Behind the Scenes Coding
I’ve spent most of the day working on getting the Bactroid.net comments system ready to launch. I’m doing all the work in my testing environment, so unfortunately there isn’t anything to see here on the live site. I’ve got the interface pretty well set now. The database backend is ready, and I’ve already got the ability to submit comments. I don’t have much more to go, but I don’t know that I’ll be working on this anymore today/tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll just need to work up the comments display (which is cake compared to the tasks of today) and handle the HTML translation. I hope to have everything ready by tomorrow afternoon, but I take no responsibility for the debugging gremlins that may show up along the way.
Comments will be open to both Bactroid.net users and anonymous users via the Internet. Anonymous users will optionally supply their Name, Email, and Homepage URL to “identify” themselves. Bactroid.net users will just have to supply their Username and Password to validate themselves. I’ve coded the authentication routines in a pretty open fashion, so I should be able to expand to other auth mechanisms as they become available. With any luck, OpenID (and therefore LiveJournal) authentication will be up an running within six months, but don’t construe that as anything approaching a promise.
Users can specify whether or not a ChangeLog entry is open for comments. The default choice is controlled by a preference in each user’s profile. If an entry is open for comments, the user can select an availability window of 1, 3, or 10 days. I may add the ability for indefinite comment windows later on, but I’d rather wait to see if that’s a real need.
It feels wonderful to have made so much progress on the comments project. After nearly a year of sitting on this project, it feels good to be so close to completion. When this is all said and done, I’ll have to reward myself with a tasty beverage.
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