Archive for October, 2008

This is a guest post

Review written by Ree, the Hotfessional
Ree can be seen at
[My Life as a Hotfessional]
[Hot Reviews Books] and [The Working Moms Channel at Blissfully Domestic]

Solomon Broad is grateful. I’m grateful for Solomon Broad. He started writing a simple list of things he’s grateful for - every day - in January, 2007. If you’re human (you are, right?), I’m sure you have days when you wonder why you’ve gotten out of bed. Why bother? Well, here’s some reasons:

• Posh Chocolates
• Bacon Sandwiches
• Weekends

Solomon’s site loads fast and is clean and easy to read. The best part, though, is its simplicity - no angst-y prose, no “good mom/bad mom” dilemmas (um, like…me. Sigh.). It’s an oasis of things we all need to remember in a desert of pains in the arse day-to-day hassles.

Solomon loves his dog, Wenna.

Solomon loves doughnuts. The caramel ones. And sometimes the apple ones.

He loves his readers and offers contests and prizes. By the way, each and every commenter gets a response - and a visit to your site. Add that to the comment-luv-y-ness, and you get special!

Simon’s sense of humor shows in this meme. And who wouldn’t laugh at the dancing broccoli - or bananas - or lemons? (He knows better to than to put limes up in case I decide to squeeze them into my vodka.)

The thing is, Solomon helps others as well. Kiva donations. Free Rice. Free Poverty. Learning and recognizing the things to be grateful for in your own life makes you that much more aware of how little some others have. It also makes you a very special person.

Do you want to learn? We all need to be a little more grateful for what we’ve given - our lives, our loves.

Learn from Solomon. Be Grateful.

Eric Maziade has done a great job on converting the 2.5.4 version of the Wordpress CommentLuv plugin to work with all the features available on the popular French blogging platform Dotclear.

Click to view the Dotclear CommentLuv page.

The Dotclear plugin will be compatible with the contest so even more places to go when it goes live!

Featured Site: SarcasticMom.com

This weeks featured site has got to be one of the top commented blogs using CommentLuv with a regular comment count of over 50 per post.

As you can see on the left, Lotus is as crazy as a batcake! Just take a look around her blogs and laugh at how she handles her life in front of the whole internets (since the year 2000!)

Closer inspection will show you the kind of caring and sharing mom she is to her boy Braden who just turned 2 and not content with one copy of her DNA running around on this earth free to put beans up it’s nose… she announced recently that she is expecting again! my god woman, you want more????

You are never far away from a photo at SarcasticMom.com, Lotus will take a snap of anything and everything. You can find some pictures of likkle Braden all over her site. He’s a real looker, I’m not sure what the ethics are of posting pictures of other peoples children on the internet so I’ll just show you what Lotus has for her new one within..

awwwww. it’s a biddy alien!

You have an awesome blog Lotus and I’m strangely attracted to you with a green bean up your nose (just kidding SarcasticDad!). I must admit though, that I will never be the same since I saw the video you made of pulling your pants down.. my lawd that was hot internet stuff! (again, sorry SarcasticDad!)

Your site is what CommentLuv was made for, a lively community of like minded bloggers who share their stories and photos with the world so I, um, I mean we geeks know what it’s like to have a ‘kids and significant other’ life. (bloody hectic!) Good luck and happy farting with your new one and I hope Bradens terrible twos aren’t too terrible!

Visit SarcasticMom and join the literally hundreds of other people all feeling the luv.

Thanks to all those that voted for CommentLuv in the Wordpress MU Plugin Contest. We did it!, first place in the peoples choice awards with almost 50% of the total votes.

The prizes won are:

250 USD from http://blogli.co.il/

100 USD from Trent Adams

A premium WPMU Dev account.

In the spirit of sharing the luv, I will be using most of the money to redistribute among the CommentLuvvers of the world!

The new CommentLuv contest

To celebrate the win and latest update which makes CommentLuv compatible with more blogs than ever, I am announcing the new contest. This will have a few requirements, mainly to encourage people to upgrade to the latest version and have the options enabled. Details will be announced soon so be sure to upgrade your CommentLuv plugin to the latest version (2.5.4) today!

Please allow a week for the collection of the contest prizes and preparation of the code and pages required for claiming.

Correction for latest newsletter

I forgot the ‘a’ on Kristabella: full of snark when I wrote it in the newsletter. sorry!

This is a guest post

Review written by Ree, the Hotfessional
Ree can be seen at
[My Life as a Hotfessional]
[Hot Reviews Books] and [The Working Moms Channel at Blissfully Domestic]

Damn, Andy knows how to draw a girl in, doesn’t he? There I was, happily writing away in my little space when “Whoomp!” I got turned onto CommentLuv. Then - CommentLuv got way fan-cee. Images and little hearts and all. And last week, Andy himself wrote a review highlighting my site.

Next thing I know, he asked me to guest post for him over here and write up one of my favorite sites and um, I think we’re now engaged or something. I don’t know how we’ll break it to Mrs. Andy and Mr. Hot…

Annnywayyyy, where was I? Oh, yes, the guest post. So, one of my favorite sites belongs to one of my favorite Chicago-ans. Kristabella - Full of Snark (since 1977 - the whippersnapper) is a fellow Midwesterner with a love of sports, beer, Chicago, wine, sports, writing, beer and wine (not necessarily in that order), so of course, we are soulmates.

And y’all? She got dooced before, so I know that once we get the word out about her, she’s not going to have to worry about finding another new job - she’s going to be earning big bucks writing and making personal appearances. I plan on riding her coattails being her personal manager.

Kristabella’s blog posts are best read without anything in your mouth that would not look good on your monitor or in your keyboard. It sneaks up on you - like that 7th 2nd glass of cabernet. And she’s famous for her Death is NOT an Option category and her expertise on National holidays.

Kristabella is a genuinely nice person and one I’m happy to have as a friend. I’ve even hugged and kissed her. Live, and in person. And you guys? She’s cute. Really! Tall. She’s got a great laugh and if you’re a hot, single male, looking for lots of fun, you should so go check out some more of her pictures site.

In the meantime, I’m going to go let Andy know that I’ll hijack this spot anytime, but I have to break off the engagement. I just don’t think I can deal with that long distance thing. But maybe I’ll wait until after he helps me Save the Boobies. Because the boobies (and lives) need to be saved!

The CommentLuv server has been handling the load just nicely, now with all this data being collected I can see how the database structure grows and what things I would do if I was to start it again.

Some news on why we need yet another update to the plugin…

Stats

The only issue I see now is accurately tracking the last blog posts that get added on to the comments. At the moment, the last post is stored when the script is called to send it back. This means that it gets counted even if the comment isn’t approved or the user changes their choice of post to show.

One way to combat the problem of CommentLuv.com not knowing which last post was chosen is to add a new filter/action to the plugin code to add a simple ajax call in the header of the blog with the information to send to the remote script that the comment was submitted. This will be done after the page loads and through the users browser so it wont interrupt the posting process.

As for not counting last posts that are canned in the spam, that again is solved by another filter/action function that lets the remote script know if a comment with a last blog post on it get it’s approval status changed.

Heart info box

This has been received really well and it’s great to see so many people adding a description to their CommentLuv profile so they can display all on CommentLuv enabled sites. The only issue were the few cases where a blogs host wouldn’t allow external file access which would throw an error.

I have come up with a solution so it should work on just about any site. Now, it tries 4 different ways to get the information and falls back on to an iframe which isn’t as pretty but is nearly the same as the other ways and it means everyone gets to use that feature!

jQuery tidying

I am making a small change to the commentluv.js file to make it bit neater and doesn’t throw an error in firebug. It works fine, it’s just some die hards can’t stand to see a “g is undefined” error come up and not cause a problem!

Version number

With the update, CommentLuv will send the plugins version number along with the request. This way I can see who are using old versions a lot easier and then be able to send a message to them to upgrade. There are still thousands of hits coming in from really old versions of CommentLuv!

Remote Scripts changed

With the new update will come the great changing of names game. It will happen in the background and it means I can have just one file used by all future plugin versions.

Database may need to be cleaned and restarted

To take advantage of the advanced tracking and storing of last posts accurately, I’ll reset the tables of the database that holds the last posts. All the membership options will be the same, I’ll just be starting the comments made and received stats at zero.

Click tracking doesn’t need to be changed and it’s working well right now.

I’ve been very lucky to get so much time to work on this and still fit in all the business I need to do. I hope this continues so I can get everything tip top and bristol fashion and then start doing some real promotion and I have some great contests planned that will do just that, for you, for me and for your visitors!

thanks to all who use and promote commentluv. You can tell almost straight away that a blog is a commentluv blog by the number of comments and it’s really nice to see how many blogs I have to click through before I run out of CommentLuv users.

Happy commenting!

Due to the big change in the structure of the files in CommentLuv there were some minor scope problems with a few of the internal variables.

I’ve updated to version 2.5.3 now and it has fixed all the little tangles and should make CommentLuv the best yet!

CommentLuv is leading the way at the WPMU contest, if you haven’t voted yet please do at the link below and get CommentLuv on as many blogs as possible!

http://wpmu.org/voting-open-plugin-contest/

Don’t forget to log in and add a description to your profile here so people can see all about you when they look at your heart info box on the comments you make

thanks for using commentluv!

This weeks featured site is probably my most visited site beyond the ones I own and run. In fact, it’s the reason there is a featured site spot here at CommentLuv.com. I’ve been eager to get Ree and her outstanding blog Hotfessional.com up on here since this site went through the last contraction of it’s birth just last month (ok so I know I’m not a girl and it’s not fair to compare the 9months and more of pregnancy with 4 weeks of php coding, but it felt like it!)

Okey doke, who is Ree?
A funny blogger,
A girl you’d bring to tea

She has a haiku or two
On Friday each week
oh, she is so cool!

I wish I could write like her
even for one day
And be even famous-er!
:-/
I know haiku’s are 5-7-5 but they don’t rhyme either. No need to point this out in the comments!
allright, that’s enough, it’s bloody hard writing Haiku’s! in 7-5-7 format. If you want to see some better ones, visit Ree at Hotfessional.com on a Friday to see how her week has gone in haiku.

The first time I visited Hotfessional.com, it kept me at my desk at work for an hour extra than normal, it was the first blog that I read cover to cover (so to speak). I laughed out loud, I sympathised and I laughed some more hearing her stories of the entire Hot cast. There’s Mr. Hot of course! they just celebrated 17 years together without a major homicide

And also, you can find shortman, the golden child, 24 and many more characters in the play called Ree. See her comment count and feed reach and you’ll understand why so many people pop around to Ree’s blog for cup of virtual java and a quick gossip.

Her writing style is so nice to the eyes and easy to read that you’ll feel right at home straight away. Sometimes I don’t visit for a few days so I can spend an afternoon reading up on posts one after the other (like I do with Prisoner or BSG episodes). (oh god I sound like a fanboy stalker don’t I? lol!)

Anyway, already with enough her plate, she wants some more chores! Check out her post for Saving the Boobies!. Even with a change of work circumstances she is running a contest and ever the giver, she is adding 1$ to the fund for every entry to her contest.

I’d be happy to support such a good cause and hope you would too!. Well done Ree for such a fine blog and for sharing all your “oh man holy hell” moments and the times when you’d scream “where’s mah wine?!” with the world, even geeks like me who like to lurk around outside listening to the gossip you and your readers get up to.

There aren’t any cash prize awards (yet) for featured sites but even so, I’d like to pledge a dollar for dollar match on your offer to pay one dollar per contest entry until it ends or it max’s out.

..from the comments at Hotfessional.com

Pamelas last blog post..holy field day, batman

witchypoos last blog post..Aftermath

This has been a weekly featured site post. If you know a commentluv blog that deserves a review and you’d like to write it yourself and add your site links and info to the top of the post (see previous featured site reviews by Sire), register for a subscriber account here and let me know your username, blog url and details in the support forum so I can upgrade you to Contributor status.
I’ll let you know when I upgrade your account and you’ll be able to submit a review for review (ahem) to be published when a space comes up in the schedule.

I have a brand new updated CommentLuv plugin for you and this time it’s a whopper!

After listening to the comments and suggestions from users (as well as countless support requests for the configuration options) I have enabled the plugin to autoconfigure itself for your form. Now the only time you need to change the form settings will be if you’re using a custom comments.php file or have a plugin to do your comments.

Also because of the demand is the addition of the checkbox option and visibility for admin. The plugin now displays a checkbox next to the last post that can be set to be on by default. If a user doesn’t want their last blog post shown (like an admin who is logged out but replying to a comment) they can untick the box. This way it’s much more intuitive for the user.

The badge (or text if you chose that option) will be displayed to all visitors to the site including admin, it only activates for non-admin users so no more false alarms for blog owners thinking it hasn’t worked for them because they can’t see the box.

You can download the new version at the Wordpress Plugin Repository
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commentluv/

If you have any issues after upgrading, use the reset to default settings option in the settings page.

New Feature

The heart info box has been added to CommentLuv. This adds a little red heart next to each last blog post link in your comments so your visitors can get some more information on who comments on your site. They can see how many times the link has been clicked, where else they comment, what other posts they have made and even adds a Gravatar so they can see what your commentators look like.

Response has been good for this new feature but I know not everyone likes tool-tips or ajax hover popups so if you want, you can disable the feature in the plugin settings page.

Registered members of CommentLuv.com can now edit their profile and add a description which will be displayed in the heart info box on the the last blog post links they have on CommentLuv enabled sites. The Gravatar image is constructed from your registered email with CommentLuv.com so be sure to register the same email with Gravatar so everyone can see your pretty/ugly (delete as appropriate) face.

Vote for CommentLuv!

A big thanks to all those who responded to the last message and voted at
http://wpmu.org/voting-open-plugin-contest/

CommentLuv is leading the way and with your help, we can get it to number 1 and on as many blogs as possible so we can all spread the luv! If you haven’t voted yet, visit the link above and choose “Ajax CommentLuv plugin for MU” . You can find it 8 up from the bottom. Thanks!

Random spot prizes

CommentLuv 2.5 is now ready for my next gift giving promotion. Coming soon will be a vast prize fund that will be distributed among the CommentLuvver community. All you will have to do is run CommentLuv 2.5 on your blog or comment on blogs using it to be in with a chance.

More news about this when it’s ready to go! If you would like to contribute to the prizes in exchange for links in the post and other promotional efforts please contact me. You could offer a months advertising spot on your site, a free blog review, a custom logo or anything you think someone might like!

Weekly Featured Site

Every Saturday I publish a new featured site that is running CommentLuv, there’s been 2 already and a new one about to be published. A few people have asked if they can submit reviews of sites they like to CommentLuv.com and I think this is a great idea!

If you want to be a contributor to CommentLuv.com just leave a request in the support forum section for the CommentLuv site with your details,blog url and description and your CommentLuv.com username. Successful applicants will have their CommentLuv account upgraded from subscriber to contributor and allowed access to submit posts for review using the standard wordpress dashboard at CommentLuv.com