LAST EDITED ON Jul-16-06 AT 02:35 PM (PST)
Commentz ReadMe and Support (Castle and Kurt)Introduction: Preparation for Commentz
Commentz is added to your web page or pages. (You can actually add it to almost any web page including php. The example is html.)
Commentz is very powerful, very easy to use and very flexible.
There are many fields you can fill out. However:
1) Most fields remain at the default setting.
2) After you set up your first Commentz you can copy it, and all the settings over and over again. This makes it very easy to do multiple jobs fast.
This is especially easy because you can click on Tuelz.exe or the screw icon more than once and open more than one Tuelz/Commentz window at a time. With two windows open at the same time you can very easily copy the input values and set up a new Commentz in 10 minutes or less. (It is basically repetition.)
The first step is to have an html page, or the layout for a page, the way it is going to look, commonly called a TEMPLATE.
Create your page layout and save it as TEMPLATE.
Add the following code called Autodiscovery tag to your html Template page between the head tags (<head> </head>) in your html and resave. (Normally this code will all be on a single continuous line in your html.):
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="Title with keywords" href="/rss.xml" />
You will copy the html of this Template page to make a New Post Page, a Thank You Page, an Error Page, an index page and possibly a Commentz Page.
You want to be careful not to modify the Template page unless you are sure it applies to all pages. I like to save a backup of the template page because sometimes I change it without thinking.
For your index page, for all your pages you will copy the Template and add additional information, usually tags.
Step 1: Copy the template page. Create a folder name Commentz. Inside Commentz create a folder for your current project.
For example create a folder called Sports. Inside the folder called Sports paste your copy of the Template page and call it page 1. (Do not create an index page yet, and do not put the index page inside the project folder yet.)
This is the end of your preparation for Commentz.
Setting up Commentz
1 - Open Tuelz
2 - Click the Commentz link.
3 - Top right you will see "Add New Category.”
4 - Type in your category eg: Sports " or stay in the Main Category. (You do not have to add a new category.)
5 – If you are adding a new category: Click Add category Button (optional)
6 - Click "Add A Project" button
7 - Type in Project name eg: Sports
8 - Click the Browse button and locate the folder 'Sports'
9 - Don't click the Add Project button as you haven't finished supplying Commentz with all the information yet.
Input Values By number
1. Script name: reply.php (no change required as it is a standard script name used on thousands of sites)
2. Suggest script name: suggest.php (no change required but you can call it something else if you like eg: opinions.php)
3. Main HTML page: commentz.html
Change the name of the main html page as it is a fingerprint. This should be changed to the page that you want the latest comments to be displayed upon and can be called “anyname.html”.
This name must not be your index page if you are using zz on your index page! If you are not using zz on your index page then you can use your index.html page here.
(If you are using zz on your index you will still be able to add the pheed for your commentz on the index page, but you will do it with zz. I will explain later.)
4. RSS index page (your RSS pheed): rss.xml (no change required - this is the path to your rss feed for syndication of your site)
5. Number of RSS items: 15 (this shows how many items you want shown in your rss feed-you can increase.)
6. Length of the RSS Title field: 50 (the length of the rss title that you want displayed-you can increase.)
7. Length of the RSS Description field: 150 (the length of the description of your comments that you want displayed in your feed-you can increase.)
These are all standard form fields and don't need to be changed.
8. Name field: name
9. URL field: url
10. Subject field: subject
11. Title field: title
12. Comment field: comment
13. Confirm field: confirm
14. New Thread Auto-Page-Naming System: The default setup is...
page-$year-$month-$day-$random.html
When a new page is created it will be named in this format.
eg: If a page was created on the 15th December 2005 the page would be called...
page-2005-12-15-8862.html (the last number being randomly selected)
I replace the 'page' with the main keyword of the site...
eg: replace...
page-$year-$month-$day-$random.html
with...
sports-$year-$month-$day-$random.html
or something similar.
*You do not need to keep all terms. You can remove $year or $month or $day or $random
15. Main Index HTML Page RSS Template: Part 1: Do not change first input box.
Part 2: Add RSS links: and select 'before' this text:
After the words 'this text' add some unique tag.
For our example this is a tag: <!-- sports -->
This tag must follow this format but can have any word or combination of letters.
You will also have to place this tag on the page you chose as the main html page, item #3 above.
You will place this tag on the main html page where you want your commentz to appear and Commentz will add the latest comments, before this tag. (as long as you choose before)
Note: If you are using zz on the index page then this tag should not be on the index page.
<!-- sports --> is my example of a tag. Make sure you use something different than
<!-- sports --> Any letters will do, does not have to be a real word.
Leave the Case as 'insensitive'
16. New Post Template: Copy all the html of your template page and save as New Post Template.
You will now create a second tag such as: <!--sportstime--> Paste this tag into the html code of your New Post Template where you want your comments to appear on all pages. (Do not paste this code on the main.html page item #3 above.
Copy the New Post Template html and paste into box #16.
17. No changes. Add comments Before this text: <!--sportstime--> (Use your own tag.)
18. No changes. Add comments After this text: <!--sportstime--> (Use your own tag.) Case insensitive. I prefer New comments first.
19. No changes.
20. Thank You Page: Copy the template page and save as thankyou.html
Copy the following code from Box 20 and paste into the html of the thank you page where you want it to be positioned.
You can change the words of thank you and click here to go back to suit your site: Copy only this code from Box 20: (and paste between the body tags of your template)
Code to copy:
<h1>Thank you for your submission.</h1>
<form>
<input type="button" value="Click here to go back" onclick="history.back()">
</form>
(and paste between the body tags of your template)
After you have pasted this code into thankyou.html copy the whole thankyou.html page and paste into box 20.
21. Error Page: Copy the template page and save as error.html Copy the following code from box 21 and paste into the html of the error page where you want it to be positioned. You can change the words to suit your site. Copy only the following code from Box 21: (and paste between the body tags of your template)
Code to copy:
<h1>You must confirm your submission.</h1>
<form>
<input type="button" value="Click here to go back" onclick="history.back()">
</form>
(and paste between the body tags of your template)
After you have pasted this code into error.html copy the whole error.html page and paste into box 21.
21. (Note: The Number 21 is repeated, this is the second #21)
Input Form delimiter:
<!-- commentz input form -->
Change the tag words, for instance <!—baseball form-->
22. Comments delimiter:
<!-- commentz comments -->
Change the tag words, for instance <!—baseball comments-->
23. RSS delimiter:
<!-- commentz rss -->
Change the tag words, for instance <!—baseball rss-->
Note: You may want to avoid words like baseball or form to avoid a fingerprint. The words or letters can be anything as long as they follow the format:
<!—anything-->
24. Host Name: Put in your host name in this style: domainname.com. Do not put ftp or http before the host name.
User name: Your ftp user name.
Password: Your ftp password.
Directory: Browse for the directory. Do not just type it in. This will also establish whether you can connect by ftp.
Url: The url field usually self populates, make sure there is a / at the end.
Example: http://yourdomain.com/
25. Select Pingz Services: You can choose individual services or choose All.
Specialized services you probably don’t need.
26. Scheduler: Set the scheduler frequency for checking for new posts.
In the beginning you won’t have many new posts so this can be once a day.
Afterwards you may increase frequency.
Click Add Project
main.html page: This is the page for step #3 above. Copy the template and save as anypage.html (you picked the name of the page in step #3). Paste the tag from step #15 into the html of this page where you want the commentz to appear. (For instance my tag is:
<!-- sports -->)
Now save this page in the Project Folder that you created (with all your other pages). It is important that this page is with all the other pages for it to get uploaded and updated.
If your main html page is your index page then it will also go in the project folder.
(If your index page has zz on it then it should not go in the Project Folder—at least not at this time.)
IMPORTANT: The following code should have been added before the </head> tag on your index.html page so the search engines find your pheed. This is called the auto-discovery tag. I actually add this code to the Template so it is on every page.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="RSS Feed for YOURDOMAINNAME.com" href="/rss.xml" />
Testing
Go to: yourdomain.com/suggest.php Make a post.
Go to commentz and approve the post.
Go to your main html page.
You should see the comments on the main page.
The input boxes should also now appear on all the pages except the main html page and the index page. You will need to add the input boxes or posting boxes to the main html page and the index page manually, if you have not already done this.
You can find the code for the input box if you go to Commentz, where you approve posts, and scroll down. Copy the code below: HTML for cgi input box: and paste on index page and/or main html page where you want an input box to appear.
Daily Operation
Commentz will allow you to moderate commentz for all the different domains you place it on from one central place. You can approve the commentz for all your domains from one central place. You will need to check Commentz to approve them.
Advanced
The default thank you page in Commentz includes the following form which directs people back to the page where they just made the post...
<form>
<input type="button" value="Click here to go back" onclick="history.back()">
</form>
This allows people to quickly keep adding comments - manual spam. You can change the script so they are directed back to the index page where they will need to click to a new comment before making more comments of their own....
Add this BEFORE the </head> tag...
<script language="javascript">
<!-- Hide from non-JavaScript Browsers
function ConfirmChoice()
{
answer = confirm("Do you really want to go here?")
if (answer !=0)
{
location = "index.html"
}
}
//Done Hiding-->
</script>
Then - in the body of the page under the text thanking people for their submission add the following code...
<form>
<input type="button" value="Click here to continue" onclick=" ConfirmChoice(); return false;">
</form>
You can of course redirect people to any page you like by changing: location = "index.html" to whatever page you like
Using ZZ on the Index Page with Commentz
ZZ can be combined with comments on the index page very easily.
But to do this effectively let zz do the work on the index page.
1) Add your own pheed from your own site to the newz tuel. Your pheed should be (yourdomain.com/rss.xml)
2) Add your zz pheed tags to the html where you want them to appear on the index page. Find the zz tag for your own site and add it to your index.html page where you want it.
Please note: You should add the tags directly to the html. Do not add the tags to the design view of a page layout program such as Dreamweaver. Add directly to code.
Now your commentz feeds will appear on the index page without conflicting with zz. However there will be a delay between when posters post and when they appear. I suggest a statement: All posts are moderated and updated once daily.
Posting Box
You may want to place a post box on your index page. You can copy the template from #18 or #19. #19 can also be found on the main project page when you select your project, at the bottom of the page under “Check for Posts”
If you don’t want a post box for the index page you may want to have a link to “suggest a new thread” on the index page or any page. You can also find a simple format of the link here.
If you use a link here, when people click on it they will be taken to a very plain page: suggest.php Instead of that copy your template once again, save as suggest.html (you choose the name.) Copy the post box and paste it into the html of this page where you want it.
Change the link in “suggest a new thread” to link to the new page you created.
TIPS (Advanced) Troubleshooting
One of the things that makes commentz so easy to use is that you can have multiple commentz browser windows open at once.
Perhaps you made a mistake. Sometimes you can change the fields and modify them in Commentz and get the desired result but sometimes that does not work.
Advanced: When just Changing the Input Fields Does not Work
Open a browser window with the commentz project you are working on open as if you were going to modify that project.
Keep that window!
Now open another window with Tuelz in it. In this window delete the current project (but remember to keep the other window open.) Make copies of all pertinent folders, then delete the contents of the original.
Delete all files from Commentz on your server including rss.php, suggest.php, reply.php commentz.dat and all html pages relating to Commentz.
Now open another Tuelz window and open commentz again. Create a new project with exactly the same name as the original.
Copy all the values from the first Commentz browser window except the values you wish to change.
Paste the corrected values, or the page with the corrected values (for instance the thankyou page) into the box where appropriate.
When you get the feel of it all this can be done in less than 10 minutes.
Advanced 2
If you use css styles you can use the same html page over and over again for many different projects, all you change is the css. This allows you to create projects real fast because all you do is have two browser windows open at the same time and copy the values over and over again. (Of course you will adjust for different domains and folders used.)
Different css will change the look of your page. Wordpress is a good source of css styles.
Submitting your Pheed
You will want to submit your pheed to the rss pheed directories. You can do it manually.
Here is a good list of sites: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
You can buy the premium version here for $5.55
http://www.masternewmedia.org/reports/maxexporssure/
I personally recommend you use a tool like: RSS Submit: It is the best I know of:
http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html
There is also another tool called RSS Announcer. You may already have a copy as it was widely distributed. It is not as good as Rss Submit but it isn’t bad either. If you don’t have a copy I can sell you one for $5.
Until I understood what I was doing I used to use this link to make my autodiscovery tags: http://www.globalsyndication.com/rss-autodiscovery-tag
(If you do use this link: http://www.globalsyndication.com/rss-autodiscovery-tag you must remember that your feed will end in “yourdomain.com/rss.xml”, that is the first line of the form and you must add /rss.xml to your domain name.)
Finding Pheeds
You can find pheeds from any blog. You can find pheeds at yahoo, or about.com. you can also use the Fatsearch in Tuelz and you will find several pheeds, as well as the Newz Tuel which will provide pheeds from google, yahoo, Daypop, Ice Rocket, Feedster.
You have to be careful as some sources, such as google do not allow you to reuse the pheeds they provide. You need to check the TOS (terms of service for any pheed you use before you use it.) Just because there is a pheed does not necessarily mean you are allowed to use it.
Many pheeds are exactly the same except for a different keyword. Here is an example from yahoo, one pheed is for paris and the other is for London
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?ei=UTF-8&p=paris&eo=UTF-8http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?ei=UTF-8&p=london&eo=UTF-8
You can see they are identical except for the “city” keyword.
You will need to create an main.html page and save it into the project folder that you created in the very first post.
This page only needs one tag for Commentz to operate correctly and in my example that is <!-- sports -->
It is this tag that tells Commentz to add the rss feed to your index.html page.
You should create your TEMPLATE page with all the graphics, links, text or whatever that you need and add the <!-- UniqueTag1 --> tag to a place where you want to see the latest comments.
IMPORTANT: I forgot to mention this...
You will also need the following code before the </head> tag on your index.html page so you can ping your feeds...
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="RSS Feed for YOURDOMAINNAME.com" href="/rss.xml" />
Make sure that href="/rss.xml" matches the name/location of your RSS pheed and should match what you entered in 4:
RSS index page (your RSS pheed): rss.xml
(no change required - this is the path to your rss feed for syndication of your site)
Side note about SEO: You may want to use a keyword here: florida.xml
I went back and dropped the ftp from the host name and all worked fine.
Sidenote: When renaming, use keywords once in a while as part of your SEO mix.
Ex: suggest.php = cheaptravel.php
Don't overdo it, as it probably doesn't have the impact as it use to, but we'll still want to use this strategy a little.
There is an important update in the post for the index.html page.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="RSS Feed for YOURDOMAINNAME.com" href="/rss.xml" />
Additional Miscellaneous Tips
1) Sidenote: When renaming, use keywords once in a while as part of your SEO mix.
Ex: suggest.php = cheaptravel.php
Don't overdo it, as it probably doesn't have the impact as it use to, but we'll still want to use this strategy a little.
2) Make sure that href="/rss.xml" matches the name/location of your RSS pheed and should match what you entered in 4:
RSS index page (your RSS pheed): rss.xml
(no change required - this is the path to your rss feed for syndication of your site)
Side note about SEO: You may want to use a keyword here: cup-cakes.xml
3) Customizing Box 18 and 19
Change the wording to dedoop it a little.
CHANGE:
{{script_name}} to reply.php
((name_field}} to name
{{url_field}} to url
{{subject_field}} to subject
{{comment_field}} to comment
{{confirm_field}} to confirm
and remove this line...
<input name="{{title_field}}" type="hidden" value="{{page_title}}">
Also - on this line...
<input name="{{subject_field}}" type="text" size="30" value="{{page_title}}"> delete value="{{page_title}}"
Then select the following...
Add Input form after this text: <!--sportstime--> (The tag you created in box 17)
Customizing Box 19
Same as Box 18, except {{script_name}} is changed to suggest.php as below:
CHANGE:
{{script_name}} to suggest.php
((name_field}} to name
{{url_field}} to url
{{subject_field}} to subject
{{comment_field}} to comment
{{confirm_field}} to confirm
and remove this line...
<input name="{{title_field}}" type="hidden" value="{{page_title}}">
Also - on this line...
<input name="{{subject_field}}" type="text" size="30" value="{{page_title}}"> delete value="{{page_title}}"
Then select the following...
Add Input form after this text: <!--sportstime--> (The tag you created in box 17)
4) I used to use this link to make my auto discovery tags: http://www.globalsyndication.com/rss-autodiscovery-tag
If you do use this link you must remember that your feed will end in “yourdomain.com/rss.xml”, that is the first line of the form and you must add /rss.xml to your domain name.)
-Boom boom boom boom.
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