Feeling The Love. Again.
My love for this site wanes from time to time. Right now it's on the up. The dead horse I felt I've been flogging has been given a new lease of life and is limping back to a canter.
I know I keep banging on about the changes I've been making. Sorry. Once they're out of the way there's plenty of content to come. I just want to get the site in shape while I chance to. I need to feel the love in order for the content to flow.
This morning I made an improvement to the threaded comments that was requested a couple of times. Now, by default, any reply more than two levels deep is hidden. There is a "button" to toggle the display of the next level of the conversation, as below:
To see it in action take a look at the comments from the other day.
To Come
Before I'm completely happy with the new site-wide commenting feature I want to add the following improvements:
- Now we know who's replying to what, it's possible to add the option to be notified via email of any reply to your reply. No need to keep checking back for an answer!
- A fool-proof way convert links in to, errr, links. Hopefully withough having to use a Java WQS agent (is it me or do they make submitting a form sloooow?).
- Basic HTML formatting. You know, the BB-style thing or maybe like stackoverflow's. Perhaps a little ambitious though.
- Option to switch from threaded conversations (the default) to a simple chronological list (and store preference in a cookie).
- Maybe make the comments section of the page as wide as the #container div, rather than the width of the main column, so it has a little more space.
- Improved spam handling. At the moment any reply to a blog more than X days old has to have me approve it. I want to improve on this.
Watch this space.
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Nice feature Jake.
I guess like most guys, we don't offer praise enough when needed, at least that's what my wife says. But you are an inspiration to many of us, that even though you don't know us, are still considered a friend and mentor in our eyes.
Through the features on Codestore you're taking away the old stigma that they've had associated with them since the early days and have displayed Notes as a modern useful tool.
Thanks brother for everything through the years.
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Ditto...W.A.Y. C.O.O.L.
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Thanks Aaron. Appreciate it. Although I've learnt to accept that people *do* appreciate my ramblings even if it's not obvious all the time.
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Hey Jake,
Love the new comment features. Extremely cool. I think this is the way comment systems should all work. Well done.
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Jake, you say ´content´ will come soon, but the way I see it, collaboratively improving your site with visitors is quite and educational. This IS content.
I definitely like the expand-collapse option. One idea may be to also include the number of comments below the section.
The coming features sound good too, although I wonder how you will implement #4. Once you go threaded, a chronological overview falls apart, since in threaded mode users can reply on earlier comments. Perhaps you have a trick up your sleeve, I´m curious.
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Hmm. Good point Ferdy. Hadn't really thought that far ahead.
Maybe when in chronological mode I will put "@NameOfWhoItsAReplyTo" in front of the body of each comment and make the link an #link to jump back *up* the screen to comments it's a reply on. If that makes sense?
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These latest changes are very very nice...Did you find out what was crashing the server?
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Still no idea. Putting it down to "one of those things".
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