The occasional scrivener

The quest for commenting in Blosxom

Argh. Why is it so hard to get a decent commenting system in Blosxom?

I’ve tried writeback, which although simple has the following cons:

• hard to integrate into my blog — it would entail duplicating a lot of code from my foot.html template.
• stores entries in a hard-to-parse format — this makes the retroactive moderation of comments a pain
• security issues
• no easy way to turn off comments based on the post’s age

I got a tip about pollxn (thanks, Dave!) and installed on a test installation. It was easy to get started, and the comments are stored in their own text files, making moderation easier. Automatic comment closing was implemented. But there were some cons too:

• fugly code that’s non-trivial to enhance
• a separate system, with limited access to Blosxom plugins that you may have installed
• comments are separate from posts, so that you have a separate window containing the comments. This is too close to Radio to be comfortable.

So what do I want from a system?

• easy to install and maintain — no stupid security holes
• notification and monitoring via email or separate web interface/command line tools. This is needed for dealing with the inevitable abuse and spamming.
• speaking of spamming — good countermeasures. Easy to install CAPTCHAs, hashcash solutions or abstruse math hacking.
• comment closure

I would have thought that there would be more tools and plugins for this. Maybe everyone is waiting for Blosxom 3, or blog comments are thought of as a lost cause due to spamming.

Posted at 21:46, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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