How can I have users leaving me comments on my website?

Chapter 1: If you’re uploading to MobileMe

Chapter 2: If you’re not uploading to MobileMe or want to add comments to other pages than Blogs and PhotoPages.

Chapter 1: If you’re uploading to MobileMe

If you upload to MobileMe you can enable comments in Blogs which could actually be used for feedback. Just select a Blog, open the Inspector, RSS, check the Allow Comments box. Or select a PhotoPage, open Inspector go to Photos and check the Allow comments box. Those comments only work with MobileMe and you can add them only on Blog pages and PhotoPages. If you’re using MobileMe and want to add comments on pages other than Blogs and PhotoPages or you are not using MobileMe go on reading...

A lot of people report that they’re having issues with the MobileMe comment feature:

1. -Each time you edit the html code of your pages post-publishing the MobileMe comments won’t work anymore
   

2. -Often people can’t publish comments to websites using that feature (mostly people using PCs)
   

3. -Losing comments and can’t get them back
   

Thus I’d recommend to use the alternative comments also to people who publish to MobileMe

Chapter 2: If you’re not uploading to MobileMe or want to add comments to other pages than Blogs and PhotoPages.

The iWeb integrated commenting system only works if you publish to MobileMe. If you don’t publish to MobileMe here’s what you could do to have a comment functionality on your website...

Foreword:

All in all a lot of work if you have a lot of pages but it's the only way I found to be working and IntenseDebate the best site offering a commenting-feature.

Main reason why it's quite complicated:

Since iWeb pages are coded to have a fixed length if you would add the comments-code directly into the page after a certain number of comments they would disappear since the page is not long enough to display them. Hence you have to build a page for the comments of each page and embed it into your iWeb page with an iFrame.

It's up to you to decide whether you want to get into it or not.

Here's the how to…

1. Register to intensedebate.com

2. Once you're logged in click on "My Account"

3. Under Manage blogs/sites hit "Install IntenseDebate"

4. Enter your domain and hit Next Step

5. Choose "Generic Install"

6. Copy the first code. We will need it further on...

7. If you now go to "Sites" and select your domain you will find a lot of possible "Settings" like whether you want to moderate all comments before they appear, the Layout of the comments if you want them to fit your website's design, …

8.  Click here to download a folder called "comments" which contains a file called Comments.html

Open the Comments.html file in TextWrangler (ctrl-click on it and choose Open with => TextWrangler).

Where it says "<!-- Paste the code you copied from IntenseDebate underneath this line of text -->" paste the code you copied at step 6.

9. For each page you want to add the comments feature to you need a Comments.html file hence once you entered the code as of step 9 duplicate the page as many times as needed for your site

10. Rename those pages to the name of the page you want to add the comments to

Example: For a page called iWeb_FAQ.html rename a Comments.html file to iWeb_FAQ.html

11. Take the whole "comments" folder and upload it to the root of your server

12. Now on the pages where you want to add the comment-feature to add an iFrame containing the URL of the appropriate commenting page

<iframe src=

"URL of the comment page"

style="width:650px; height:500px;

border-width:0px;

border-color:#990033;

border-style:solid;"

scrolling="auto" >

</iframe>

Note that IntenseDebate adapts to the sizes you enter as the iFrame sizes.

That’s it.

Example of the whole process:

If I wanted to add comments my iWeb_Feedback_Comments.html page

http://iwebfaq.org/site/iWeb_Feedback_Comments.html (the one you’re looking at now)

I would create a page for the comments (Comments.html with the IntenseDebate code in it as per instructions I wrote above) which would then be located under

http://iwebfaq.org/comments/iWeb_Feedback_Comments.html

once uploaded to the server

And on the iWeb page I would have an HTML Snippet with the following code in it:

<iframe src=

"http://iwebfaq.org/comments/iWeb_Feedback_Comments.html"

style="width:650px; height:500px;

border-width:0px;

border-color:#990033;

border-style:solid;"

scrolling="auto" >

</iframe>

to display the comments on the page. Note that they will display only when published to the web.

Another (easier) method to include these comments in your site and how to customize the appearance of the comments is described in my iWebFAQ.org E-Book (15$)

This is how it looks (I will not watch the comments here so if you have questions refer to the Forum and don’t post them here):

iWebFAQ.org - Tutorials, Tips & Tricks is made with iWeb and for iWeb.

It’s presented by Cédric and hosted by HostExcellence.com

I would like you to give me feedback on this page by commenting in the appropriate section of the Forum. Tell me if it's been helpful. If it wasn’t please tell me why. If you think something is missing please tell me what. If you have questions about it post them there and I will probably try to give you an answer.

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Thank you for visiting and supporting my website.

- Cédric -