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Put number of comments on front page and additiona

August 29, 1999 - 01:28 — mathowie
I think a big UI enhancement to evolt would be to show the number of comments a particular article has on the index page.

I know doing a query within a query in ColdFusion is a big no-no, but I found a hack to get around CF's limitation.

(I swear I'm not here for self promotion) On my site, I set an array and populate it with a record count of comments on each page. Then I make up a variable of comments. Now, within each output, I display the contents of the variable for that single output. It's a total hack, but it works. I'd be happy to funish the CF coder responsible for the evolt site with the code.

I got a bunch of customization ideas because I solicited comments on my site to a bunch of friends. So here's another one that they told me to add: customization of the index page's length. On my site, I show the last 7 days of entries, and I noticed on evolt, it shows 5 topics at a time. I have big monitors and a fast line at home and work, so I'd prefer to see about 10-20 topics per page.

Also, letting someone edit their comment might come in handy, or at least do a preview before post. I do it at my site by storing someone's post in hidden form elements. After they preview what their comment or post will look like, then they hit submit and I dump the hidden form elements to the database.

I love evolt, it's a great resource and I should post more articles and comments. I think these ideas (along with the persistent logins) would make evolt easier to use and might lead to more interaction with the audience.

Comments

August 31, 1999 - 21:17 — elfur

Most of the things you are suggesting, I know nothing about, but the comment editing thing I can answer: You can change your mind about your comments. You can't edit them, but you can delete them after you've posted. There is an X in front of your comment, if you press it you are deleting the comment. This comment here was posted twice, because of hideus spelling error the first time around. HTH elfur
April 2, 2001 - 00:37 — MartinB

Done

Hi Matt

As I'm sure you've noticed, this now happens (and has for a few months now, just no-one remembered to note the fact here) - we have the number of comments on the front page, and a user can edit & delete their own comments.

April 2, 2001 - 01:08 — mathowie

you're right

Yeah Martin, I've noticed. My original thread was from almost two years ago, and the site has certainly improved very much since then.
April 2, 2001 - 08:50 — MartinB

Getting better all the time

While I think that the site we had 2 years ago was better than a hell of a lot of other sites are even today, I'm glad you're seeing the development. And it keeps going - just this week we had additional sidebars for top-rated and most-commented articles, then permalinks to comments (click the wee cubes...). You can tell when Dan and/or Jeff have a quiet week - they implement some of the extensive ideas queue we've got. And of course, seeing each new idea implemented sparks off more ideas. Want to know what's coming, and to help? Join thesite mailing list.