Comment Luv: The Only Plug-in I Love

Excluding its simplicity, a big plus, Blogger has some disadvantages over other free blogging platforms. It heavily relies on JavaScript (this quite plain site ships 100,034 bytes of JS) rather than server side scripting, i.e. PHP or Perl, it claims to be XHTMl 1.0 strict, yet the very first script Google flushes breaks the validation, resulting in 461 errors, 164 warnings for this very site. These problems inevitably slow down loading of the pages and design concerns for running an efficient blog become even more critical.

Now, I can live with extensive use of client side scripting (JavaScript) and 461 errors because there is nothing I can do about them and modern browsers are really fault tolerant (which makes them less secure, too). But I can not live without Comment Luv. It is the coolest, sweetest idea in the whole blogosphere. It is trivial to install it on a, say, wordpress blog.

When I found out that there was a Comment Luv plug-in for Blogger, I had to try it. And I did. I was expecting problems but not this. It immediately screwed up the custom template I was using. I first thought it was a script incompatibility so I disabled all plug-ins using JavaScript and tried it again. Nope, the beast was resilient. I checked a few forums, made a few Google queries but no solutions. I decided to sleep over it (it was late).

Next day, I compared the two templates, my original one and the JS-Kit processed one. The only difference was a few lines of code in the commenting section and honestly I could not see why these lines would break the template. But I wanted Luv.

So, I picked up one of the ready-made templates, rearranged a few things (basically the width) and tried it again. And, success! I hope. I made a test comment and it worked.

For those who can not live without it, try it with your current template first. If it works, cool, you are luckier than me. If it does not, choose a template from Google's offerings, it should work.

Comments

  1. Web Hosting PackagesMay 2, 2009 at 2:53 AM

    I used to have my blog on blogger and if I had known about CommentLuv then, I might have kept it. I have it on my new wordpress blogs and I love it. I hope your readers get as much benefit from commentLuv I have on my blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ArchiverMay 2, 2009 at 3:05 AM

    A good way to integrate JS-Kit to Blogger is when you have your own domain hosted there, otherwise the comments will not be indexed with your own URLs by search engines.

    Still, the extra JS is taxing on the blog, therefore I do not implement it here.

    Overall, CommentLuv is a very good plug-in, a must-have if you have a Wordpress blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Template DesignJuly 29, 2012 at 10:11 PM

    This is really a great post an informative one!Thanks for taking time to share your great experience and knowledge about the subject..Its been very useful for the blogers..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pros of Short Domain Names

Life is a good teacher. Up to now, it has never occurred to me a short domain name could be an advantage. I have always assumed, because I do it that way, people could bookmark a site when they like it regardless of the length of its name. Though I do not use it, social networking sites like Twitter changed my mind. I suddenly realized how difficult it must be to write a tweet about an article on this site without the aid of URL shortener services. Just writing the part "experimentsincyberspace/2009/04/" with the protocol prefix consumes 52 characters. I am not saying you will not be found. I am talking about the extra step, often tedious, of the necessity of shortening the URL. A very good idea could be having a short URL handy beneath or above your articles so that people can easily use it. Rather than having your visitors do it, you can take the extra step and place a short link yourself. In addition, keeping your URL intact can be a marketing and branding advantage.
Read more

A Thought Experiment on Do Follow Comments

Image
Einstein was a great scientist and without exception all physics students new to his work are introduced to his use of Gedanken Experiment or thought experiments. Gren Ireson, a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK, where his research interests include quantum philosophy, physics of sport and learning and teaching physical sciences, contests that a thought experiment has three requirements [PDF]: It is carried out in the mind (however one cares to define 'mind'). It draws on experience. It allows the experimenter to see what is happening (perhaps a better term to use than 'see' is 'imagine' or 'form a mental image').  I see a lot of blogs announcing they do follow comments lately, so I will humbly use Einstein's technique to shed some light on do follow commenting today. Let us start with a definition first. Google's Matt Cutts speaks: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives web masters the ability to modify PageRank flow
Read more

New Rush for Top Level Domains Begins

It will shortly, if ICANN's new proposal holds up, that is. According to Paul Levins, VP corporate affairs, any domain name will be possible, subject to your imagination, The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially "generic top-level domains" — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system. Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a web address ending in .hiphop. [...] To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding w
Read more