Posting Date: April 15, 2002

WebWord Comment -- Here is some important housekeeping. I've made two changes to WebWord. First, you can now enter comments anonymously. Second, you can now use HTML in your comments. I listened to your feedback and I think it makes sense to relax the rules. Please don’t abuse these privileges. Thank you!

Reader Comments...

It might be a good idea to put some information alongside the comment form explaining that paragraphs are automatically inserted but other HTML can be added (with examples of tags). It's awkward when commenting systems don't let you know whether to simply put in the URL (which it'll then automatically make clickable) or insert HTML.

Posted by: Matt Round on April 16, 2002 04:23 AM

Matt, that is a good idea. I'll see if I can take care of it in the next day or two. Also, I still need to add more space between each comment. I really thought that I took care of that.

All things considered, the conversion over to Movable Type went well. I really expected more problems. For the most part, people are sending me usability advice (cool!) and minor tweaks. Nothing really bad has happened.

When I have a chance I'll write up my experience. The summary is that it took about 20 hours and was tedious. However, as I focused on the tasks and read the documentation, the transition from Greymatter to Movable Type was very reasonable. Just think about it...a transition from one content management system to another in about 20 hours. Not too shabby. I think it says more about Greymatter and Movable Type being excellent systems than anything else. (Remember, I'm not really a developer or system administrator!)

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on April 16, 2002 07:54 AM

John, a suggestion...

Remove every "Add Your Comment" link
Rename every "Permanent Link" to "Add your comment"

Take a look. Both pages contain the same content, but the permanent page is superior because it is permanent. The user is not served by duplicated services.

Or is there some failing of MT that prevents this?

Posted by: Jack Schonchin on April 16, 2002 11:24 AM

Rats, I just realized the one difference is on WebWord's front page, where "Add Your Comment" also indicates the number of posts in the discussion. Is there a way to add that functionality for permanent links?

Posted by: Jack Schonchin on April 16, 2002 11:28 AM

Yes, MT can add the number of comments to a permanet link. It's just one of their template tags.

The place where you might run into an issue though is communicating the fact that you can add comments, and communicating the fact that there is a permalink. I solved it on my site by just linking the time stamp and the comments stamp to the same individual archive page.

Posted by: Will on April 16, 2002 01:48 PM

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