Cas,
The all coComment-team want to thank you for being so supportive And you’re right, the new wordpress extension(s) makes it so much easier so I hope you’ll soon track all comments with it. Continuing my speech, we have also released a plugin for firefox users.

And the most important thing:
Cas, as an active and positive coCo-user don’t hesitate to share with us your desire in terms of features, for you and your community! What can we do to convince your friends…

My pleasure nicolas Right now I can’t think of anything I really desire in terms of features etc, but rest assured if I think of something, I will share.

*beats the firefox extension around the head with a baseball bat*

Ok, just because one of your creators just appeared on the blog, it doesn’t mean it is time to stop working… Grrr.

Please excuse me whilst I go take my computer down an alleyway and beat it into submission. Do talk amongst yourselves - you heard Nicolas:
What can the coCo peeps do to convince you to use the service?

Sure, we won’t stop working!
It’s already pretty late here in Switzerland and so it is in the UK and we’re still here to serve you…

Right, just joined your shiny coComment club. And now I want to see it at work.
*looks around for magical rainbows*

didn’t get any magical rainbows. I did, however, somehow end up owning your blog. Will look into this after work. Bizarre.

You ended up owning the blog? What on earth do you mean?! (And can I have it back please )

Nicolas - it wasn’t a problem at your end, but a problem at mine. Now I’m all awake I worked out what it was: the firefox extension and David’s plugin don’t play nicely together. That is also probably something to do with my settings - I’m gonna play after work.

my pleasure Cas For the conflict between the firefox extension and the blog integration, we are currently checking it and I’m confident we will solve it pretty soon!
Discussion on this topic on David’s blog:
http://www.andare.ch/blog/2006/05/cocomment-enhancer-wordpress-plugin-v12b/

I’m so totally willing to surrender my booty to you (oo-er) . If I can figure out how.
Just got in and working on getting my own blog to show up on the Top Users Box page. At the moment, I’m getting a cheerful message -

This is the box for your blog called ‘Bright Meadow’.

But I haven’t begun to work out how to change this. Stay tuned.

Cas, for info,
We just fixed the conflict between the firefox extension and the blog integration.
we just released a new version of our js script called by the extension and the blog integration plugin. Now it works fine for me with both the firefox and you wordpress plugin at the same time.
I hope it’s the same for you!

Testing Sweet New WordPress plugin for coCo and I am using the Firefox extension too. Hopefully everything works!

oo-er indeed JB!
Well, I suppose I have been saying “my blog is your blog” to all you Minions for a while now, so perhaps it is time to stand by my words!
No idea what’s going on there though - if you’re still having issues I’d suggest you head on over to the coCo forums. The nice people there are always quick to respond, even if it’s just with a “WTF?! Er, we’ll look into it…”

Nicolas - thank you for keeping me posted on this one. It does seem to be working at the moment, so fingers crossed
Welcome to the fun Dewayne
Now all I need is a non-coCO-peep to comment to see if their comments are tracked. Hmmm, where’s a helpful Moose when you need one…?

I felt left out so I will leave a wee comment.
And I do hope that I am one of the three…. although I sometimes forget to click the bookmarklet due to the fact I use Safari, and there is no extension etc…
Why are we, Myself or Dewaayne, not helpful…. we may not be “non-coCO-peep”s but are still very important and helpful, we give support to you for example

ahhhh…. there are forums? I emailed support. Got a very nice reply from Nicolas. Apparently only blogs I have commented on will show up in the list -

This is the box for your blog called ‘Bright Meadow’.

- merely being unfortunate wording.

Crazy - you and Dewayne are very helpful! (stop fishing for love, it’s not very attractive )
It was just in the context of this post that I want a non-coCo-peep. I still want one. Yes, I could turn off the extension, but how would I be sure it’s a comment the plugin picked up and not my normal..

Ok, just answered my own question.
*blushes*
*goes to start up Safari*

And JB, that makes sense.
Time to comment on your own blogs then

Cas, in case you’re wondering, the comment you posted using safari (presumably) didn’t get cocommented because your coComment script tag does not include the trackAllComments attribute (at least it doesn’t when I look at the source now).

Dammit. Now I want some cocoa….

Chris, thank you! Now I know where to start looking to try and sort the problem out. A job for the weekend I think

Ok, if you get stuck you know you can scream for help right here - as long as you make sure your comment is cocommented. Isn’t that practicable?!

*thinks happy thoughts…*

*Does a happy dance around the blog*

Oh, that was worth spilling the dregs in my water bottle all over my bluetooth keyboard.

I would like to announce that this blog is now fully coComment-integrated. Even comments made by non-coCo-peeps will now be tracked. (Well, it works for me, so here’s hoping).

It actually wasn’t that scary - I was really worried about where to put the javascript, but I suddenly realised as I was peddling away at the gym (if that was a real cycle I would be in Belgium by now) that of course it goes on the comments page. I really am rather blonde sometimes.

Once I’d realised that, it was a simple matter of getting the appropriate file, finding a convenient place to stick the code, and doing a quick copy/paste job. I’ve done away with the plugin - it just wasn’t working for me and it’s one more thing to go wrong.

Anyway, now whenever you comment, a little box should appear briefly that says “comment now being added to cocomment”. If you don’t see it, don’t worry, the world isn’t about to end. If you do see it, feel free to ignore it. It’s just there to make me happy.

I would like to say a big “Thank You” to all the coComment people, and in particular nicolas and Chris for stopping by Bright Meadow with their help and tips. Definitely good people

Awesome Cas.

I have no idea what you were on about. :p

*is as computer-literate as a dead slug*

You had to mention slugs, didn’t you? *shudder* Some people fear spiders, I fear slugs. Seriously, slugs. Yes, I know the things move at like three cm an hour, and do no harm, but they creep the hell out of me.

I was trying to get across how easy it was to make everything work…
You’ll just have to trust me

i cant’t find the button to sign in…

Have to agree, Cas, that the coCo people are wonderful and helpful. Sadly for me, I am on Blogger—thus, no tracking of non-coCo people.

You’re on blogger? Ouch. I feel your pain Jack.

And hello Spot, welcome to Bright Meadow

Yep. By default, really. We started the Beyond Branding Blog in 2003 and it was one of the more readily available choices. When I began blogging myself, at my own site, I didn’t want to go to a different place. Of course, it means I now pay the price …

You know Jack, you could quite easily install wordpress on that server in the same directory, and import your blogger posts - its almost as easy as one click now, I think…

With a few hours of work, it wouldn’t be too painless.

JB, is Wordpress customizable much? As in: can I get the sort of layout I have at my present blog? I am also concerned as I have heard of people having Wordpress blogs that do not ping, and it has been down an awful lot more than Blogger of late. Whether that is indicative I do not know; I certainly enjoy commenting on Wordpress blogs as I find that process very user-friendly.

Jack,
Wordpress is infinitely customizable - to be strictly true, it is as customizable as your skills allow and your ability to find plugins. I’ve never had a problem (to my knowledge) with pings, and because the service is hosted on your own server, you don’t have to worry about a third-party service fritzing on you. In that respect, it’s more stable than blogger.

The down side is when things go wrong there’s more onus on you to have made the necessary backups. That, and the learning curve is a little steep when you first start to play around with it.

All things considered though, I never regretted the switch from blogger to my own wordpress blog. The benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks. As JB said, it is a fairly simple procedure to move all your posts over. Moving posts over with their associated comments is a little more tricky, but I am assured it can be done. Layout wise, whatever the mind dreams can be made true. There are any number of pre-coded templates out there, all of which a easily modifiable. If you’re brave you can even write your own (I’ve never been that brave). And there’s a vibrant and helpful community of wordpress users just waiting to help with any problems you might have.

Best reason for switching? You can insert the coComment-catch-all-comments feature of course
Occasionally I do yearn for the good-ol’ blogger days when I didn’t have to worry about the technical back-end too much, then I remember that I want to do more with this place than blogger will allow.

That’s just me however, and I can fully understand reticence in changing if the current system works well enough for you.

Thank you for your advice, Cas. I might investigate Wordpress then. Probably not right now, but when I get a bit of spare time. I still think of myself as an amateur blogger who doesn’t need that many functions, though what you and JB say, and how more user-friendly these comment fields are in Wordpress, do seem to be nice boons.

Well, you could always investigate a wordpress.com account - they’re free, and are limited in their customization options, but you could get a feel for it at least. And thanks everyone for not drawing attention to my saying painless instead of painful above - oops…

Anything to help a fellow blogger Jack
And JB - the only reason you got away with it was because I checked the blog before I left for work early in the morning. I wasn’t quite up to speed. Fortunate for you!

Hey Cas,

Nice blog, enjoyed reading some of your older posts. coComment is as you mention, a simply fantastic service and we bloggers are definitely propagating them.

Just a ques: Is this plugin having any effect on your blog’s speed? Just heard stuff from a couple of other people, that’s why.

@Jack: Man, as I told you before, Wordpress is a complete solution, be it for the power user or for a person who doesn’t know much. It’s quite userfriendly, fast and offers much more advantages than blogger and if you are worried about spam, then you’ll end up marrying Akismet.

Chrono,
Welcome to Bright Meadow I have to say, I don’t use the plugin at all (I am assuming you’re talking about David’s plugin) I just couldn’t get it to work. In the end I simply inserted the appropriate javascript into my own template and everything seems to be working wonderfully well. Bar one small hiccup the other day with some permalink confusion, but nothing major.

I haven’t noticed the javascript insert slowing things down either.

Call out to the class - has anyone else noticed a slowdown?

[...] Since I integrated coComment fully into the Blog, I have come to rely on it as a way of keeping track of comments when I am at work. Especially now several different posts are the focus of conversations at once. I’m not the only one it seems with a desire to track conversations - for example Easton uses coco, del.icio.us, and co.mments. [...]

Chrono, I don’t disbelieve you but I think it fair to get a second opinion, don’t you?

OK. I’m still new to this coCo thing. but I like it. I’m using the firefox extension. It seems to work well.

My blog however is currently using HaloScan, and it doesnt seem to work at all with coComment.

I guess I have to set up Drupal and get rid of the Blogger

The coComment folks know of the Haloscan bug, though not sure when they will fix it. Hopefully soon, TFB. Next time I might try selecting all the text before hitting the bookmarklet, so that the text and not the ID number gets submitted.

@jack Yan,
we (coComment folk) are in relation with Jeevan the responsible of Haloscan. We have discussed together how to “coComment enable” Haloscan. It should be done in the coming week(without “s” I hope).

Hi Nicolas—thank you for your personal response here. I am very happy to see that coComment is being vigilant on this!

I second Jack’s thanks, Nicolas. You heard it here first folks!
(Perhaps you heard it elsewhere first, but I like to think that you heard it here first. Just humour me, ok?)

Alas, it is a day late and a dollar short, for I have removed Haloscan from Fat Boy Magazine.

FatBoy - if you’re going to want coCo to work properly on blogger comments, you would be better off switching to the non-pop-up mode available.
More details can be found here - http://www.cocomment.com/supported

My other way is to copy the URL for the comments, then paste that in, removing &ispopup=true from the end. Better than feeding all that malarkey in yourself.

ok, its running now. go test it!
Fat Boy Magazine

Just started using coComment and I’ve got to agree - looking very very excited The main thing for me at the moment is the number of blogspot blogs that have managed to create problems with it though - apparently there is a javascript setting or something that messes it up Need to spread the word so that we can get all those blogs coCo enabled again!!

Wow, you cocomment guys really rock… Definitely this little known app is taking the blogosphere by storm, shame a lot of people really don’t know about this.
Jack: You can try other CMS’s as well - Textpattern, Drupal, they are all decent… TP kind might click for you….

I like Drupal as well. I have a couple of Drupal blogs, and my main site, Fat Boy Magazine will soon be Drupal.

Yup, the coCo-chaps certainly rock my world As for getting the word out, the best thing is posts like this - the people who use and love coComment talking about it, and persuading their readers to use it as well.

I found another good argument is that it boosts your traffic, because it does! Most days now, one coco page or another is one of the top referrers to Bright Meadow. That can’t be bad.

I just this week signed up to coComment and think it’s great, with one proviso: I discovered on my WordPress blog that the addition of that line of code which makes the coComment function always available can have horrible consequences for site visitors. I’ve stripped it out and just use the bookmarklet for myself, in Firefox.

Visitors reported to me that their comments were aborted/blocked because of the coComment pop-up and, worse, my partner reported from work - where he’s no choice but to use IE - that the site crashed the browser with coComment’s line of code in the comment form, and then the PC rebooted. He thought it might be a fluke, rebooted - and tried three times just to make sure. Every time the same result (good job he wasn’t too busy at work today!).

So yeah, coComments is wonderful but my advice is not to add in the code to your comments.php file because if it isn’t ‘liked’ for some reason, the consequences could be severe for the end user. Besides, if they’re registered coCommenters they’ll likely have the toolbar add-in set up on their machines. I see, I think, you’re using it as a permanent plugin to your comments… Have you noticed anything, or your visitors? Now that I’ve ditched it, the problem is resolved. Of course, there could be a clash with another plugin which I can’t discount… Still, it wasn’t worth the problems it caused. That aside, coComments is great and I’m using the RSS feed on my blog as it takes up much less space than the provided ‘boxed’ solution. x

Hey Andy,

That is one severe reaction and I can understand why you’ve stripped the code back out if it’s causing so many problems!

I tried the plugin-route, but I just couldn’t get that to work, so I inserted the javascript directly into my comments.php file. I haven’t noticed any problems myself, nor have any been reported to me in the two weeks I’ve been running it. This of course doesn’t mean there haven’t been problems, just that people haven’t got around to moaning yet!

I also have to use IE at work and, whilst I’ve only commented a few times from there, nothing untoward happened to me. Or the PC.

Very, very odd. At a guess, I would hazard there’s some nasty conflict going between your wordpress install, your plugins, and the code. Do you have ajax commenting or strange things like that? (I know I had to disable the ajax commenting on my K2 install before coco would work properly).

As far as Bright Meadow is concerned, everything seems to be working ok, and I am finding the tracking of all comments made invaluable. It means I can really easily track what new comments have been made whilst I am away from my own pc and RSS reader (i.e., at work), regardless of whether people are coCo users or not. Hardly seems fair to force my readers to use coCo just to make my own life easier (though, you know, they should get coCo because it’s great!).

It might be an idea to head over to the coco-forums and their bug page and report this. I doubt the team would want to be even partly responsible for fritzing a load of machines!

Whatever happens, welcome to Bright Meadow

Thank you, you keep a lovely and interesting space here!

Plugins et al… Hmm, until, like you, adding the code in for coComment, I’d made no direct changes to the comments.php file which came with the theme (Regulus 2.0) but had added in quoting, captcha code and preview functionality through plugins, unfortunately around the same time as coComment so it would be hard to say if there’s a connection.

I do know coComment caused no reported problems for Firefox users, only some IE users and as I say the problems ranged from annoying to extreme. You might like to know when I comment here, if I scroll back up the page to view the other comments in the middle of typing, the page kind of splits vertically and temporarily - one side of the screen seems to take a moment to catch up with the other side as I scroll up. Hang on…

It does it both ways. If I scroll up to the top of the post or down from there. What’s very interesting is I noticed this on one other site today which uses the coComment code…

You’re right, I should report this and I will, tomorrow as I’m off out now. If it were anyone other than the love of my life telling me about the browser crash/PC rebooting, I’d probably scoff (privately) but given that I trust the source it is a bit disturbing. Even an unstable site caused by a plugin crash/conflict shouldn’t do that; it just shouldn’t work properly. And your page slicing upwards is so weird! I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m using Firefox, by the way.

I’m just using the RSS feed on my site for now and it’s great as you say for keeping track of what’s said where and by whom. Like you, I tried a fair few plugins for coComment and all either didn’t work properly or didn’t work well or looked ugly to my eyes. I’m fussy with these things! x

Ok, so page-slicing is odd behaviour. And in trusty Firefox to boot! I knew things were going screwy with the comment display in IE, but they’ve been doing that since before coComment, and it’s a known K2 bug (that I can’t seem to fix, grrr). Looks like Saturday is going to become my default “try and work out what the frell has broken in my CSS this week” day. I want it to be a CSS problem related to my poor site not being used to this many comments on one post, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be coCo related. There did seem to be a temporary hiccup in the service this evening.

As I said, it’s Saturday’s problem. First I’ve got to try and recreate the behaviour. *whimper*

(Oh, who am I trying to kid? I love playing around with this stuff :D)

And thank you. Compliments always greatly appreciated. Though you should probably stop now, you’re making me blush. :wp-redface:

Good luck! And I know what you mean - I always say it’s a bane to problem-solve my blog when things don’t work how I want them to but secretly I love it (such a geek at heart). x

Hey Cas,
How many hits does coco give you on an average? Just curious!

I am really looking forward to full-comment tracking @ CoComment. But first it would be nice if they started tracking all WP blogs, as Wordpress blogs already have a RSS feed for each posts’s comments.

Seeing as how you asked so nicely Chrono, I shall go digging for you…

*lift musak plays*

Ok, so according to my server stats (that are ever so slightly weird and have to be taken with a pinch of salt) in the past week I have had 650 referrals from comment.com, and 379 from a post on the team blog that I was mentioned on. Added to that, I normally have a couple of referrals a day from the pages of other coCo-pees who have commented here.

Now I don’t exactly have thousands of readers, or places that refer here, so those figures are pretty significant. Also, Bright Meadow tends to stay in the “most commented” lists on the coComment blogs page, so I imagine a fair bit of what I do get is “I’m bored so I’ll go surf” traffic.

Every little helps, right?

Absolutely! I don’t get as many as you, Cas, but I still welcome the few that come my way.

Of course as more people get on board its going to get harder to stay on the top of those most commented lists!!

That’s true, IIQ. The blogs that have coCo enabled will surge past those that don’t (or can’t, in the case of Blogger).

Im with Blogger on a few blogs… since I removed Haloscan, it works fine!

Go test it Jack!

What I mean, TFB, is that Blogger won’t allow us to capture the comments of non-coCo users. I don’t think there’s a way we can change the ‘Add comments’ page.

That is indeed true IIQ - but I see that as a good thing. Why should just a few stay in that list? Every now and then even blogs that get a low number of comments have posts that exceed all expectations. (This post for example still makes me give a very Keanu “whoh!!”)
It’s become part of my daily routine now (when I have the time) to look at the most recently commented list and I’ve discovered some new blogs with it that I wouldn’t have found before. It would get very boring if the same blogs were on there all the time. Roll on more people using coCo I say
(At the same time of course, I want Bright Meadow to stay on the list, because who wouldn’t want their blog to be listed so prominently?)

Jack, no, I don’t think there is a way you can change the ‘add comments’ page which is a shame. And more reason to move to a platform that does let you change things…

Ever since coComment gave us the recently updated (over the last 10 days) list, that has proved handier than the “all time” one. It really shows where the global conversation is. I also like seeing the most recently commented articles, which may be at some unpopular blogs—but occasionally, the topics pique my interest and I surf on over.

Sorry Cas - I never meant to give the impression I was hoping for coComment to remain a secular society!
I def think it will be a great thing as the numbers grow - and hopefully that will produce one of two results on the blogger front: they bow to popular pressure, or there are enough people using that it really doesn’t matter anymore
I was more just saying that it is potentially going to take more work to keep it there as the community grows - being a “founder” isn’t going to be as important moving forward…

That’s ok IIQ - I think there was some crossed wires due to the tone in my head when I wrote the comment not translating to the tone in your head when you read the comment
I totally agree - moving forward is good, and so’s a bit of competition. Keeps us on our toes

Mis-reading tone happens over half the time for email; so I’m using that as an excuse for blogging too!

How did you get on with your investigations? I am still having a nightmare finding any WordPress plugin that delivers on its promises. Am trying a Firefox Greasemonkey script at the moment, to avoid having to click that damn bookmarklet all the time. I’ve had lots of feedback from people all of whom say not only my own blog but others which tried implementing the coComment box automatically caused problems in IE ranging from freezes to complete crash-outs. I suspect many visitors don’t bother telling, either - they just don’t come back and I can’t ever afford, in my view, to piss off newcomers to my blog. Or even diehard repeat visitors, either.

I’ve also tried various means of adding in coComments to my sidebar, but they range from the intrusive and crazily HUGE - like the offered box from coComment itself - to other options such as the RSS feed as a widget. I wish, I wish, I wish someone would create a drop-down method of accessing your coComments. It would mean you’d have the equivalent of one line of valuable sidebar space taken up but you could open it up and scroll to any given comment and visit it in a new window. Ah, if only I was a developer of such things… x

[...] I've posted extensively in comments on earlier posts about this, not to mention on other sites such as Bright Meadow, where Cas has found herself at the centre of a major discussion about the pros and cons of not only coComments as a service but the various methods of trying to get it to work on blogs. [...]

Hey Andy I wrote this comment using IE and Win XP at work, and nothing exploded, and I haven’t been able to replicate the page-slicing behaviour you noticed, so you could say that my investigations have reached a halt! Nor, to be honest, has anyone else reported any problems. As you say though, I can’t afford to piss people off, or loose new people
What exactly are you looking for in a Wordpress plugin? The problem, of course, being that any plugin will rely on the coCo-javascript, and if it’s that code that’s causing all the problems… Now that’s a horrible thought!

As for the comment box, I’m not sure if you’ve seen this one from Pablo - http://irgeek.net/projects/show-cocomments/ From a quick look-see, I’d guess that you can impose some of your own styling on it (i.e., dimensions, what it shows).

I’m thinking out loud here, and I am not totally sure whether it would work or not, but if you put it in the side-bar in a show/hid div, that might work… Failing that, do what a lot of people are starting to do and create sub-pages where you stick things that would normally reside in a sidebar. Like the About page, or Links page.

Cas, hi - and thanks for replying so quickly. Yeah, I’ve seen Pablo’s but again, it takes up acres of sidebar space unless you elect to only display, say, 1 or 2 comments. I’d much prefer to be able to access more without hogging the real estate. That’s why I’m thinking a drop-down menu would work, like on archives or categories, where perhaps blogs where you’ve commented and/or others have commented as well would show up and you could click on them to go see the latest responses. I don’t know if that’s possible but I can’t see why and it would mean easy sidebar access which wouldn’t take up any space at all.

I’m testing out the Firefox extension now as opposed to the bookmarklet, and so far, so good - it seems to work on all blogs apart from Blogger pop-ups (which have always driven me insane).

If I wanted to stick a coComments page on my site, I know how to create new pages but how would I get coComments into such a page? Do you know and can you advise? I’m not sure about going down that route - too many pages can spoil the broth! - but it might be worth investigating, because then I could basically have a whole list of ongoing conversations without concerns about screen space and usability.

The page-slicing isn’t happening today. So it’s either you’ve changed something, somewhere or I have - but the only thing I’ve ditched is the bookmarklet. I’ve got the coComment box under here as I type because of the Firefox extension which seems not only to cut out that extra click requirement but also seems to work better full stop. So maybe it was the bookmarklet causing some kind of page interruption? Who knows!

I do know there’s definitely a problem with adding in the Javascript so the button always appears, whoever’s visiting my blog. Too many have come forward to say so, and all of them have been IE users. Nobody using Firefox has had a problem.

As for currently displaying coComments on my blog, I’m using the RSS feed as a widget but for some reason it’s not updating. I’ve asked in the coComments forum for help. It’s a simple enough widget - just the standard RSS one, you slot in your feed et voila - and when I check the feed directly, it is updating all the time. It’s just not appearing to be updated on my site. Hmm… It’s testament to how much I like the idea of coComments that I am perservering, eh? And thank you for any and all advice and chatback to date! x

*&&^%%%$ technology! It’s sod’s law, really, but my RSS feed has just decided to update. There’s a quirk I’ve noticed in displaying the RSS feed that sometimes comments show as being from users ‘unknown’ - your last here, for example, when it should say ‘Cas’.

I’m researching right now into the ‘coComments on a page of their own’ possibility. x

It says unknown because I am commenting from work, and I can’t sign into coComment due to nasty IT people. I get the option to ‘enable’, but it doesn’t submit.

It’s something I’ve been meaning to report on the coCo forums - in the RSS feed it says ‘unknown’, but on the coCo-page it says ‘unknown as Cas’, so surely the information must be available…

Sorry to confuse you!

I think I might have solved the two things: how to save on my sidebar space, how to integrate coComments onto a page… I’ll report back, given how many comments you’re getting here on the whole coComment thing, in case anyone else wants to follow my lead (assuming I manage to get the page up and working!). x

Don’t worry, I’m easy to confuse. After much investigation, I’ve got coComments showing on my blog in a way I like. I created a new page template, cocomments.php but of course it can be called whatever - and in that I inserted the customised Javascript code from the coComment website. I then created a new page from that template and left it blank. No need for any content as the content is embedded in the template.

And hoorah! I now have a page filled from top to bottom with all manner of conversations culled from mine and other people’s blogs. It looks great, too, which is important, and it means I can track things easily at last. x

Nope, I’ve not changed anything with regards the page-slicing. Well, I can’t remember changing anything. I’ve got a feeling it was just my server having hiccups or something - note to self, don’t use Fasthosts again.

The Firefox extension is great, I agree. We’ll have to agree to disagree on the javascript that totally integrates coComment into the blog however. I think the advantages of tracking everything outweigh the potential disadvantages of annoying (a few) I.E. users. I have a fairly even split of IE/Firefox users and no-one’s complained of major problems. Of course, if things do start to break, I will be re-evaluating the situation in a hurry!

And congratulations on solving the problem of how to display the coComments to your satisfaction - that is a sweet and elegant solution. If the penguins weren’t taking up so much room in my header, I might just employ a similar solution myself. But I like the penguins (even though they are evil)… But I like coComment as well! Ah, the dilemma

I just cleared out my Firefox cache including cookies, meaning when I came back here I had to log into coComments again, and the page-slicing effect has returned upon doing so. I am convinced it has something to do with that code. I was able to implement it easily enough - it’s not much, after all - but like I say, the grief some experienced was so extreme, it really scared me off. I didn’t want people blaming my site for crashes and reboots. Still, it’s acknowledged that the code isn’t risk-free or in a final or guaranteed state.

I was wondering if a plugin might give me the functionality to track all comments, so did some research. I found iG:CoComment which promises to track all comments for me. I’ll see over the next few days if it does so. It was certainly a breeze to install, the options all look like they’re working but, of course, plugins can appear to do everything they should and then not deliver!

It does look promising - for reasons beyond my ken, you can either track all comments OR have the coComment button auto-activated. You can’t do both, so I’ve selected the tracking option given that the button gave some of my users such hell. If the track all doesn’t work - and I’ll give it a few days to see - then I might see if enabling the button via the plugin gives me better results than the previous Javascript-line route.

The penguins are indeed lovely. I don’t blame you. Still, it is nice for me to be able now to access my coComments from my own blog, in full. And, of course, thank you for your reciprocal visit and kind words!