Written By: - Date published: 2:05 am, November 30th, 2008 - 41 comments
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I’ve added two front-end features to the site. Automatic comment closing and a WSIWYG comment editor.
Comments get automatically closed on posts older than 30 days, unless that the post remains quite active. It displays like
The main reason for this update is because a common troll tactic recently has been to drop comments into very old posts. It does no real harm. But it does increase site traffic and is annoying for the moderators because the comments are usually out of context with other dialogue going on. It will also prevent some confusion over posts where people have found them using google, and thought they were current.
The other update is to put a experimental TinyMCE comment editor on the site. This can currently only be accessed by people who have registered and are logged in and have that grey mantle of authority. Users can turn it off in their profile if it causes problems. At present I have no plans to extend its use to people who aren’t logged in because they can’t turn it off if it causes problems with their browser configuration. It looks like this.
To turn it off, go into “Site Admin” in the top right, and then click on your login name in the top right again. Turning off the visual editing flag will turn off the javascript editor. However it may take a while to clear your local cache
The current limitations on the TinyMCE editor are that the BlockQuote doesn’t work (but I’m working on it), and it may have problems with browsers with strong popup controls. I’d have preferred to use NicEdit because it is smaller and closer to the site needs. However it doesn’t seem to want to store the formatting if you aren’t the the sysop 
Let me know of other issues here and I will see what I can do to correct them. In the meantime, I’ll clean up some of the other CSS issues like font size, removing the redundant tag message, and adding it to the reedit.
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Can’t register because I’m already WordPress registered. Can’t login because I the site doesn’t accept my WordPress registration.
Draco – this is a stand-alone wordpress site using code from wordpress.org. It runs its own registration system. The only thing that we share with wordpress.com are their anti-spam service Akismet plugin and consolidated stats using the WordPress-stats plugin.
Register away.
Ok, works now – was confusing as the registration and login pages had WordPress stamped all over it (who looks at the adddress :p). Now for some playtime
digitalblasphemy
The HTML editor is acting funny as well – it put the first three lines on a single line of code
PS, and the editor seems to lose some of the formating.
Hi Lynn
In another thread I wrote; In Safari 3.1.1 I can’t post a comment – if I try I just get a blank page with the message “Error: please type a comment.’
You replied: [lprent: Sorry, forgot to press Post - there is a new post about it]
I still can’t post a comment in Safari 3.1.1, same error message. Firefox works fine (to post this). Other than that, great work on the upgrades – thanks!
Edit – this time line breaks from the original comment were not displayed, I had to use edit to recreate the paragraphs.
Draco – TinyMCE is running on your side, which is what makes this stuff a bit unreliable. Not everything is fully working. But i figured I’d need more info.
rOb – Ok I failed to get it to store on Safari 3.1.2 on Tiger. That is odd, it was working yesterday.
You can see why I only wanted this in if people could turn it off
BTW, I’m using:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008111318 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.4
What if something you posted becomes highly relevant again? Say a throway comment speculating something comes to pass months later. Will you turn the comments back on?
M: Yes, but it is more likely that that we’d write a new post and link back
Draco: My workstation is OpenSUSE 11 and Firefox 3.04. That is what I do primary testing on.
BTW: My blockquote doesn’t work – does yours?
Using IE7 on XP (SP3, patched) I now don’t see the editor which suits me just fine because I can hand code and it was giving me gyp when you experimented with it before. But I didn’t go through the whole “turning it off” procedure you’ve outlined – it just isn’t there.
However, since you first started making changes I’ve noticed that when return visit to a post (as opposed to the main page) I now need to hit “refresh” to see new comments. For instance I might revisit the site and see lprent has commented on a post I’m following but when I click through to the post the last comment appears to be the one I left, till I manually refresh, then yours will appear. Bit annoying but not the end of the world I guess.
If however all of your new features start having usability drawbacks I’m going to start suspecting you’ve learned developing at Microsoft
Ah you cannot see TinyMCE comments because you aren’t logged in (can tell by the comment background color). You’re running in guest mode. I removed the TinyMCE comments because from that mode because the bug issues are on the client side (ie javascript) rather than the server side. So I needed some way for users to turn off the ‘feature’. I could only do that if they changed their registered user profile (selected solution) or put more stuff on the front-end (too much work).
The problem with the caching is that I’m doing some work at the server and periodically kicking the server side cache. From experience, when I’m doing that, the cache has issues if people are active at the same time.
Happens on the weekends because traffic is low and I have the time. I’m doing it on the production server because I’m merely paying with css and it isn’t worth reconfiguring the home workstation to think that http://www.thestandard.org.nz lives here. WordPress has a bad habit of not being fully transportable, and embedding the site name all over the place like in the database.
You’ll find that it returns to normal usage when I stop hitting the button.
But I appear to be logged in, and it’s recognising me (presumably via cookie) when I return. I’m registered for the site (you got me wondering, so I tried registering again and it confirmed it has my info) so now I’m confused.
Not that I want the TinyMCE thing. Real men code by hand
Glad to know that refresh thing is temporary though.
On the front page look towards the top-right under actions. If you’re logged in, it will say Logout. Otherwise Log in.
I’m into doing tags as well. One of the nice things with the wsiwyg is it will help people put in clean links (I hope).
No, it doesn’t. I’m having to use the HTML editor to get that in. Almost every
thingelse works fine though – the undo/redo buttons don’t work and the sub/superscript is being removedSuperscript
Subscript
Odd – mine go through fine.
redo & undo
Ok – that doesn’t work on anything except mickeysoft. Removing (relies on JScript)
Perhaps it was the way I had them on the same line that caused it to be removed.SuperscriptSubscriptSup/subscript – on one line, specifically the Sup/sub with the script left as normal.
Actually, that got all crammed into one line of code with the super and sub removed.
Superscript Subscript
Thought I’d try again with going into the editor but it still got removed and crammed onto one line
Only thing blocked from my end is scripts from google-analytics.
Firefox on Mac
Bold super sub
I’m Firefox on MacX.4.
No sign of Bold super or sub or italics.
Ok looks like I have fixed the safari problem. The safari plugin for tinymce caused problems with modern safari browsers – go figure
lanmac – try again now…
testing bold and Link
opensuse 11 + firefox
Test, ok now my css is working – just have to fix it so it isn’t so damn small
Iprent No sign of the tags for Mac Firefox X.4
XHTML might work. now will try strong or strong
lanmac – is that a new new version of firefox – I’m running 3.04 at present on linux and the same on safari and on windoze ?
Also you don’t seem to be logged in? (in which case it won’t work anyway)
Testing chrome on XP
Only problem I had was a oversized tinyMCE box after I saved Chrome 0.4.15.25
Oh. Using 3.0.4 Firefox Now bold and italics and Strike and three2 etc.
Have logged in now. Do I have to do that each time that I come on?
Looks like only Bold and Italics work but thats good.
Chrome on XP
Thanks. Try again tomorrow.
Testing blockquote on OpenSUSE with firefox. About to turn on blockquote
Nope that doesn’t work
Testing blockquote on firefox on OSX
Test doesn’t work
Testing blockquote on Safari on OSX