th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Right, Stefan. That is exactly what is happening to me. In my case however, I am logged-in. I cleared my cookies to ensure that when I arrive at my page, I'm logged-in. I'm hoping that there is a fix. I'm clicking on my name, just like you. This is the link: http://blog.maltese.net/?t=Chris The friendly name is good, as I checked it.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
I must be doing something wrong then - I'm not getting the ?t=stefan on my name above.
February 28th, 2006 at 12:42 am
okay, I'm a total idiot. Maybe if I had read the instructions COMPLETELY I would have seen about adding the ?=nicename variable into the website address. I'll see if it works now and crawl into my hole if it does.
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:45 am
I tried to install this plugin several times and this is what I get:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, e]
CREATE TABLE wp_extcomments ( extcomments_Id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, extcomments_URL text NOT NULL, extcomments_Site_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Post_Name text NOT NULL, extcomments_Time timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, extcomments_Preview text NOT NULL, extcomments_user_ID bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Count int(11) NOT NULL default '0', extcomments_Approved_By text NOT NULL, extcomments_Approved_On datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', PRIMARY KEY (extcomments_Id) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1
WordPress database error: [Table 'analilia_wrdp7.wp_extcomments' doesn't exist]
SELECT COUNT( extcomments_Id ) AS modcount FROM wp_extcomments WHERE extcomments_Approved_By =0
What could I be doing wrong?
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:26 pm
How does one get past the “OK the page has moved” and go right to the moderation page?
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Bonita, I'm not sure why it's unable to create the table for you. There have been some SQL problems with other users and the code located here seems to work. If you're familiar with MySQL, you could try to do it manually. If not, the next release will have the new code in it. Sorry for the hassle!
Chris, I don't know man. I thought that was just me. It happened shortly after I did the Dreamhost auto-upgrade from WP 1.5.2 to 2.0.1. Weird…
March 2nd, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Awww man! I'll just wait.
I don't know how to add the code manually…
Thanks though! I can't wait for the next release!
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
all I can think of is that I'm a retard or something - I couldn't get it to implement correctly. I'll wait and try it again on the next release
I love what the plugin was made for though. I run across blogs when browsing and make comments and then a few days later can't remember where it was that I commented. So, it'll be nice to be able to track it.
Thanks for your work on it dave!
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Stefan, Bonita, I'm sure you can find someone willing to troubleshoot it for you guys (for a fee) if you've got a little bit of extra cash to spare, and a Paypal account.
heck, you guys can probably find someone to get it up and running for free, although I'm of the opinion that paid help tends to be a bit more trustworthy.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Moonbatty - thanks for the idea, but I can't count the number of people I've helped with something since I started using WP. That's the whole reason I use WP versus TextPattern or anything else. I'm a retard but not totally stupid
I'm about 90% to having the issue worked out and I'm sure that I will, one way or another, or use another plugin as a last resort 
March 10th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Thanks, Dave. Any word on the next release?
March 19th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
[...] So I’ve written another plugin for WordPress. This one is nowhere near as groundbreaking as X-Comments but it’s something I’ve wanted for this site for a while and couldn’t find anything anyone had already written that did it the exact way I envisioned it. Anyways, here’s the skinny… [...]
March 28th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
I am just testing this plugin to see whether it works.
April 27th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
I have implemented your plug-in and everything is working well. I was hoping that you could tell me how to style it though. On my blog there is too much space between the comments. Additionally, I would like to get rid of the bullet points for each comment. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get any css to work. Is this something you could help me out with dpb?
April 28th, 2006 at 9:27 am
hubs, sorry it's taken me so long to reply to you. Any editing would have to be done in the get_xcomments function within the plugin file itself. If you need any help with specifics, let me know.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:01 am
I was installing the plugin and encountered the same “Table Creation” bug as some of your previous installers. I am (sadly) using MySQL version 4.0.25 as my webhost is a bit behind the times.
Anywho, I played with the code and found that the trouble spots were that there aren't single quotes around CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, and then everything after ENGINE=MyISAM needed to be deleted. Don't know if this will help or not, but thought I'd let you know.
May 8th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
[...] I downloaded x-comments last night nad thought it was a really great idea. However, there is currently no widget support, so I can’t add it to my pretty widget sidebar. Okay; I’ll make my own! [...]
May 8th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Because I really liked the concept of X-Comments and apparently have too much time on my hands, I made a widget you can install that takes advantage of X-Comments. For now, it resides on my website, and you can find a direct link here. If Dave would like to integrate this into his plugin I would be more than happy to be of further assistance.
May 21st, 2006 at 1:11 am
Oh yeah good job with the code… I didn't mean to put you down my mentioning coComment.
it's all good. cocomment is good xcomments is good yo momma is good ya know it's all gravy train baby
May 23rd, 2006 at 8:53 am
[...] ↓↓ X-Comments .10a is a WordPress plugin that allows you to track your comments on other blogs. Very nifty plugin! However, if you’re using MySQL 4.0.24, you might encounter the following error message on your plugin page after activation. [...]
June 14th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
testing X-Comments… Dave is hot.
June 28th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Dave:
Excellent plugin. Works well in my blog. Certainly better than coComments, with its obvious problem of requiring its script to be in every blog for capturing comments. Yours is way ahead. Good work.
I made a separate page My Comments that contains obviously my comments (duh).
I seem to have a problem with the See More link at the bottom. It seems to be targeted to a page that is inside a folder my-comments which I don't have. Can you help me with some clues?
Thanks again for the plugin.
August 13th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
[...] X-Comments [...]
August 20th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
You're so sexy when you make hawt plugins, dpb… thanks
Now to see if it works! Ahah
September 13th, 2006 at 5:02 am
Test start-up Plugin!
Very nice!!
September 21st, 2006 at 8:41 am
I made a minor change to X-Comments that might be of interest to you and the community at large. I'm not using the “Preview” field, so I was seeing trailing colons at the end of each <li>. I added a test just before outputing the line to see if the preview field is blank; if not, I add the colon to the front of the field value. The code looks like this:
Thanks for offering a great plug-in.
October 27th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
cool plugin. installing it right now
November 15th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Great plugin, Dave!
I'm wondering if there's an easy way to put the list of X-comments somewhere other than on my sidebar. For instance, can I create an “X-comments” page?
January 1st, 2007 at 4:33 am
[...] X-Comments – Damit bin ich enorm unzufrieden, werd ich sehr bald erweitern und verändern damit es etwas automatischer geht. Vorallem das automatische finden meines Kommentars geht nur mit Wordpress [...]
April 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Like Herman, I'm not being redirected to administration, I go to the front page; when I go to manage x-comments the URL has been stored but there's no title or preview. Still a nifty plugin, but it'd be great to make it work as intended.
May 10th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Ааану-кв ребятки голосуем!!!
Призанвсайтесь проказники и владельцы сайат dailydoseofdave.net ))))
ЧТО вы будете деалать этмр летом?!
September 21st, 2007 at 10:38 am
Test myfunction comment
June 7th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
y yall did that wat happend to xcomments.com yo