XF 2.3 Debating on how to handle comments

[Taylor J]

I'm currently stuck on choosing how to implement comments into my blog addon and I'm stuck on two different implementations but I'm not sure what would be best for users/scale and decided to open up a discussion about it.

Implementation 1:
I can create my comments from scratch and insert them into a blog post while having them paginated (hopefully without page reloads) with a tiny editor at the top. I think with this way I would also have to implement quotes into the editor so users could quote each other just like normal, which while typing this up I believe I would as the quote bb code can only currently lead to posts so I would need to extend off of that / create a new quote bbcode to link to blogPost comments.

Implementation 2:
I take this the XFRM route and have each blogPost create a thread in a designated forum set in the addons options so that users can have a thread to comment with instead. With this way I would be also copying how Invision has their blogs setup currently where it will have a notice at the bottom saying "join the discussion on this blogPost" or something along those lines. If I go down this route I don't have to setup the logic for handling tags on blog posts as I could just have the saving process create a thread with tags and pull the tags from there.

How would other developers handle this? Users, which way works best for you? Or does anyone else have another idea by chance.

 

[briansol]

I hate the way resources are disjointed from the conversation. so, i would pick option 1

 

[Miri]

Option 1 I consider better in terms of usability. Option 2 is very detached because it requires more clicks and takes you to a new page (which is very frustrating and discouraging). But second you must first ask a crucial question; What happens to the content if I have to uninstall the addon? Because in this case, maybe with option 2 you could make the thread permanent?!

 

[Taylor J]

I hate the way resources are disjointed from the conversation. so, i would pick option 1

This is the reason I made this thread in the first place. I also dislike how the conversation is disconnected from the actual material but if I went with 2 it would have the first post in the thread be either the full blogPost or a snippet with a link to the blogPosts page, and that is what is making it hard to decide.

Option 1 I consider better in terms of usability. Option 2 is very detached because it requires more clicks and takes you to a new page (which is very frustrating and discouraging). But second you must first ask a crucial question; What happens to the content if I have to uninstall the addon? Because in this case, maybe with option 2 you could make the thread permanent?!

You actually bring up a good point in regards to what would happen to the content if the addon was uninstalled. Threads would be able to make it "more" permanent in a way.

 

[Jeremy P]

I'm not sure there's a strong technical reason you couldn't (or wouldn't want to) leverage threads while also providing an option to view some or all of the posts under the blog entry.

 

[Taylor J]

I'm not sure there's a strong technical reason you couldn't (or wouldn't want to) leverage threads while also providing an option to view some or all of the posts under the blog entry.

Oh now this is the best of all worlds!

 

[Old Nick]

I'm currently stuck on choosing how to implement comments into my blog addon and I'm stuck on two different implementations but I'm not sure what would be best for users/scale and decided to open up a discussion about it.

Media Gallery comments system is a good option i think.
Practical and simple, from a user point of view.

 

[Taylor J]

I think I'm pretty much in love with @Jeremy P 's suggestion. I just have to flesh out the design of it all in regards to implementation.

My first thoughts were to take advantage of XenForo's tagging system so that threads would have a tag of the blog's name so they could then be clicked on and hopefully the only results would be blog posts from that same tag, but then I remembered that owners have the option of opt'ing out of tags (off by default) and I'm not sure if I would want to force an owner to turn them on if they have reasons for having the feature off.

Have some brainstorming and pondering to do.

 

[Jeremy P]

You can create a custom thread type (like resources) and use that to customize the thread view to include a link to the pertinent blog/post.