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Usage Manual: DLComments

Frontend

DL Suite: Comments is a plugin module, meaning you can use it on the frontend of your web site using DLComments as the name of the tag. All of its parameters are optional. Below is the list of the parameters, their default value, and what it is for.

  • comments: (boolean) Defaults to true. This can be either true or false. If this is set to true, then the user comments will be shown, otherwise, it won't.
  • form: (boolean) Defaults to false. This can be either true or false. If this is set to true, then the submission form will be shown, otherwise, it won't.
  • group: (string) Defaults to the page alias. This should be the group for which the comment belongs to.
  • css: (boolean|string) Defaults to true. This can be true, false, or a string with the same name as the CSS template you want to use. If this is set to false, then the CSS won't be shown. If this is set to a template name, that template will be used instead of the default template. If this is set to true or if the given template name doesn't exist, this will use the default template.
  • comment_template: (false|string) Defaults to false. This can either be false or a string representing the template name of the user comments to be shown. If this is false or a template name that doesn't exist, this will use the default template, otherwise, it will use the provided template.
  • form_template: (false|string) Defaults to false. This can either be false or a string representing the template name of the submission form to be shown. If this is false or a template name that doesn't exist, this will use the default template, otherwise, it will use the provided template.

Comment Approval & Editing

DL Suite: Comments is located under the "Content" menu item. Once you click on that, you should be taken to administrator area for DL Suite: Comments. The very first page you should see is the page that allows for you to approve any comments. There are also tabs which will allow you to edit approved comments, modify the CSS used to display the comments, modify the various templates used to display the comments and submission form as well as some other settings.

Both the comment approval and editing tab are very much the same. You begin by selecting which group of comment to look at (or all of them if you wanted to). Click on submit and if it finds any comments for the specified group, it will be listed in order of when the comment was submitted from oldest to newest.

From here, you can click on the username or comment and an input field should appear to allow you to editing the content if necessary. Once you are done, make sure the checkbox for that comment is selected and then just click either Approve, Save, or Remove.

Change Comment Appearance

You can easily change the way the comment look on your site by editing the CSS and/or the templates. Simply click on the tab you want to edit. Listed will be all the templates available for that particular tab. You can either add in a new one or edit an existing one. Make you changes and save and you should be all set. You can also remove a template if you want but note that this module will not allow you to remove a template if it is the only one left since there needs to be at least one template.

Changing the Settings

You can change the message displayed to the user upon failure and successful submission of the comment in the settings tab. You can also change whether or not you want to display an icon for that particular message and you can even change the URL to that icon.

User Comments

  • Posted By
  • Posted On
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  • Comment
  • test
  • May 16, 2008
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  • testing; [Webmaster note: This was someone else posting a test. Further test messages will not be shown.]
  • Jack
  • June 03, 2008
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  • Very very nice work. It runs smoothly on my test environment.
  • Bobonze
  • September 18, 2008
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  • How do I set Comments to show up without having to approve them? [Response: Please download the latest version 1.0RC1 and go to the settings page. There, you should see the option to allow auto approve of the comments.]
  • jknon
  • October 05, 2008
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  • maybe you could use the existing help files for other modules as a template for providing manual support. - i am fairly confused by what i have found. i am unable to find out how to add groups or even how it fits into the front end of the site, can it be put in more than one page for page specific comments? please make the link to the manual for dlcomments a little clearer. many thanks for the module and your efforts so far.
  • duclet
  • October 07, 2008
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  • To jkon: Yeah, I'll try to make it clearer in my next update.
  • jknon
  • October 14, 2008
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  • how do I add in a new field for input and display. I'm wanting to modify the comments to include a link field i've adjusted the templates accordingly but i need to add some code somwhere but don't know where. can you helpplease. thanks [Response: Are you letting the user adding the link? If so, that requires the addition of a new column in the database which this script currently does not support. That will be added in a future version.]
  • Moru
  • November 04, 2008
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  • How do I get the module to show the admin pages? All I get is the row of tabs, under that it's a white empty square. I think something blinks up when I open the comment settings the first time but that quickly disappears. I tried latest Opera, Firefox and Internet explorer 7.
  • duclet
  • November 07, 2008
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  • To Moru: I am not sure what you mean because I have not experienced that in Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7. The only thing that I can think of is that you might be using a PHP version less than PHP 5.2. If you can, can you provide a link to a snapshot of the problem?

Comment Submission

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This page was last modified on: Jun 09, 2008.