Subscribe to Comments 2.0 Final

July 11, 2005
6:24 am

Subscribe to Comments 2.0 for WordPress has moved out of beta with the release of version 2.0 final. Only minor fixes over beta-2, so this is an optional upgrade.

24 comments

Subscribe to Comments 2.0-beta-1

June 10, 2005
1:42 pm

My Subscribe to Comments 2.0 has been officially released in “beta” form. A big thank you goes out to the many people who helped me troubleshoot the plugin during the limited alpha release for the last two months! The code is very stable now, and the “beta” designation is just indicating that I’m planning on active development and bug fixing (if any should show up) in the next few weeks.

Now that the plugin has been officially released, I’m going to submit it to the WordPress plugin competition, where I think it has a decent shot at the “Best Community Plugin” category ($500 prize).

Go here

54 comments

Subscribe to Comments 2.1

May 15, 2005
4:48 am

Subscribe to Comments 2.1 is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

Features

  • Rudimentary security
    • Users cannot enter a random e-mail into the subscription manager and modify someone else’s subscriptions
    • In order to modify subscriptions, users need to use a special link, given in notification e-mails, and printed in the comments form as long as they have their comment cookie
  • Recognition of subscription status
    • Unsubscribed users see the “subscribe to comments” checkbox, but subscribed users see a “Manage your subscriptions” link
    • The author of the post is recognized by either login or comment cookie and is assumed to be subscribed to the entry (as they will receive notifications through WordPress)
  • Themeable subscription manager
    • Uses visual style of WordPress interface
    • Can be optionally accessed via “Manage” menu in WordPress
    • E-mail verification of block requests
    • Javascript “invert selection” link to check/uncheck subscriptions for mass deletion
    • “Return to the page you were viewing” link that persists at the top of the page, so that users can easily return to the post they were reading once they are done modifying subscriptions
  • Ability to let users change notification e-mail address
    • In the subscription manager, users can request that their notification address be changed for all their subscriptions
    • Special link is sent to the old address for verification
    • Once clicked, their e-mail address will be changed instantly for all their comments
  • Easy integration into comments form
    • No modification of comments form needed for WP 1.5+ (supported themes)
    • For users who want custom placement of the checkbox/link to subscription manager, this can be done with one simple function call, placed anywhere in the comment form
  • Subscription without leaving a comment
    • By popular demand, you can now offer visitors the option of subscribing to comments on an entry without having to leave a comment themselves
    • If the reader later decides to join the conversation, their subscription continues without them having to explicitly set it
  • Customization
    • You can make the Subscription Manager that your users see use your theme’s header, footer and sidebar, using CSS to style it to fit your site
  • Internationalization
    • I’ve written Subscribe to Comments 2.1 with i18n in mind, making full use of __() and _e() functions. The domain is “subscribe-to-comments”.

Download

Version 2.1 Update

Version 2.1 of Subscribe to Comments has a feature that people have been begging me to implement for many months: you can view the list of people who are subscribed to posts on your blog, and you can also see a list of the most “subscribed” posts. Also in this version is a new one-file install. You just put subscribe-to-comments.php in your /plugins/ directory, activate, and you’re done. This version will work on WordPress versions from 2.0.6 through 2.3.1 (highest tested).

Versions

  • 2.1.2 Fixed a few bugs that’d send bad notifications (thanks Donncha!), cleaned up some code and moved to using proper WP escaping functions
  • 2.1.1 WordPress 2.2 compatibility! Also note that support for attribute_escape() is needed, so if you get errors about that, upgrade to the latest version in your branch
  • 2.1 big update, fixing a few potential XSS holes, and misc error messages… see above for details
  • 2.0.8 XSS security fixes, hopefully fixed “+” symbols in e-mail for good
  • 2.0.7 additional “funky e-mail” fixes
  • 2.0.6 support for e-mail addresses with “+” symbols, option to disable CSS “clearing”
  • 2.0.4 potential security bugs, better WP 2.0 capabilities compat

Feedback/Bugs

Feel free to leave bug reports or feature requests here. Use this entry’s comments to ask support questions or offer general feedback

4,468 comments

Subscribe to Comments 2.0-alpha-4

April 9, 2005
10:28 pm

The alpha 4 version of Subscribe to Comments 2.0 is now available. Upgrade if you were having problems. If you are using a cutting edge version of WP 1.5.1, it is a necessary upgrade, because of some recent file shuffling in SVN.

I’m still going to hold off publicly releasing a final version until WP 1.5.1 is out, because I don’t want to have to spend all my time supporting issues that are related to the bugs in WP 1.5

The only people who should be using this now are people who are comfortable running alpha WP 1.5.1 code.

10 comments

Subscribe to Comments 2.0-alpha-3

March 31, 2005
4:56 pm

Subscribe to Comments 2.0-alpha-3 is available for my alpha testers. Biggest change: options are now set through WordPress options interface, and more things can be customized, including the default “checked” status of the “subscribe” checkbox.

Add a comment

WP: Subscribe to Comments 2.0-alpha-5

March 28, 2005
11:49 pm

This post pertains to the alpha test period for this plugin which ran until June 9th. As of June 9th, this code has been officially released and listed in the WordPress plugin repository.

Go here.

171 comments

WP: Subscribe to Comments 2.0 Preview

March 16, 2005
1:59 am

Not everyone has such active commenters on their blog that a return after 10 minutes will reveal numerous responses. If your blog is anything like my blog, comments on an entry might take place every couple of hours, over a few days. Because of this, the Subscribe to Comments plugin by Jennifer at Scriptygoddess has been a lifesaver. When leaving a comment, users are given an option to subscribe to that entry’s comments, and will receive e-mail notifications of replies. The plugin was written soon after the release of WordPress 1.2 Mingus. Although the original work was Jennifer’s, several others, myself included, have contributed to the code, adding features and fixing bugs. Jennifer has become unable to maintain the code as of late, due to personal factors. I’ve sort of taken the code under my wing, and have been giving it a little TLC, cleaning it up, and adding features that people have suggested in the last year.

What follows is a breakdown of the changes I’ve implemented so far (subject to change):

(more…)

50 comments

Show/Hide Comments in WordPress

June 3, 2004
2:13 am

As more and more people switch over to WordPress, they are wanting some of the features they enjoyed when using Movable Type. Rest assured, there are people working overtime writing plugins. I’ve just now installed a “Subscribe to Comments” plugin by Jenn from ScriptyGoddess (which is in beta right now… keep your shirt on), and I just wrote up an article over there about how to do Show/Hide Comments.

The whole thing is quite lengthy, as I went into detail as to what code you should change, but for people who have a stronger understanding of PHP, I can give you the short version.

Basically, we’re going to harness a variable, $withcomments, that is used as a switch for RSS feeds. It really isn’t used in your main templates, but it suits our purposes here. Since your entire wp-comments.php file is wrapped in an if($single || $withcomments){ conditional, all you have to do is go in and separate code chunks into the stuff that should be shown on an $single page, and the stuff that should be shown on a $withcomments page (dropdown comments, that is.) Any code chunks that should be in both, leave alone.

What you need to do in your index.php template (besides making the links to expand the comments), is set up code near the top that will designate certain types of pages as $withcomments. The simplest form would be this:

if(!$single){
$withcomments = TRUE;
}

So every page that isn’t $single will be $withcomments. As you can imagine, you can get much more complex if you like. This was merely an overview of the basic approach. Maybe you’d better just go read the whole thing.

14 comments