Hari's Corner

9 Oct 2008

Blog software update: commenting system

Filed under: My software by Hari
Posted at 11:03:21 IST (last updated: 30 Oct 2008 @ 07:20:20 IST)

It is with great satisfaction that I announce the completion of the article display and commenting system for my blog software in development.

Here is a list of entry-specific features:

Separate draft and publish modes with separate drafts management section.
Optional parsing of smilies in posts as smilie images.
Pseudo-clean URL support for entries based on "stub" (e.g. entry.php/this-is-an-entry)
Ability to make an entry "featured" - that is have it displayed permanently in the sidebar. This can also double up as a "static page" feature.

Commenting is a key component of a blogging system and I've implemented these comment-specific features:

Optional anti-spam CAPTCHA to prevent spambots (which is highly recommended).
Ability to disable/close commenting on a per-article basis.
Ability to hide the list of comments on a per-article basis (while still allowing comment submission for that article).
Optional (global) moderation of individual comments.
HTML disallowed, but smilies parsed in comments.

Since comments are the lifeblood of a blog, I think I have approached it right. I might still need to implement a few more anti-spam measures, but that will come after intensive testing at a later stage.

Having crossed this milestone, the implementation of category-specific and date-based archives will be relatively smooth. smile