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[[!template id=plugin name=comments author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]] [[!tag type/useful]]

This plugin adds "blog-style" comments. Unlike the wiki-style freeform Discussion pages, these comments are posted by a simple form, cannot later be edited, and rss/atom feeds are provided of each page's comments.

When using this plugin, you should also enable [[htmlscrubber]] and either [[htmltidy]] or [[htmlbalance]]. Directives are filtered out by default, to avoid commenters slowing down the wiki by causing time-consuming processing. As long as the recommended plugins are enabled, comment authorship should hopefully be unforgeable by CGI users.

The intention is that on a non-wiki site (like a blog) you can lock all pages for admin-only access, then allow otherwise unprivileged (or perhaps even anonymous) users to comment on posts. See the documentation of the [[lockedit]] and [[anonok]] pages for details on locking down a wiki so users can only post comments.

Individual comments are stored as internal-use pages named something like page/comment_1, page/comment_2, etc. These pages internally use a \[[!_comment]] [[ikiwiki/directive]].

There are some global options for the setup file:

  • comments_shown_pagespec: pages where comments will be displayed inline, e.g. blog/* or !*/discussion.
  • comments_open_pagespec: pages where new comments can be posted, e.g. blog/* and created_after(close_old_comments) or !*/discussion
  • comments_pagename: if this is e.g. comment_ (the default), then comment pages will be named something like page/comment_12
  • comments_allowdirectives: if true (default false), comments may contain IkiWiki [[directives|ikiwiki/directive]]
  • comments_commit: if true (default true), comments will be committed to the version control system
  • comments_allowauthor: if true (default false), anonymous commenters may specify a name for themselves, and the [[!meta author]] and [[!meta authorurl]] directives will not be overridden by the comments plugin

Known issues:

  • Needs code review
  • The access control via postcomment() is rather strange (see [[discussion]] for more details)
  • There is some common code cargo-culted from other plugins (notably inline and editpage) which should probably be shared
  • Joey doesn't think it should necessarily use internal pages (see [[discussion]])
  • Previews always say "unknown IP address"
  • Add COMMENTOPENID: the authenticated/verified user name, if and only if it was an OpenID
  • The default template should have a (?) icon next to unauthenticated users (with the IP address as title) and an OpenID icon next to OpenIDs