Comments Going Native…

By on January 15, 2013 in

I’m going to switch back to the “native” comment system here on BH2.0.

There are lots of things I like about Disqus, most of all allowing BH to be part of the network of other NH Media sites that use the system (NHPR, WMUR etc) But I just have not been able to get  all of our comments in to their system and I think preserving those is an important part of the legacy of Blue Hampshire.

It’s a minor miracle that the SoapBlox folks were able to them all out of SoapBlox and into WordPress in the first place I guess we should be happy with that. (The XML file containing our posts and comments is nearly 95MB and has over 370,000 lines of text.)

I did find a Thumbs Up/Down style rating service we can use and will get this in place later tonight/Wed A.M. The fact that there will be a bit more “friction” in order to comment should help retain some more control over the community feel of the place as well.

The downside is that I think we will lose some of the comments made over the past couple of days. Apologies for that.

About Mike Hoefer

Mike has been an active member of Blue Hampshire from the early days, and currently serves as the managing editor.
View all posts by Mike Hoefer →
  • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

    Rating widget is in place. Note that you can give 1-5 star ratings on posts as well… sort of like the tip jar on Dkos.

    Next up… getting ‘Front Page” functionality in place.

    • http://miscellanyblue.com William Tucker

      Cool. Huge thanks for all of your work on this.

      Are there (or could there be) any automated actions associated with the ratings (like hiding a coment when the number of thumbs-down hits a certain threashold)?

      • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

        Not with this particular plugin. Will have to watch for trends and take action vs relying on automation.

        As much as it was the right thing to do move our content out of the soapblox “monopoly” I do have a new appreciation for the advantages of custom software!

    • GreyMike

      Don’t love that thumbs up/down is anonymous, encourages drive-bys, IMO. The rest looks great, Mike.

      • http://bluehampshire.com/author/mike-hoefer/ Mike Hoefer

        Let’s keep an eye on it and see how things go. I’m sure there a number of plugins out there but not sure we’ll find one that mimics the functionality we had in Soapblox.