wordpress-plugin

Comment Rating Within WordPress

James Mowery of TechInDemand.com got in touch with me a few weeks ago and wondered which plugin sites like Engadget and Autoblogs were using that allowed for comment rating. I digged into the source code for those websites and couldn’t figure it out. Today, I have finally discovered which plugin those guys are using and figured I would share it here.

Its called, Comment Karma. Comment Karma is a plugin you can use to allow your visitors to rate each others comments. Like Digg, you can click a thumbs up or thumbs down icon which will give that comment either a positive or negative number.

Comment rating

This plugin was created in 2006 so I’m not sure how it will work with WordPress 2.3 but it’s worth a shot. One thing worth noting is that, the rating cache is set to 120 seconds.

If you’re using WP-Cache or similar the icons will not show up gray, nor will the numbers be updated if you reload the page until the page expires. However if a user votes again it will throw them an error. I’ve worked around this by setting the cache for 120 seconds. That way the server doesn’t get hammered with SQL queries, but you still see the comments being moderated in almost real time.

There is a similar service in SezWho, but by using this plugin, you can keep the comment ratings local to your WordPress install which may improve loading times for your site. I may install this plugin in place of SezWho just for that reason alone. If you’re interested in using this plugin, check out the official Comment Karma plugin page for directions on how to install it into your blog.

AskApache 404 Google Fix

Askapache.com Logo

For those of you who are using the ajax powered Google search plugin for your WordPress 404 page that I featured here Add Google Ajax To Your WP 404 Page, you may have noticed after upgrading to WordPress 2.3 that the search results have stopped displaying. A number of others including myself have experienced this problem and the fix is relatively simple.

In your WordPress admin panel, click on the OPTIONS link. Now click on the AA Google 404 link which will load the options for this specific plugin. Where it says Google API Key, click on the GET ONE link. Type in your URL to Google and they will provide you with a new API key. Replace the plugins current API key with the newly acquired one and click the save button. Your 404 search results should reappear.

Ajax Edit Comments 1.1.1.0 Released

Reader Appreciation LogoRonald Huereca has released a new version of his plugin, Ajax Edit Comments, which gives users and guests the ability to edit their comments similar to the way that comments can be edited on Digg.com The latest version includes a couple of bug fixes, most notably dealing with UTF-8 encoding.

The following issues were addressed in this release:

  1. Admin were able to edit, but non-admin couldn’t. This was caused by the timer offset in the WordPress admin panel.
  2. MySQL errors resulted in the comment unable to save. This was caused my blogs and MySQL database not in UTF-8.
  3. Some characters were being screwed up when saving to the WordPress database. This issue was caused by non-UTF-8 back-ends.
  4. The blog would be inoperable in Internet Explorer due to multiple session headings being called.
  5. Random loading comment failure on WP 2.2.2 installs.

The issues (with the exception of issue number 4) can occur on a case-by-case basis depending on blog configuration and character set.

Be sure to visit The Readers Appreciation Website to pick up the updated version or to grab it for the first time.