The official coComment weblog

The popular German-speaking blog platform twoday.net has improved support for coComment. The default skins now contain <% this.coComment %>, which injects the following code in the comment page:

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
// adds support for CoComment
  var blogTool              = "twoday.net";
  var blogURL               = "http://newcoco.twoday.net/";
  var blogTitle             = "newcoco";
  var postURL               = "http://newcoco.twoday.net/stories/2342992/";
  var postTitle             = "Another test story";
  var commentTextFieldName  = "content_text";
  var commentButtonName     = "save";
  var commentAuthorLoggedIn = true;
  var commentAuthor = "newcoco";
  var commentFormID         = "comment-form";
// ] ]></script>

(Example taken from our test blog over there.)

This code makes sure that coComment gets the correct information when capturing a comment.

If you are a twoday user and your template was customized, you can use the diff link to see where to insert the code.

Layout > Skins (HTML) > Change templates (HTML) > Comment editor (Comment.edit)

If you want all the comments on your blog to be captured (not just those of people using the bookmarklet or the Firefox/Flock extension), you need to add the following code in your template (just before or after):

<script id="cocomment-fetchlet" src="http://www.cocomment.com/js/
enabler.js"></script>

technorati tags:twoday, integration, cocomment, template, skin, code, integrate, knallgrau, blogplatform

Quite a few of you noticed problems between coComment and Flickr these last days:

• first, lots of HTML started showing up in comment RSS feeds
• then, people using the extension got ‘unresponsive script’ errors when they were visiting the Flickr website.

The Art of coComment requires us to do quite a bit of ad hoc parsing, and some changes Flickr made to their templates caused our parsers to choke. We’re happy to say that both problems have now been fixed. Our apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused some of you.

technorati tags:cocomment, flickr, problem, solution, script, template, resolved

A bit over a week ago, Lee Hopkins, an early coComment adopter, reported that coComment had stopped tracking his conversations.

The very next day, Christophe was at it to try and find what was going on. He quickly noticed that Lee wasn’t in fact logged into the coComment server (although Lee had been logging in as asked). Finally the problem was narrowed down to a cookie setting in ZoneAlarm, a popular Windows firewall that Lee was using. (The details of the one-on-one troubleshooting that went on behind the scenes have not been disclosed, so that part of the story will be left to your imagination.)

So, if coComment seems to have stopped tracking your comments, and you are using ZoneAlarm, click the Site List tab in ZoneAlarm and check the “3rd party” cookie control for cocomment.com:

That should do it! Let us know if this was useful for you.

Disclaimer: I don’t have ZoneAlarm, so if you have trouble finding the screen depicted here, ask in the comments and we’ll get more precise explanations for you. Thanks to Lee for the screenshot.

technorati tags:cocomment, zonealarm, cookie, troubleshooting, solution, thirdparty, tracking

We will take the servers down for a few minutes between 11am and noon today (Geneva, Paris, Berlin, Madrid time). Sorry for the inconvenience, and watch out for the new coComment!

Good news for all you Flock users out there (for those who don’t know Flock, you should try it now, it’s great): the magic Firefox extension which lets you forget coComment exists as it silently records all your comments can be made to work with Flock.

The bad news is that it took me until now to realize that (I’m an avid Flock user and have been frustrated by the extension incompatibility for weeks, if not months).

The good news is that it’s dead easy: install the Flock coComment extension now!

A small word of caution, though, or two:

1. I’ve been using this extension for a few days and it seems to work, but it hasn’t been extensively tested by the coCo-team. If you’re geeky enough to understand how converting an extension really works, be kind to leave a comment and let us know if there seems to be any risk of breakage.
2. The Flock extension I’ve linked to is one particular version of the extension. Within the next weeks (or so I heard!) there will be a new release of the extension, and the link above will still point to the old extension (still with me?) I’ve also been told the Flock conversion may not be necessary anymore… let’s keep our fingers crossed and our eyes open.

technorati tags:extension, flock, firefox, cocomment, conversion

We currently face problems with our Oracle Database.
We are investigating the problem and will try to fix it as soon as possible.

Don’t worry, your comments won’t be lost and you will retrieve a stable coCo-environment soon.
We are really sorry about this and apologize for any inconvenience you encounter.

How do you use the "Conversations" page? When do you visit it? Do you visit it at all? I find myself going there pretty infrequently, and the links I click on most are the little grey boxes on the right which take me to the blog article I’ve commented upon. What about you?

Do you use the other links? How often? What links would you like to have on that page?

What about the RSS feed? Are you happy with the links it provides?

technorati tags: comments, links, rss, feed, usability

We are really proud to announce our first guest on the blog here. Please welcome the great Easton from BusinessBlogWire and Knowmoremedia!

Easton is a very active blogger and coCommenter. He is full of ideas for coComment which he communicates to us. So thanks Easton and now the stage is yours!

Did you know you can keep all your comments private? It’s easy, just go to your account settings, click on Hide page, and others won’t be able to access your conversations. Your messages will of course remain in the corresponding threads (they are published on public websites anyway) but the page showing all your conversations won’t be accessible to others.

As you can see on the screenshot you can also exclude your account of the top users list, and disable RSS feeds and boxes. . All these things are not recommended (coComment is based on open conversation after all) but as some of you needed that so here it is!

I was thinking about privacy because we are now working on offering comment-level privacy settings so you can have even more flexibility, and hide that comment on a Dating Weblog you wrote “on behalf of a friend who was too shy”

If you’re an enthusiastic coComment user, you probably wish that more of those participating in the same conversations than you were also using coComment. Sure, we are now capable of tracking comments by anybody if they are made on an integrated site. You’ve probably already set up your own blog to do that.

But what about all the other blogs you are commenting on? And what about neat things like tagging, RSS feeds or Firefox extension notifications your fellow commenters could also take advantage of if they were coComment users? We know many of you have been encouraging readers or fellow bloggers to register, and we really thank you for that.

We’d now like to ask you - the members of the coComment community - what ideas you have to encourage people to open a coComment account, and, let’s face it, discover the real power of blogging as a conversational medium.

What can we do to help you invite your readers into the big coCo-family?

What, in your experience, has convinced people around you to try and use our service?

And if you haven’t got a coComment account yet, or have one and don’t really use it, we’d love to hear from you too. Why haven’t you tried? Why aren’t you using it, or why did you stop using it?