iSay - Public Alpha Release

[AeroSoul]

First off, iSay is a commenting system for Coranto (in case you didn't already know that). Second, you can find a working demo of it here. Third, this is an alpha release, with virtually no documentation, so anyone is welcome to try it, but do not complain if you cant get it installed; at this point it is only for people that know what they are doing. Fifth, I do not want many feature requests (that will come at a later point), right now all I want are mainly bug reports.

And finally, here's the download link:
http://www.jerald.per.sg/cgi-bin/get.pl ... 15-pl1.zip
current alpha version: 0.15-pl1

Instructions
(Use a plain text editor [eg: notepad or wordpad] for all steps requiring editing of files)

1. Open "iSay.cgi" and "iSay_GetCommentCount.cgi" and edit the path to Perl at the top (if needed).
2. Edit the "absolute path" variables in "iSay.cgi" and "iSay_GetCommentCount.cgi".
3. Upload all files (4 in total) to the directory which contains coranto.cgi and other Coranto core files.
4. Create a directory named "comments" within the HTML files directory and CHMOD it to 777, 666, or 755 (if needed).
5. In Coranto, enable iSay, go to the iSay control panel in the administration section, and fill in all the necessary fields (if needed).
6. Add the following into the news style(s) where you want the comments link to appear (change all the URLs appropriately, if needed):

JavaScript:

Code: Select all

<a href="iSay.cgi?Page=Comments&ID=<Field: newsid>">Comments (<script language="javascript" src="iSay_GetCommentCount.cgi?ID=<Field: newsid>&js"></script>)</a>

PHP:

Code: Select all

<a href="iSay.cgi?Page=Comments&ID=<Field: newsid>">Comments (<?php include("iSay_GetCommentCount.cgi?ID=<Field: newsid>"); ?>)</a>

7. Build news, and you should be done.

NOTES:
- See this post for ZComment database conversion script.
- This addon was a day behind the scheduled release date because of many reasons outside of my control and which I will not discuss here.
- The demo uses the latest version of iSay with the default design.
- Please post all bugs/problems/comments in this thread until further notice.
- I imagine that most developers will be wondering why some of the code is unnecessarily complex, lengthy, and sometimes slow, and the reason is because the addon used to have a lot more functions in it (backup, mysql, language, etc...), but was removed because of conflicts within the code. These conflicts will hopefully be resolved and the code will be brought right back in.
- Please do not re-distribute the alpha to avoid confusion.

Enjoy, and please report bugs.

[goyo]

Just 3 questions:

Is it working with maginot ?
Can I include somehow the comments form and the answers UNDER the submitted news ON THE SAME PAGE ?
Is it possible to post a comment without a registration ?

Thank you for your answers!

[AeroSoul]

1. no
2. no
3. yes, unless you set the settings otherwise

[Zygor]

iSay looks like a beautiful addon I look forward to seeing it become more powerful.

[l0rdphi1]

My suggestion: use strict.

I know you'd have to rewrite half of it to make it work under use strict, but I think it's worth it.

[faithless]

My suggestion: use strict.

I know you'd have to rewrite half of it to make it work under use strict, but I think it's worth it.

i supposed you meant the xhtml part?
heh.

aerosoul: i havent downloaded iSay to try yet, but if it's not too hard, a wish would be for the comments page output to be user customisable like zcomment. the fields can be standard but perhaps in future versions you could enable the users to do their own layout?

and oh yah. looking at your demo, using javascript to display the comment count is a i'd say bad idea. first it loads slow. as in i can actually see the javascript outputing the count slowly. secondly, if i disabled javascript, then i won't be able to see the comment count.

perhaps it could be done too via ssi? that way it'll be more transparent for the count. and also it'll no use the current zcomment method of rebuilding the entire news again just for the count. nice idea by you by the way.

[AeroSoul]

The comment count can be displayed via SSI and PHP as well, its just that I chose to use JS for that demo.

The layout of pretty much everything is totally customizable through the control panel.

Field management (much like Coranto has now) is a planned feature.

My main priority right now is to convert iSay to work from the Coranto core rather then its own. There is no way that I can continue to develop it without holes unless I do so. I know, this will mean it will likely perform slower, but its not going to be much slower then Viewnews or Searchnews.

[faithless]

My main priority right now is to convert iSay to work from the Coranto core rather then its own. There is no way that I can continue to develop it without holes unless I do so. I know, this will mean it will likely perform slower, but its not going to be much slower then Viewnews or Searchnews.

work from coranto core as in?
the building of comments and stuff?

may i suggest leaving the commenting script separate. maybe only reading coranto once in a while for some settings. that way it'll be fast and won't bog coranto down causing slow respond time. you could maybe even keep isay's field management config files as well as the style template files seperate too.
and only integrating the editing of comments and style and outlook to work from the coranto core.

oh and how are unreg and reg users managed now?
do existing Coranto users have to register seperate for iSay like zComment?

ideally, i think would be to have iSay read coranto's database for the reged coranto users. and a seperate database for non-coranto reged users. of course one foreseen problem when using this ideal method is that when you want to add a new user to coranto's db who already has a reg nick in iSay's db.

heh. hope these suggestions helped.

[AeroSoul]

What I mean by having the Coranto core instead of a seperate core is that like Searchnews, iSay will load most Coranto core files into memory and then use Coranto's subs for things like file reading/editing. Getting the comment count will remain the same (build news will not be called). The reason why I need to involve the Coranto core is for things like getting the time offset and the StyleToPerl sub from cradmin.pl for use with iSay designs.

[Hans5849]

i can't wait for a fully funcional version to use on my websites

[kleptik]

hows the progress going guys?

[johnsonben]

Looks fantastic, but it would need to be maginot compatible before I can use it

[phattangent]

Will it work with CorantoSQL?

[InSAnE NiNjA]

people its an alpha, meaning "so you stop worrying that nothing is being done"

[msbzdragn]

I must say, this is looking very nice indeed. Does it allow for templates?