//beconfused

An update to Fresh Comments widget.

Fresh Comments 1.2.1 Changes

Just one tiny little change only. As pointed out by blogan, Fresh Comments 1.2 does not work with Nybble Lab’s Sidebar Modules (SBM) due to a mistake in the coding. The issue has been rectified.

What is Fresh Comments 1.2.1?

Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is a WordPress widget that displays the latest approved comments submitted by your visitors and also gives you - the owner - better control on how your recent comments are displayed. Go straight to download Fresh Comments.

How to install Fresh Comments?

(Click on the icon to configure Fresh Comments.)

Easy. Just download Fresh Comments 1.2.1 and extract it to your hard disk. Then upload freshcomments.php into your wp-content/plugins folder and then activate the plugin through your admin interface. Finally, check it out in your admin interface at Presentation -> Sidebar Widgets to add or remove Fresh Comments widget by dragging around.

How to configure Fresh Comments?

(Above is the configuration screen of Fresh Comments 1.1. See how Fresh Comments 1.0 look like.)

Here are the configurable options:

• Title - Give the widget a name to be displayed in your blog.
• Before - This is where you can insert HTML before all fresh comments are displayed. Recommended that you put <ul> here.
• After - This is where you can insert HTML after all fresh comments are displayed. Recommended that you put </ul> here.
• No. of comments - Number of comments to be displayed in descending chronological order for your fresh comments section. (Only takes a value of ‘1′ or more.)
• No. of preview words - Displays only the number of words you specify as a comment preview. (Only takes a value of ‘1′ or more.)
• Format - Allows you to specify how you want each line of fresh comment to be generated. You can click on ‘(reset)’ to go back to the default format. Read more about the formatting options below.

How to format Fresh Comments?

• %comment_author%
• %comment_author_url%
• %comment_content%
• %comment_preview% - Displays the first few words of the comments. The number of preview words is specified in the ‘No. of preview words’ option as mentioned above.
• %post_title%
• %comment_permalink% - This displays the URI of the comment in your post.
• %post_permalink% - This displays the URI of your post.

Most of the tags are pretty much self explanatory. To add a tag, just click or highlight within the formatting textbox and then click on the tag you wish to insert.

Below are some examples of formats you can use:

Format:

<li><a href="%comment_permalink%">%comment_author% in %post_title%</a>: %comment_preview%</li>

Format to HTML:

<li><a href="http://beconfused.com/blog/2006/03/22/busy-week/#comment-9812">Mr. Dew in busy//week</a>: Well, it's okay. I don't think I can do much</li>

Displayed in browser:

<li><a href="http://beconfused.com/blog/2006/03/22/busy-week/#comment-9812">Mr. Dew in busy//week</a>: Well, it's okay. I don't think I can do much</li>

Other examples of formats:

<li><a TARGET="_blank" href="%comment_author_url%">%comment_author%</a> in <a href="%comment_permalink%">%post_title%</a>: <a href="%comment_permalink%">%comment_preview% [...]</a></li>

<li><a href="%comment_author_url%">%comment_author%</a> says, <a href="%comment_permalink%">"%comment_preview%..."</a></li>

(Using Fresh Comment widget in your sidebar.)

Additional notes

If there are any things you spot that is not working, do give me a notice and I’ll fix it as soon as possible. I’m not an experience PHP coder so please forgive me if anything goes wrong.

Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is tested on WordPress 2.0.7 and WordPress 2.2.2 except to make it WordPress 2.1 compatible. The browsers tested are Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.

Download it (2.97 KB in ZIP archive, 10.8 KB after extraction)

The source code for Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is distributed under GPL (General Public License), meaning that you can freely modify and distribute this source code.

Please do comment about my work.

Note that Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is out.

What is Fresh Comments 1.2?

Fresh Comments 1.2 is a WordPress widget that displays the latest approved comments submitted by your visitors and also gives you - the owner - better control on how your recent comments are displayed. Go straight to download Fresh Comments.

How to install Fresh Comments?

(Click on the icon to configure Fresh Comments.)

Easy. Just download Fresh Comments 1.2 and extract it to your hard disk. Then upload freshcomments.php into your wp-content/plugins folder and then activate the plugin through your admin interface. Finally, check it out in your admin interface at Presentation -> Sidebar Widgets to add or remove Fresh Comments widget by dragging around. (more…)

Note that Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is out.

What is Fresh Comments 1.2?

Fresh Comments 1.1 is a WordPress widget that displays the latest approved comments submitted by your visitors and also gives you - the owner - better control on how your recent comments are displayed. Go straight to download Fresh Comments.

How to install Fresh Comments?

(Click on the icon to configure Fresh Comments.)

Easy. Just download Fresh Comments 1.1 and extract it to your hard disk. Then upload freshcomments.php into your wp-content/plugins folder and then activate the plugin through your admin interface. Finally, check it out in your admin interface at Presentation -> Sidebar Widgets to add or remove Fresh Comments widget by dragging around.

How to configure Fresh Comments?

(Above is the configuration screen of Fresh Comments 1.1. See how Fresh Comments 1.0 look like.)

Here are the configurable options:

• Title - Give the widget a name to be displayed in your blog.
• No. of comments - Number of comments to be displayed in descending chronological order for your fresh comments section. (Only takes a value of ‘1′ or more.)
• No. of words - Displays only the number of words you specify as a comment preview. (Only takes a value of ‘1′ or more.)
• Date/Time format - This allows you to set the format where the date and time would replace %comment_datetime%. Fresh Comments 1.1 uses the PHP date formatting parameters.
• Show trackbacks - Checking this option enables trackbacks to be displayed in Fresh Comments.
• Show pingbacks - Checking this option enables pingbacks to be displayed in Fresh Comments.
• Before - This is where you can insert HTML before all fresh comments are displayed. Recommended that you put
  here.
  • After - This is where you can insert HTML after all fresh comments are displayed. Recommended that you put

  here.

• Format - Allows you to specify how you want each line of fresh comment to be generated. You can click on ‘(reset)’ to go back to the default format. Read more about the formatting options below.

How to format Fresh Comments?

• %comment_author%
• %comment_author_url%
• %comment_content%
• %comment_preview% - Displays the first few words of the comments. The number of preview words is specified in the ‘No. of preview words’ option as mentioned above.
• %post_title%
• %comment_permalink% - This displays the URI of the comment in your post.
• %comment_datetime% - This displays the date and time according to the format that you set in ‘Date/Time format’.
• %post_permalink% - This displays the URI of your post.

Most of the tags are pretty much self explanatory. To add a tag, just click or highlight within the formatting textbox and then click on the tag you wish to insert.

Below are some examples of formats you can use:

Format:

<li><a href="%comment_permalink%">%comment_author% in %post_title%</a>: %comment_preview%</li>

Format to HTML:

<li><a href="http://beconfused.com/blog/2006/03/22/busy-week/#comment-9812">Mr. Dew in busy//week</a>: Well, it's okay. I don't think I can do much</li>

Displayed in browser:

<li><a href="http://beconfused.com/blog/2006/03/22/busy-week/#comment-9812">Mr. Dew in busy//week</a>: Well, it's okay. I don't think I can do much</li>

Other examples of formats:

<li><a TARGET="_blank" href="%comment_author_url%">%comment_author%</a> in <a href="%comment_permalink%">%post_title%</a>: <a href="%comment_permalink%">%comment_preview% [...]</a></li>

<li><a href="%comment_author_url%">%comment_author%</a> says, <a href="%comment_permalink%">"%comment_preview%..."</a></li>

(Using Fresh Comment widget in your sidebar.)

Additional notes

I followed CSS Drive’s tableless form structure but I used tables where necessary. This release wouldn’t be made possible without the suggestions and request that I have gotten from Herrmueller’s comment, Inkiness’s trackback and Babak’s comment.

If there are any things you spot that is not working, do give me a notice and I’ll fix it as soon as possible. I’m not an experience PHP coder so please forgive me if anythings goes wrong. I tested this on WordPress version 2.03 only but it should work in any version that Sidebar Widgets can support.

The browsers tested are Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and Mozilla Firefox 1.5. It didn’t work on Opera browser but I can’t do anything about it since WordPress Widgets don’t work there anyway.

Note that Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is out.

The source code for Fresh Comments 1.1 is distributed under GPL (General Public License), meaning that you can freely modify and distribute this source code.

Please do comment about my work.

Note that Fresh Comments 1.2.1 is out.

I’ve been slightly because this couple of weeks so you see my posts are lacking these days. I’ve been busy but the times are quite fun. I’ve been meeting and talking to quite a lot of people recently. Mostly are my pals in camp, I haven’t seen them for quite some time.

There are surprises as I walk around my neighborhood too. I’ve been meeting long lost friends - okay, not that long - basically just secondary school friends and stuff.

Also has occupied me is my Fresh Comments plugin. I lost touch so fast. I don’t know what I coded already. I revisited my code a couple of days ago and just literally shut my text processor off to play Ragnarok Online. But this afternoon I really went on to try to understand my codes.

I’ve been listening and I implemented a couple of extras to the existing plugin, notably:

# Ability to display fresh comments from static and published pages.
# Allows you to include the date or time of the posted comment in whichever format you wish so long as it follows the PHP date format.
# It is also neater. Yes, it’s quite neat already, but it just got neater again. The whole HTML portion is rewritten from a scratch so the structures are prettier. I use tables when necessary.
# Also, you can select if you want pingbacks or trackbacks to be listed. Okay, I got to be honest - I haven’t coded that part fully. It’s half-written and I had to rush off to a friend’s birthday.

I am aware that some users request for these:

* Cached Fresh Comments.
* Show fresh comments in categories.
* Private post’s comments are not shown to people who logged in.

The above 3 features are not implemented in the coming release (version 1.1). Fresh comments in categories are kinda hard. I mean it’s not hard to code but it’s just not that worth the trouble. I have to query MySQL too much to get that done. I have yet to figure out how to do caching too. And private posts… Well, I haven’t figured that one out too.

I’ll be releasing the plugin after more tests. Probably coming Monday or Tuesday if possible.

Several of Nafcom’s comments are eaten up by the hungry Akismet plugin in WordPress. Now, I am trying Akismet Worst Offenders Extension to see if it works better.

Akismet saved me a lot of time maintain a blog and I can’t just deactivate it. Once deactivated, I’ll get hundreds of spam per day! And that’s just too hard to maintain.

I’ll hope the plugin modification would help. If you’re sure you comment and yet your comment just doesn’t appear, it is either moderated or caught by Akismet spam filter.

Akismet tends to catch false positives. I’m annoyed but can’t do much except to visit my list my comments and marked the legitimate comments off the spam list. Hopefully Akismet would improve soon.

If only there aren’t spammers…

Thanks to Christine Davis’ Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, tagging is now available. I complained about the limits of categories, and wished for tagging to be available for WordPress.

(The //beconfused tag cloud.)

In the end, I can’t wait any longer and applied a plugin to enable tagging. I still wish for something similar to Ultimate Tag Warrior to be supported by WordPress natively.

The cool thing about Ultimate Tag Warrior is that Technorati can detect the tags used in my posts too. That way, it’s much easier to find blogs that discusses on the same topic easier.

I join the whole tagging business quite late actually. It’s fun and easy for me. I still refuse to remove categories though. They’re quite useful in my opinion. You can see the tag cloud at my archives.

I just gotten an Adsense plugin for WordPress. I am hoping to earn more money using Adsense. I barely cover the web hosting and domain name after all the conversion rate.

Instead of including advertisements above and below the post, I decide to include an advertisement in longer posts. I don’t think it would affect much, but I hope that with such inclusion, the revenues would increase.

So if you see something interesting in the advertisements, do click on it so that I can earn some money.