Cindy of Digital Ramble wants to build a better WordPress comments panel based upon a plea/whine/beg I made for WordPress Plugins I believe WordPress needs and I covet desperately. The challenge?
Create a WordPress Plugin that would add instant AJAX replies from the WordPress Comments Panel without accessing and loading the full post. It would speed up replies and save bandwidth and database hits that come with loading the entire post, writing the comment, and then reloading the entire post after submitting the comment. Then trying to find your way back to the Comments Panel. I also asked for a few other bells and whistles, and Cindy is working overtime to make this happen.
She needs help, though. The Comments Panel interface isn’t as “hooked” in as may be necessary in order to get this to work. There are some complex issues that make this process a lot harder than it should be.
Still, I consider the fuss and time-consuming bother of how WordPress handles comments to be the number one flaw and most needed improvements in the WordPress interface. Don’t you?
Want to help? Are you familiar with WordPress Plugins, AJAX, Javascript, and want a hand in improving one of the most used interface panels on WordPress?
What are you waiting for? Get over there.
Site Search Tags: wordpress plugins, wordpress development, wordpress comments, comment panel, administration panels, improving wordpress, wordpress help
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network 
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15 Comments
Thank you Lorelle for voicing this plea and Cindy for taking up the challenge. I’d help if not for a paucity in coding skills. Blogs are wonderful. I love maintaining one and reading others but the commenting function of blogging is broken in my opinion. Not only how one goes about commenting but the very structure of comments.
The linear view doesn’t seem organic enough to me. I’d rather have a mind map type comment section or something radically different. I’ve seen threaded comments but this seems to me to be a better implementation of an idea that’s faulty to begin with. Anyway kudos for inspiring the quest for better commenting.
Thank you.
I agree that threading would be a nice feature, but the most important information to the blog owner is “GIVE ME THE NEWEST COMMENT!”
Once you have responded to a comment, it rarely has much interest for you, unless you need the information the comment contains. A search will bring it to the fore again. Do you reread comment conversations from the Comments Panel? There are WordPress Plugins for Comments that include threading capabilities inside posts.
Once the faster method of responding to a post has been dealt with, we’ll start looking for more options to add, I’m sure. 😉
An option to sort posts on the Manage Posts Panel by comment count has been requested, but that’s a different issue.
I’ve actually got some ideas in mind now…without even using ajax directly 😉
The notion is to drop in more javascript that rewrites a span (an empty named span added along with the new link) which is where the javascript rewrites the new text area. Add a submit button and patch in a check for the submission where the info is stuffed in, both entirely hookable into the relevant page, and I think that will do the trick. Will take some fiddling. The big part is duplicating the proper “stuffing” of the comments into the wordpress DB, but that’s mostly digging into how the comments page does it…
In the meantime, if any problems crop up with the simple version (which at least cuts out the middle click-click-clickety-clack stages) do let me know.
I agree that the comment system is sort of a klug compared to other parts, but I would make the admin panel the #1 thing most in need of a clean up. I use Tiger Admin and it does work nicer, but the default needs a good touch also.
But back to the post at hand. With all the comment plugins out there, to find one that does it elegantly would be a nice touch.
Does an AJAX Comments plugin not exist or does this one not do quite what you want it to?
I think it is great that things like this are brought to then attention of the WordPress world. It lets people at least bounce ideas off each other.
I’ve already made a few suggestions.
litwc: Do you mean the entire Administration Panels “cleaned up”? If they work right for me, I don’t care if they are purple and black with annoying graphics – okay, I do mind. But functionality will always win for me over pretty on the Administration Panels. I drive a beater car because they get me to where I’m going and bring me home safe. Not because they are pretty. 😉
Jim: The Ajax Comment WordPress Plugin you list is for creating Ajax style posting on the post not in the Administration Panels. Big difference for the blog owner.
Cindy of Digital Ramble: A part of me cares, but most of me doesn’t care how this is done, we just need it done. I’ll check out your new version and report back. Thanks for taking this on. You are a star!
I could possibly write that announcements plugin for you.
Contact me at ncgreyfox hackermail.com if you want to know my status (add the @ sign yourself).
Evan, that would be lovely. I assume you are talking about the Announcement Plugin for putting non-post and non-Page text announcements on a WordPress Blog?
These WordPress Plugins aren’t just for me, so I’m not sure what you would need direct contact for. If you can figure out a way to do this, go for it. You would have a huge fan club of WordPress users who would love this. And I’d love to promote such a valuable and much needed Plugin. Thanks for the offer.
Like the idea.
I posted something like this about the WP 2.1 Link Management system. 🙂 All over, including on the Support forums which got several posts because of the topic on the Support Fourms. 🙂
Personally I think effort should also be put on weekly (yes, weekly) updates fixing major bugs (they exist). Lots of friend have moved to Blogger cause of 2.1 bugs
I think a cleaner/faster administration is needed for wordpress the most.
this tool really rocks, thanks!
I believe that the wordpress theme K2 (getk2.com) already has a similar feature included.
i have used this tool for 5 months.
Thank you Lorelle for this plugins..
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