Adding comments to blog articles

Comments on Blog articles are on our list to do, but I've found a neat way to add a comments box to individual blog posts in your e-commerce store...

I suggest you have a look at http://www.htmlcommentbox.com

HTML Comment Box generates code for you, which you insert at the bottom of a blog post. Instructions on how to do this are below;

STEP 1
Go to http://www.htmlcommentbox.com/account.html and log in using your Google Account login and password. If you don't have a Google Account, click here and sign up to get one.


STEP 2 On your account page, go to the settings tab. You should set your options so that you can moderate every comment to ensure your site doesn't get spammed.

In the "Moderation" section...

• Choose require approval for suspicious comments (those which contain links).
• Choose require approval for anonymous comments.
• Choose require approval for comments from signed in users.
  

STEP 3
On the HTML Comment Box home page, select the following options...

• Select "Unstyled" for the "Choose a skin" field
• Enter "10" for Number of Comments to show at once
• Tick the "Collapse Comment Box" field
• Un-tick the "Put Comment Box At Top" field
• Un-tick the "Use watermark labels" field
• Tick the "Show Submission Date of Comments" field
• Tick the "Profanity Filter" field
• Un-tick the "Show RSS Feed of comments" field
• Un-tick the "Show website field beside comment box" field
• Select "Require" for "Email" field
• Tick the "Email ME when I receive a new comment on my website" field
• Un-tick the "Ignore Query String" field
• Un-tick the "Only I can comment " field

The result of the options specified above is that people can add comments to your blog articles individually, and you can choose which articles to display the comments box on... as you only paste the code into articles that you want to allow comments on.

They also mean that you need to approve each and every comment that you get, so that no spam ends up on your Spiffy Store.

STEP 4
The box above this form has some code. Select all of the code in this box and copy it (CTRL & C buttons on Windows, Command & C buttons on Mac).

STEP 5
Go to the article you want to have comments on in the "Pages & blogs" section of your store toolbox. Edit the article, and paste the code into the bottom of the article. Before saving a blog article, you'll need to add a "more tag" above the code. This is to ensure that the comments box doesn't appear on your blog summary page. It can only appear on the actual article page, as it won't work on the summary page if you have more than one comment box. The comments will also not appear on the article page. The "more" tag looks like this...

<!--more-->

After you've saved your article, a comments section should now appear on this article page in your store.

Whenever someone makes a comment on your article, you will receive an email sent to the email account linked to your Google Account.  To approve a comment, go to the Account page on the HTML Comment box website to approve the comment.