Blog post, comments...

5 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: August 4, 2009   (RSS)

By andycal - August 3, 2009

I'm just working out how to do a blog-type system that will also allow comments and I'd welcome any thoughts.

I've got two ways of doing this from what I can see, but neither is really 'elegant'.

The first is to use a category style menu with the parent item being the blog and the child items being the comments. The problem here is that the comments will all have blank entries where the blog is and it'll look a bit odd (in the admin).

The second is to have two seperate menus, one is for the blogs, the others for the comments. From an admin point of view I'm thinking this might be the best way, however going into the 'comments' menu will show the comments all over the place. Ideally I'd want to be able to click on my blog entry and go straight to all the comments for that blog.

Just thinking aloud, but any ideas welcome.

Re: [andycal] Blog post, comments...

By ross - August 3, 2009

Hi there

Thanks for posting!

There are definitely going to be a bunch of ways to do comments. I haven't done them using category menus before though. What I find works best is if you just setup a regular list section with the following fields:

title
name
email
article number
comment

For the most part, all the fields are actually arbitrary except for the article number one.

On your article pages, you'll need some code for adding an article to that comment section that passes in all those fields as well as the article number.

Does that make sense? Send me an email through consulting@interactivetools.com if you'd like a sample of that add code.

If that ends up being enough to get you started on your own, keep me up to date with how you make out :).
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com

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Re: [ross] Blog post, comments...

By andycal - August 3, 2009

Hi Ross,

Thanks for that. I'm OK with the article adding in the article number and all the comment data - shouldn't be a problem, but is there a way of adding a link or something to the 'article' menu in the CMS so it will go to the 'comments' section and list all the comments for that specific article?

Does that make sense? (it looks confusing to me and I wrote it!)

What I'm after is an easy way of managing it from the point of view of the admin.

Re: [andycal] Blog post, comments...

By ross - August 3, 2009

Hi

There are a couple different ways you'll be able to handle the admin side of things. First off, the advanced search options in the latest versions of CMS Builder will let you setup a quick search box at the top of your comments section that you can enter a number into and find a specific article's comments.

The other way would be to build a simple list page that you can pass an article number to and it will display the comments for that article. This one is pretty much the same thing as the other idea but it would be outside of the CMS Builder interface.

In both cases, you would just enter the article number you want to see the comments for and it will list them.

Do either of those ideas sound like they would work? Let me know what you think :).
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com

Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you
need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with
Priority Consulting: http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/