13FEB08 – “Commentable” is easy; it’s something you can comment upon or about. Dinarius searched for months to incorporate an area of the site that could accept readers’s Comments and thoughts safely. Too many comment systems leave a site completely exposed to attacks. As we searched for a system that could fulfill this task safely, we examined search terms like comments section, user notes, visitor logs, guest books and the like.

So here’s some straight dirt to answer questions that other depressed webmasters will have about visitors leaving comments on a site. You will need to be modestly capable at code and understand the very basics of PHP and CSS and CMS. Databases will be controlled through PHP, CSS will style the results and CMS is just a generic acronym for Content Management System. Of all the tens of solutions I investigated to allowing guests to leave notes, TEXTPATTERN was the most brilliantest and it’s free.

The installation will wring your little brain if you’re new to the acronyms above, but you’ll survive. According to Google’s Webmaster Tools, one search that drew a single visitor to Dinarius’s /commentable section (the blog or essays) was ‘act as commentable.’ When considering just what your website visitors and guests should be allowed to comment on or notate, You might have the power to allow guest booking on specific paragraphs rather than just the whole ball of wax.

It’s a fascinating service for WordPress users called COMMETNPRESS. Tooling an installed download of this comment manager permits guests and visitors to comment and share their views or make corrections on each paragraph if you set it up that way. When searching for ‘act as commentable,’ this BLOGSPOT entry intelligently taps into the notion that visitors to a website should be able to comment at an even finer (like fine focus) level than paragraphs.

In this lovely day of Social Networking and people filtering into niche websites that discuss what they enjoy and meeting others who hunger for similar content, commenting on paragraphs, collaborative notation and website guest annotation might be the next, big taken-for-granted advancement. Soon, one website’s content might well by a cumulative effort of, say, about 1400 visitors a week (this site). That said, when looking for a way for visitors to leave comments or sign a guest book you install, don’t over estimate the visitor’s desire to do so.

Starting a dialogue is a lot harder than just making it possible.

DINARIUS Bryan's old Digital Interest blog