Getting rid of pop-ups @ Radio Free Blogistan

November 17, 2003

Christian Crumlish

Does anyone know of a good step-by-step tutorial that walks through converting default MT templates to ones that use no popups for either comments or trackbacks?

I always find it easier to follow a trustworthy checklist than reinvent the wheel, however, this isn't brain surgery, so check this:

Make sure the comment form on the individual archive template has a name anchor.
Change the comment link on the index (home page) template from the current popup code to one that is like a permalink for the entry but with # and then the anchor name for the comments form.
Here's the tricky part: Add tags to include trackbacks on the individual archive page, including a named anchor, before the comments probably, or maybe in the right-hand column?
Then change the trackback link in the index template from teh current popup code to one that is like a permalink but with # and the anchor name for the trackbacks area.

But now it occurs to me that the comments link on a blog entry on the home page might be used eithe to read comments (in which case it should show up at the beginning of the comments) or to make a comment (in which case it should show up at the end, where the form is). How do people usually deal with this? Prior art?!

Posted by xian at November 17, 2003 12:05 PM

Comments

Actually the instructions are in the docs. Pages 14-15 give you the details to either run popups or inline.

Posted by: filchyboy at November 17, 2003 12:55 PM

Ah, RTFM, doy.

Posted by: xian at November 17, 2003 1:47 PM

Wait, page numbers? What is the section, template tags?

Posted by: xian at November 17, 2003 1:51 PM

Yea pretty lame that they don't have the docs built with section numbers. The section is directly after archiving - called comments.

Posted by: filchyboy at November 17, 2003 3:09 PM

I'm reading it in here.

Posted by: filchyboy at November 17, 2003 3:10 PM

I think I've got it, or at least a working semblance.

I added the trackbacks inline as "further comments" on the individual archive pages (rebuilding now), and just used teh comments styles.

I made the links from the home page go to the invidualarchive and then a named anchor of either #comments or #trackbacks

I fixed the Recent Comments item in the home page sidebar so that each title links to the specific comment on the individual archive (the name still links the user's url, if any, which i'm afraid invites comment spam, so i may remove it if the battle is lost eventually).

I added a Recent Trackbacks item in the sidebar (down among the external links), but I can't figure out how to summon up the permalink of the entry page referred to by a ping, since there's no <MTCommentEntry> equivalent you can use to provide the entry context for the individual archive page's permalink.

Posted by: xian at November 17, 2003 3:42 PM