remotedotcomments
Want to use dotcomments in your blog, but your host doesn't support PHP? Phil Ulrich figured out how to host dotcomments on a separate free host that does support PHP, but now he has moved on to another comment system, then on to another host and domain name, and back to dotcomments, and his tutorial has gone missing along the way, so this is my modified version of it.
Find a PHP host
The first step is the hardest: you need to find a free host that supports PHP, isn't down most of the time, and preferably has FTP access and no ads (especially no popups, which tend to ruin the comment count). At the moment, that narrows it down to barrysworld, and sometime again, digitalrice. Sign up for an account with either one (or both, if you can, so you can switch back and forth), and once your account is activated, connect with your ftp program, create a directory named comments and chmod the directory to 777 (set Read, Write, and Execute permission for Owner, Group, and World). If you want to put comments.php in a subdirectory in your free host account, that's fine, just create the comments directory as a subdirectory of the directory where you plan to put comments.php.
Edit comments.php
Next (or while you wait for your account to be activated), download remotedotcomments.zip, my lightly modified version of dotcomments, and unzip it. Open comments.php in your favorite text editor. Edit the variables at the top as instructed in the dotcomments readme (the only one you absolutely have to edit is $comments_path).
Upload the files
Upload comments.php, commentcount.php, and dcbanner.gif to your free PHP host. Note that they do not go in the comments directory, but rather one level up: comments should be empty until it starts to fill with comment files. While you are at it, upload some sort of an index.html, so that it doesn't look like you are just abusing their generosity in supporting PHP.
Edit your template
Now, to edit your Blogger template. Somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags paste the following, changing www.mydomain.com to the address for your free PHP site:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mydomain.com/commentcount.php" defer="defer"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function viewComments(n) {
commentWindow=window.open('http://www.mydomain.com/comments.php?' + n, 'comments' + n, 'directories=0,height=480,location=0,resizable=1,scrollbars=1,toolbar=0,width=515');
}
function countcomments(){
if (document.childNodes){
if(typeof(commentID) != "undefined"){
for (i=0;i<commentID.length;i++){
oSpan = document.getElementById(commentID[i]);
if(oSpan){
oSpanText = oSpan.firstChild;
while(oSpanText.nodeType != "3"){
if(oSpanText.hasChildNodes)
oSpanText = oSpanText.firstChild;
else
return false;
}
oSpanText.nodeValue = commentCount[i];
}
}
}
}
}
</script>
In your <body> tag, include onload="countcomments()" so that you have something like:
<body link="#336699" vlink="#003366" alink="red" onload="countcomments()">
In the spot in your byline where you want the comment link to appear, include:
<a href="javascript:viewComments(<$BlogItemNumber$>)"><span id="comment<$BlogItemNumber$>">comment</span></a>
Finally, if you want to include the dotcomments banner, use:
<a href="http://www.foreword.com/dotcomments.php"><img src="http://www.mydomain.com/dcbanner.gif" width="88" height="31" border="0" alt="Comments by dotcomments"></a>
Again, replace www.mydomain.com with the address of your PHP site.
Publish and test
Publish your blog, and check it out. You should see links below each post that say "comment". Click one and make a test comment, and then reload your blog to see if the comment link changes to "1 comment" (note that comment counting only works if you are using a DOM compliant browser: IE 5+, Netscape 6, sometime in the future Opera). Once it's working, republish your archives if you want comments there as well.
- Sign up at BarrysWorld
- Get a copy of the current version of dotcomments from foreword.com
- Edit comments.php - for now you just need to put your BarrysWorld url/path/ in $comments_path and your email address in $email
- Upload comments.php, my commentcount.php (below) and dcbanner.gif to BarrysWorld
- Create a directory at BarrysWorld named comments, and chmod it to 777
- Follow Phil Ulrich's instructions for what to put in your Blogger template (with my commentcount mod)
- Add the dotcomments banner with:
<a href="http://www.foreword.com/dotcomments.php"><img src="http://www.youraccount.barrysworld.net/path/dcbanner.gif" width="88" height="31" border="0" alt="Comments by dotcomments"></a>
Looking at 4Nx2 last night, I learned what may be the reason why there are so few free hosts with PHP enabled. Apparently it's very handy for spammers, who put a "remove" link in the spam, with your email address in the query string, and then use PHP to read it ($sucker[i]=$QUERY_STRING). I didn't get around to trying to sign up with them, to see if dotcomments would work with their "several functions are disabled" setup, but it's worth a try if you can't get in at f2s or portland.co.uk/port5.com/isamillionaire.com.
If you want the comment count, and you use tables for your page layout, this might be a good time to switch to CSS instead. If you have tables, the browser has to know how big everything inside the table will be before it will display anything. That means that the comment count script for every single post has to run before any part of your blog shows up. With CSS layout, the first post displays, then its comments are counted, then the second post displays, then its comments are counted... much more viewer friendly.
[Update: version 2.1 (above) is much faster loading, smoother, and more tolerant of remote host downtime.]
Copy the code below, paste it into a text editor, save the file as commentcount.php, and upload it to your PHP server.
<!-- Begin copying -->
<?php
$n = $QUERY_STRING;
if ($file = @fopen("comments/$n.comment", 'r')) {
$thisFile = file("comments/$n.comment");
$comments = sizeof($thisFile);
if($comments == 1) {$comments .= " comment";} else {$comments .= " comments";}
}
else {$comments = "0 comments";}
echo "document.write('$comments');";
?>
<!-- End copying -->
Next, replace the text for your comment link in your blog template (Discuss, comment, whatever you used) with the following line, and be sure to replace http://www.example.com/path/ with your domain and path to commentcount.php:
<!-- Begin copying -->
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://www.example.com/path/commentcount.php?<$BlogItemNumber$>"></script>
<!-- End copying -->
Save changes, publish, and you should be counting comments!
