Comments
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Introduction
Comments enable you to create micro-communities around any type of content on your website. Comments encourage visitor participation on your website, creating an increased level of transparency and higher levels of credibility for your business. Comments also help towards creating a sense of community on your website.
Its likely that youve already seen similar Comments features implemented on most blogs. Accepting reader-input on ones blog entry is now more or less a standard. However with this system you can encourage user-input on any type of content and not just blog entries such as Web Pages, FAQs, Announcements, Web App Items, Products and more.
This is an example of implementing the Comments feature to encouraging user feedback on food recipes (web app item) published on a web site.
How Comments work
Its important to understand how the Comments feature works. In effect there are two sides to this feature.
The first part is the Comments form that allows customers to rate something, write some feedback and optionally identify who they are by a way of providing a name and an email address. You can add this form to any type of content. You can also customize the form after inserting it and remove any of the fields that you don't require.
If you go to Modules > Comments > Manage new comment rules you can select the approval process for comments that are placed against different sections of the site.
The second part of this feature is the modules that allow you to publish this content back on your website:
- {module_ratingrank} displays the average rank for the current item calculated from all the rankings given by visitors
- {module_ratingfeedback} displays the list of feedback provided for the current item. Refer to a later topic on how to customize the feedback layout.
Adding Comments to your website
There are a number of ways to add comments to your website. If you are adding this feature to a web page then its just a matter of adding the relevant module to the web page. If you however wish to use this feature for FAQs, Announcements and so forth, then you need to insert the module in the relevant Details template for the given content type.
To add the Comments form or modules to a web page:
- Go to Modules -> Comments and choose the Add comments to a web page link.
- Use the Module Manager on the online WYSIWYG editor
Alternatively, you can use Triangle to add it to the page.
Reviewing Comments
All Comments that are recieved against items on your site will need to be approved by default.
The way to review the comments left by your websites visitors is to go to Modules -> Comments. Here you can see and filter through visitor comments.
Automatically approving new comments
If you prefer to allow comments to be shown on your site as soon as they are posted (i.e. without moderation), you can select 'Manage New Comment Rules on this page.
This allows you to select the areas of your site, and the new comment setup for each of these areas....
Customizing how Comments appear on your website
Customizing the appearance of comments on your website is done much the same as customizing any other type of content. Go to Admin -> More Customization Options-> Comments Templates or use Triangle.
When you place the module {module_ratingfeedback} on your website, it uses this template.
