CommentLuv, Alexa and AJAX updates
10,846 views
I’ve seen quite a few blogs using CommentLuv now which is fantastic and I see a lot of comments about blog authors finding more great blogs by following the links to the last blog post but, I see some places not picking up everyones last post because their hosting does not allow Curl commands which is what I use for parsing the comment authors page, they can still use the fetch_rss() function so I have created some external hosting for a script that takes a URL, parses that page and outputs a feed with the location of the feed.
I’ve added a bit to the plugin that calls that external file if the hosting it is installed on doesn’t allow Curl commands, it can read the result because it doesn’t need to open it as a file using file and fopen commands.
I have found it is quicker to parse the users page first rather than try all the combinations of the default locations because each try can take up to 5 seconds (or whatever you put as the MAGPIE_TIMEOUT) which isn’t ideal. Now with the option of every blog being able to parse the users page first it shouldn’t take too long and because the rss functions of wordpress uses a cache when it reads a feed, when someone comes back and writes another comment on your blog, the plugin will use the location it found last time because it will be stored as a feed in the cache. yey!
I’ve also added a check box to allow the user to not add their last blog post, this is if you want to leave a comment asking a splog that is using commentluv to stop scraping your content (you wouldn’t want to leave a link to your blog on a splog) or if you are commenting on your own blog from elsewhere without being logged on and don’t want your last post shown.
I’ve made it easier to change the message that is displayed below the comment form too. Just edit the bit in the quotes in the source code below the changelog.
The Future
I am in the middle of learning event listeners so I can really cut the time down for parsing the page by doing it AJAX style after the user has entered their blog url and clicks to the comment area to make their entry. This should make CommentLuv almost completely transparent and prevent any longer than necessary waits after submitting the comment.
I imagine that will be after Christmas as well as adding language support and it’s own options page. I have purposely kept away from using extra tables in the WP database because, A) I don’t want to mess up an existing database, B) I haven’t used MySQL before, and C) I don’t know how! (yet)
Much later than that, I want to create a widget style box for displaying links to your commenters posts (Cliq style). I am sure I can add Gravatars to it too but that will require storing the last blog posts in the database in their own table.
You can download version 0.997 of CommentLuv here (one-click installer plugin users can use this link http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/commentluv.zip)
AJAX tutorials
Tutorial 4 is ready and will be published tomorrow. I have seen quite a few hits coming in for them so I have spent a bit more time trying to add some graphical explanations for each process in the script to make it a little easier to follow. I have part 5 all planned out so that part 6 can see you creating your own AJAX scripts. Maybe some homework assignments to send out? 
Alexa Ranking
I am pleased to see my traffic going up a bit each week. The largest referrer is Stumbleupon with a steady stream of hits coming in as well as a few sharks fin spikes in my stats. I think that has helped with me getting close to the sub 100,000 mark for my alexa rank which, today is at 106,955. For just the sites visited by UK users, I am very close to being in the top 10,000 visited sites. (I can see it now, “FiddyP makes it to the top 104 UK sites”)
Happy Hanuka/Christmas/Holidays/Eed Al-Adha (delete as appropriate)!
Popularity: 12% [?]
Tags: ajax, Alexa, commentluv, plugin, Ranking, traffic
Print This Post
December 19th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Haha, it’s not Ramadan, we had that holy month of fasting months ago. We are now celebrating the sheep-sacrifice holiday; Eed Al-Adha, if you want the name.
I am not surprised to hear about your traffic and range improvement. Way to go!:)
Happy holidays and celebrations to all!
Lalla Mira’s last blog post..Maroc Blog Awards’08 T-shirts
December 19th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Can you try the new version of commentluv at your place? I think it is working fine, I know your hosting has issues with using curl so I’d like to know for sure if my remote script is working for it…
December 19th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Andy, I checked with one of my readers who cannot get CommentLuv to work for her on my site. She has an rss feed listed, and it’s in her header. Also, some of my regulars don’t show their last post by times, by others, they do. I have only noticed this since I updated the plugin.
witchypoo’s last blog post..The ingenious plot of Skinny Bitch to torture her husband.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
December 20th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Congrats on the rankings!
Thanks for the update on CommentLuv, I better go download it.
clairec23’s last blog post..Why I Let Mr. Claire Away With Pissing Me Off
December 20th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Commentluv seems to be a lot faster on some blogs I’ve seen it on, looks like the remote script is working. thanks for the luv!
December 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Hey Andy
I believe the AJAX idea for commentluv is great. I will try the new version and report if it works (remember the problems I had before?)
Btw your article inspired me to write wordpress plugins and I did 3 already. You said you’ll give it a look did you?
Vladimir’s last blog post..Life, what was that?
December 20th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I’ll get around to it eventually..
December 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I couldn’t get this to work on my blog, I have wordpress 2.0, I’m sure it is a compatibility issue. The problem is that whenever someone tries to submit a comment, it doesn’t go through and pulls up a blank white page.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm
instant upgrade plugin is good for doing an update. It takes all the pain out of it!
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Andy, I have tried CommentLuv on http://ukmac.net but I don’t seem to be able to get it to work. My site is hosted on Plus.net. Is there anything obvious I can do to check for compatibility with your plugin ? How do I know if Plus.net supports Curl ? Is there nothing that can be done to make it work if they dont ?
Cheers
Scott’s last blog post..Win A Set Of iMaingo iPod Speakers
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I did a couple test comments on your blog and it seemed to pick up the last post. If you were testing it with your own domain in the comment, it might not have been able to access itself. You could wait and see if someone else can get their last blog post shown or log out and use a site that you know has a feed to see if it can pick it up.
it’ll only pick up for comments made after CL has been installed. Hopefully it’ll continue to work with new comments…