What is a Comment/Feedback section ?
Comments/Feedbacks are some mechanisms for the readers to leave their comments about one's blog post. They provide for a lively interaction among the blogger community.
How can I add Comments section to my Blog ?
Very few blogging sites have the capability to support their own Comments section. Blogging tools such as MovableType and Nucleus are examples of this. In other cases, such as the popular ones Blogger/BlogDrive/etc, third-party providers can be used to provide the Comments section, typically using some Javascript code.
Do I need to know Javascript for adding Comments Section ?
No. Typically, only a few lines of Javascript code is all that is needed for adding the Comments section. And almost all of the Comments providers can generate this code automatically to be copied and pasted into the blog template. Or they can update the blog templates automatically when provided with the username/password of the blog.
What are the commonly used Commenting services?
[Answer from Bala Subra's post in the TamilBlogs Yahoo group: Refer to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilblogs/message/531 ]
Most of the folks use BackBlog
http://www.blogextra.com/backblog
(Free accounts are limted to five entries per post)
A more comprehensive list is at
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=126&topic=23
Some of the earlier discussions are
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilblogs/message/279
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilblogs/message/10
The general consensus seems to be Haloscan
http://www.haloscan.com
Ofcourse when you search the web there are
numerous options like http://comment.quodlibet.be/
How do I setup Comments for reading/writing in Tamil ?
The answer to this question varies and lies in multiple levels.
1. The comments page should be configured to have a character encoding of UTF-8 (for example in haloscan, login and go to settings/advanced settings/character-encoding/utf-8).
2. The CSS stylesheets for the comments page should be updated to list Tamil fonts. Use Unicode fonts such as Latha, TheneeUniTx, etc. Dynamic encoding of fonts can also be used.
3. Make sure "Indic" support is enabled in your WinNT, 2K, XP computers.
How can I modify the default look of the number of comments, etc?
Depends on the provider. Typically involves modifying the template and/or the CSS stylesheets. Read provider specific FAQs.
Why is there a limit to the number of comments for a single post ?
Depending on the membership type and the individual Comments Section providers, there may be a limit on the number of comment entries users can make for a particular blog post. Backblog has the limit at 5 for free users. No limit for premium users. Haloscan does not limit the number of comments for free users as well.
Why does comment entries sometimes get truncated ?
Most of the Comment Section providers have an upper limit on the number of characters (read "bytes") for each comment entry. Depending on the provider it may be 500 bytes or 1000 bytes. If the comments are in English (ASCII) then one can enter that many characters as there are bytes. However, if the comments are entered in Tamil, as in UTF-8 encoding, then the number of Tamil characters that can be entered will be significantly less. Each Tamil glyph (note: NOT character) takes up three bytes in UTF-8 encoding. For example, "kOthai" (கோதை) written in Tamil, although has only two characters, will take upto 15 bytes (9 bytes for kO, and 6 for thai). Also, be warned that if you have the encoding set to ISO-8859-1 or some other ascii-compatible encoding, and then copy and paste a unicode text from some other tool, then each glyph will take up to seven bytes (to represent it in unicode number format). So the above example (kOthai) will take 35 bytes of storage !!!
Can I prevent someone from making a comment in my blog ?
Yes. One can use IP banning method to prevent someone (from a given IP address) from commenting on your page. Again this depends on the service being used. Details are specific to the service used. Search for IP banning...
Can I prevent anonymous comments ? How do I make some field mandatory (like a username, email, etc?
Depends. Advanced users can do this by modifying their html templates to include form validation using Javascript. Note: Upgraded/premium membership (Read: paid) may be required to access the html templates.
Can I link to a comment entry from my posts ?
In general, yes, that is possible. Look for the permalink for a particular comment (often represented by the # sign) and copy the shortcut and include in blogposts.
Can I delete comment entries from specific users ?
Yes. In most cases, logging into the comment providers will give you a view of all the comment entries and an option to delete specific comment entries.
How can I prevent errors from the Comments script while loading a page ?
In some cases loading a page causes error dialog boxes to show up when the comments service providers are down. Phil Ringnalda has a nice way to gracefully handle the errors and remove the annoyance for the user. It involves initializing the javascript variables prior to using etc. Beginners and not interested people can skip this link to
Phil's blog
My browser seems to display only upto the comments line and doesn't show below that. How to circumvent this problem ?
This problem may occur because of the Comments link Javascript code, or things like Statistics trackers. Hit F11 in MS Internet Explorer twice, as if to toggle full view mode and back. Now you should be able to see the entire site. Don't know how this works, but definitely works !
Other useful links:
Mathy's template for backblog with dynamic tamil fonts.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilblogs/message/279
Suratha templates for backblog
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilblogs/message/360
Haloscan faq
http://www.haloscan.com/members/faq/
Is there a stylesheet template for HaloScan users ?
You can probably use this:
/css/rselvaraj-TamilComment.css in the "URL of your style-sheet / template" field in haloscan>template gallery>manage your template page.
This template looks something like this and has support for Umar's dynamically encoded Thenee unicode Tamil font.
Or you can try to modify the following and upload it to haloscan template space (if it is not blocked).
@font-face {
font-family: TheneeUniTx;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(http://www.geocities.com/csd_one/umar/THENEE.eot);
}
body {
font-family : Latha, TheneeUniTx, TSCu_InaiMathi, TSCu_InaiKathir, TSCu_ArulMathi, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size : 11px;
color : #000000;
background-color : #eeeeee;
}
p {
font-family : Latha, TheneeUniTx, TSCu_InaiMathi, TSCu_InaiKathir, TSCu_ArulMathi, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size : 11px;
color : #000000;
margin : 25px;
line-height : 20px;
}
a {
color : #0099CC;
font-size : 11px;
font-weight : 600;
text-decoration : none;
font-family : Latha, TheneeUniTx, TSCu_InaiMathi, TSCu_InaiKathir, TSCu_ArulMathi, verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
a:link {
color : #0099CC;
}
a:visited {
color : #006699;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}
hr {
color: #CCCCCC;
width: 60%;
text-align: center;
}
input {
font-family: Latha, TheneeUniTx, TSCu_InaiMathi, TSCu_InaiKathir, TSCu_ArulMathi, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
}
.MainTable {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
.PSubmit {
padding-left:110px;
}
.SubmitButton {
}
