Random notes from mg

I've just spent the whole night setting up blog comments. PyBlosxom doesn't make it painless, sadly, more like the opposite.

First: don't be scared by the list of comment-related plugins on the PyBlosxom site. There's only one important plugin: comments. All others depend on it and enhance its functionality. The last three or four times I was about to add comments to my blog I got scared at step one: evaluate the available plugins. Don't repeat my mistake!

Second, follow the instructions carefully. There's no shortcut.

Third, fix what's broken. Be prepared to debug the source code. print >> sys.stderr, "message" is your friend.

Fourth, fiddle with the look (CSS and HTML).

Fifth, write a blog post and eagerly await your first comments.

Step 3 screams for an explanation, doesn't it? Problem 1: the comments plugin requires that you use categories in your blog. I'm not (I'm holding out for tags). Workaround: comment out if entry['absolute_path'] check in cb_story and cb_story_end.

Problem 2: the AJAX post returns "Empty response from server". Workaround: modify cb_story_end to call readComments directly if entry['num_comments'] is None, since cb_story, which usually does the read, is not called during the AJAX post.

Problem 3: if you enable comment moderation (by setting comment_draft_ext to a different value from comment_ext), the AJAX post returns "Empty response from server" once more. Workaround: modify cb_prepare to notice this case and set data['moderated'] = True, create a new template comment-moderated and render it in cb_story_end just like the preview template is rendered; also modify __shouldOutput to return True when rendering comment-moderated.

I'll post patches to the pyblosxom mailing tomorrow, unless I forget. It's 6 am already, and I'm kind of sleepy. I just hope I haven't inadvertently broken my RSS feed or flooded any planets.

Oh, and a helpful hint: don't name the post you're writing comments.txt, or the #comments anchor will point to the start of the story instead of the comments.