Plan to add user comments sections

bgillingham

Hi fellow designers,

I was getting ready to make the next revision to my PHP coded site -- and I have seen a few sites with great comments systems, etc - I wanted to ask if y'unz guys had any preferences in a comments system. When you have good content already, it can be very powerful to add user-comments, eh?

I want to allow users to comment on the over 75,000 software titles that are listed on the site. Depending on how relevant the user comments seem to be, I would allow the user to optionally search inside of the comments as well as the descriptions of software. The various software listing pages (as well as the screenshot page, order page, and download page) would list the 10 most recent comments by default, but would also allow for sorting on rating and viewing all comments in a paginated manner.

For reference, you could picture the user comments form at the bottom of each listing box - below "Description" and just above the "Bookmarking" section. http://betterwindowssoftware.com/products-14034.html

The user comment should allow for a quick avatar selection. I like quick.... perhaps a pop-up dialog of a preloaded set of only 20-30 very simple avatars... Would anybody suggest a different avatar selection method?

Does anybody have suggestions on how to deal with spam postings? Should I just use a CAPTCHA or also use the one web service API that checks to see if content is spam -- can't remember the name though.

Does anybody have any general suggestions to making a great comments system??? Aside from a site like Yahoo Answers, what site has a great comments system?

ftv_flung

I would recommend you visit this website for help with PHP Scripts

http://www.programmingtalk.com

bgillingham

The comments system is coming along nicely in my local development environment. I am thinking of ditching the user picture avatar capability -- it doesn't need avatars.

I am also looking into the API for spam detection that I mentioned earlier... That was called "akismet" for anybody who wants to look into it. It is very powerful, but I think that I would have to be considered a commercial application - since the site is much more than just a blog, it is a business and I have clients (more or less).

I am thinking of writing my own routines to detect if something is spam. It should be fairly easy to block about 80% of the spam postings with a bit of logic, eh? I'd appreciate if anybody has some recommendations on this - I searched the programmingtalk website with no luck.

bgillingham

I just uploaded the comments system and it ran fine for the first 24 hours. I didn't use akismet, but I made a nice CAPTCHA that no bot should be able to easily crack.

If anybody wants to comment on the software that is listed on our site -- feel free to enter comments. They are reviewed manually at the present moment, but we will be training a spam algorithm the entire time.

doppleganger

u guys are doing an awesum job, hats off to u and keep it up

bgillingham