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Top Commener Movable Type Plugin

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

I while back I added a new feature to Be A Design Group that created a list of the top commenters on our blog with a comment count next to the name of the comment author. It seems like it would be a native feature of Movable Type, but it isn’t. In my search for a plugin that could do the job I found some conversations about plugins called “CommentLeaders” and “mt-leaderboard”. The plugin were no longer listed on Movable Type’s plugin directory, and they don’t seem to be available anywhere else online.

Finally I found a thread on Six Apart’s community forum that eventually led to the comment leader board plugin. The conversation wanders through several suggestions and improvements, but there isn’t a clear cut solution. I thought I would attempt to save you some work by explaining the solution that worked for me. I know just enough to make this work, so I apologize in advance for not being able to improvise beyond the following steps. Here it goes:

The first step is to create a page called “connect.php” that will be used to access your Movable Type database. In a text editor, create a file with the following code:

<?
// name of your database
$database = "databasename";

// connect to database
$db = mysqlconnect("localhost", "dbuser", "dbpassword")or die (’I cannot connect to the database.’);
mysql
select_db("$database",$db);
?>

Be sure to change databasename, dbuser, and dbpassword to your specific info. Save and upload to your server as connect.php.

Next create a php page called “leaderboard.php” with the following contents:

<? include 'connect.php';

$leaders = mysqlquery("SELECT commentemail, commenturl, commentauthor, COUNT(*) as commentcount FROM mtcomment WHERE (commentblogid=1) AND (commentauthor!=’name to exclude’) AND (commentauthor!=’another name to exclude’) GROUP BY commentauthor ORDER BY commentcount DESC LIMIT 10");

while($row = mysqlfetcharray($leaders)) {
while (list($key,$val) = each($row)) {$$key = $val;}

if (!empty($commenturl)) {
$authorlink = "<a href=\"$comment
url\">$commentauthor</a>";
} elseif(!empty($comment
email)) {
$authorlink = "$commentauthor";
} else {$authorlink = $comment
author;}

echo "$authorlink ($comment_count)<br />\n";
} ?>

There are a couple things to notice. First make sure that you have the correct path to your “connect.php” file. Next, you can exclude commenters from your list by replacing “name to exclude” with the name of the author who’s comments you don’t want to appear in the list. This is very helpful because if you are active in the comments of your blog you are probably the top commenter.

If your blog id is not 1, change “blog_id=1” to reflect the blog id number of the blog you are adding the leader board to. Another thing to notice is that this will link the commenter’s name to the url they entered when they made a comment. If no web address was specified then their name will not be linked to anything. It would be simple to link the name to the email address of the commenter, but that would expose their email address to spammers and is probably not a good idea.

Finally, at the spot in your blog where you would like the Leader-board to appear, add the following line:

<!—#include virtual=”path/to/your/leaderboard.php” —> .

If you are lucky, you now have a list of the top commenters on your blog. Like I said before, I just barely got this to work, so if you need help, you are pretty much on your own. If anyone decides to try this, and has suggestions about how to make this tutorial better, please let me know. Good luck!

References: Six Apart’s community forum www.thegirliematters.com

Wanted: A Way To Pull My Comments On Other Blogs Into My Blog

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Somebody tell me if something like this already exists…

I would like to be able have comments I leave on other people’s blogs appear on my site. It could work really well in a sidebar (although I don’t have one at the moment) as a “See What Adrian Is Saying Elsewhere in the Blogosphere” section. Not the catchiest name, I know, but it is a work in progress. Ideally, it would look something like this:


Adrian recently said, “Listen to the commercial. It says “I am a Mac. I am a PC.” They clearly don’t say “I am a mac user.” They aren’t supposed to represent the users, they are representing the products! It is a pretty simple concept, so I am amazed by how you misread it so badly….”

On a post called “The problem of smugness
over at www.cultureby.com
on Aug 30, 2006 at 10:26:15 AM


Easier said than done, I am sure. When I am on a blog and hit the button to publish my comment the plugin (or whatever is powering this crazy idea of mine) records the comment and lets me preview and edit what it will post to my sidebar. Kind of like a bookmarklet (Do they still do bookmarklet’s or is it called something else now?) except it would work for comments instead of entries. I don’t think there is any money in this idea, but it would be pretty handy. Ok, somebody go make that for me…

Blogging Compromise: I Failed

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

I hate compromise. I try to blog with conviction, and not let anything stop me from saying what I believe. I have avoided this, my personal blog, because I knew that I was being forced to not say what I really want. I have always been pretty confident that everything I write on my blogs is protected by freedom of speech. I still do, but I had the first legal encounter with someone threatening me because of what I wrote. It is a relatively harmless situation, and I am kind of a wuss for backing down so easily, but the stupid thing has been on my mind for about a week now, and I just want to get it behind me. You can read the nasty letter here if you want the dirty details. I can’t tell you how much better I feel just for publishing the lawyer’s letter, even if I stripped out the names. I think that was the best thing to do, but it is still a compromise, and it stings. Part of my wussyness has to do with the fact that I don’t want to make a scene since I still work for the agency where I did the work in question. Job security aside, the blogger in me just wants to paint it in the sky and really make them pay. But I didn’t. I compromised. I backed down. I gave the faceless corporation a pass. I failed. Please forgive me for my compromise, and I promise to never do it again. I hope.

Blog Comments Don’t Represent the Readers

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

Comments are my favorite part of blogging - usually. On my photography blog, Found Photography, I just reached a new milestone. I passed the 50 comment mark on one of my entries. If you had to guess, which entry do you think it was on? The logical guess would be the tutorial about the camera I made out of Legos. After all, it was featured on Boing Boing, Metafilter, Engadget, Make, Flickr’s blog, Digg, and over a couple hundred other sites. I am telling you this not to brag (ok, well maybe a little) but because this ISN’T the post with the most comments. That honor goes to an entry I made reviewing a piece of garbage camera called the Philips Keychain Digital Camera. I basically just wrote about how worthless the camera was and urged people to avoid wasting their money on it. So why has this post become so popular? The answer is because a camera this junky isn’t supported by Phillips. Nearly everyone who bought this camera does a Google search and finds my entry near the top of the results. The typical comment goes about like this:

“hey I bought this phillips camera its very good do you know were I can download the software because I lost mine
Please email me back.”

There is a huge temptation for bloggers to tailor their writing to match what they think their audience wants. While this seems logical, it leads you to base the concept of your “reader” on the kind of comments your site is getting. Based on my blog’s comments, I would make the mistake of thinking my readers were inconsiderate fools that blatantly disregard capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and common sense. Since I know that isn’t true and since I have no ambition to write reviews of crappy cameras, there is this conclusion: Blog comments don’t represent the readers.

The vast majority of the people who read blogs don’t leave comments. Unfortunately, that means that there isn’t a reliable way to know what your reader’s want. So how do you know what to write? Easy. Stop writing what you think people want to hear, and write what you care passionately about. Not only will it be easier to write, but it will also be more interesting and attract more readers. Don’t let the loud commenters persuade you to change your style. Don’t get mad if your blog’s comments don’t reflect the kind of reader you want. The readers you want will find your site. They might be silent, but they are there.

When Blogs Collide with Real Life

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Remember that Seinfeld episode where George is afraid that if his two worlds (his dating world and his friend world) would collide it would be the end of him? “A George divided against itself cannot stand!” Well, blogging is kind of another world for me. Almost noone in my daily life reads my blogs. I rarely go out of my way to talk about it, and I doubt that there is much here that would interest them anyway. I actually like it that way. It is kind of a fear of “world’s colliding” thing.

Recently I was invited to lunch by someone who had read my blog. Not only had he read my blog, he read a post I made that criticized him. Needless to say, I was a little nervous about meeting him. What can be said in private that can’t be said on a blog? Plus, he had the ability to do plenty of homework on me, while I had no way of knowing what to expect from him. If he hadn’t of been persistent in his invitation, I would have been more than happy to keep the blog world separate from the physical world. (Sidenote: I read a post earler last week that said, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they would punch you in the face.” I think the same thing could be said about blogs. I don’t know if that is necessarily a bad thing, but blogging does have the fortunate side effect of me not getting beat up when I tick someone off!)

Well, I went through with it. I let the worlds collide, and to my delight, it was a very pleasant lunch. We easily worked out our differences, and the conversation made a smooth transition from conflict to recognition of similar beliefs and attitudes. Actually, I couldn’t believe how much we had in common! If there is a point to my story it is this: If you have a blog and are ever given the opportunity to meet a reader, jump at the opportunity. Let the world’s collide! You will survive and you might even meet someone that you have more in common with than you might expect.

Blog First, Design Second

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

After making another round of tweaks to adrian3.com I thought of one piece of advice for anyone thinking about starting a blog: Don’t wait until you have your templates perfect to start your blog. Building a “perfect” website takes an incredible amount of time. If you wait until you have the perfect templates and every little feature you are wasting valuable blog time. Get your site up and running and worry about perfecting it later. For one thing, this allows you to start building content. It also lets you understand what your content will be and how it is going to work. Once you know that you can build your design accordingly. I would even go as far as to say don’t start customizing your site until you have written for a while. Use one of the default templates to start out with and slowly build and modify it until you have a decent site. Think of designing a blog as a neverending redesign. Never stop thinking of ways to improve your blog’s layout. That is the philosophy I have taken with Be A Design Group. I have constantly tweaked the site and still have a ton of little things I would like to do to improve it. If I waited until my templates were perfect BADG never would have started. So what are you waiting for? Start your blog today.

Blogging From Indiana

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

Bits and pieces from my trip to Indiana:

Toll Booths
I took the toll road to the airport. I managed to scrape together $0.75 for the first toll and hoped that the other toll booths had attendants who could give me change. Luckly they did, but I always wonder what you do if you are stuck there without change. Why don’t they have a change machine? Or make the toll be $1? Or take credit cards. Otherwise, you either have to flag down another car to ask for change, or speed on by and hope you don’t get caught.

Dinner
Dinner was a box of Junior Mints and sour gummy worms. I didn’t feel like overpaying for a McDonald’s burger at the airport.

Reading
Creativity’s top 50. Hoping most of the names will sink in so that next time I hear the names, I won’t feel like an idiot for not knowing who they are talking about. Hoping to finish Free Culture finally.

Rental Car
They gave me a brand new PT Cruiser with less than 200 miles on it. The interior was stylish and pretty cool, but I don’t think I would ever buy one. I can’t really explain why, though. It seems decent enough…

Hotel
I am staying at the Essenhaus here in Middlebury. It is my first time here, and it is nicer than the nickname it has in our office: “The F’en House.” They said they were hit by lightning a little while before I arrived. A fire alarm was going off downstairs from my room. It took them until past midnight before they could turn it off. Internet was down until this evening which is why I haven’t posted sooner.

Extended Forecast
It has been raining hear since I arrived. Supposed to rain most of the week. It hasn’t dampened my spirits though. I had a successful first day of photography capped off by a nice dinner with Craig Lamson. Ready to do it again tomorrow…

The Human Voice, Part 2

Sunday, April 2nd, 2006

Do you remember the first time you commented on a blog? What made you do it? Most likely, your first comment was accompanied by a strong emotion. Maybe you were furious. Maybe you were touched. Maybe you were thankful. Maybe you were relieved. Maybe you were ecstatic. The reason most people’s first comments are accompanied by emotion is because it takes strong feelings to move you from being a passive reader to an active participant. It wasn’t the first time you had these feelings, but it might be the first time it was so simple to respond and be heard.

Most people believe their opinions are worth hearing, but unfortunately there aren’t many places where they are listened to. Yelling at your TV set, talking to your radio, and calling your newspapers names is obviously pointless because nobody is listening. Participation in the blogosphere is monumentally different from previous models for transmitting information. When you read a book or watch television, the information is only going in one direction. It’s the difference between a dialogue and a monologue. When information starts passing back and forth, the average person gains power and so does the community. When a reader finds the courage to make their voice heard, whether in a blog of their own or by leaving a comment, this event is extremely empowering. A community forms and people realize that they aren’t alone. That may seem trivial, but don’t take it for granted. Eventually, what was once the voiceless masses transforms into a mobilized population.

While blogs are wonderful for the individual, they can be a threat to people and institutions that have profited from a model where the public is relatively silent. The people who want to ignore the cultural impact of blogs are the people who have the most to lose from its rise in power. Whether you recognize it or not, opposition to blogging is growing. One of the first places blog opponents try to strike is to claim that blogs lack the credibility of an established institution. Of course a blog will never have credibility in the same way that network television does, but that doesn’t mean that blogs aren’t credible. Actually, the whole framework of credibility has really changed because of blogs. Look at CBS. Until they were exposed by bloggers, CBS would be considered one of the most credible institutions that existed. The credibility of a blog comes from the combined weight of a networked community. When something is explored by blogs, the result is credible because the result is achieved by the collaboration of minds with varying motives.

The credibility of blogs is attacked for one reason: Credibility equals power. The power of blogs is increasing, and it is starting to make a big impact in modern society. The impact is felt by corporations that can no longer mislead their customers for fear of being exposed. The impact is seen when bloggers expose corrupt news organizations trying to influence elections. It is felt by consumers who actually expect customer service people to listen to them. Blogs are a threat to corporations that don’t want to have a relationship with their customers. It is a threat to a celebrity that doesn’t want to be seen as a human. It is a threat to churches whose congregation expects something in return for their time and money. It is a threat to a writer whose income is tied to the monologue of traditional publishing. As the internet continues to shape modern culture we will see fundamental changes in some of the most influential areas of modern life: publishing, news, advertising, politics, religion, and entertainment.

Don’t fall for the line of thinking that says making your voice heard is arrogant, self-serving, or trivial. Just because you aren’t a celebrity doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to voice your thoughts. Additionally, don’t participate expecting to be rewarded with fame, friends, or fortune. That’s not the way a community works.

No Compromise - Blogging with Conviction

Saturday, March 25th, 2006

Several years ago I was filling out a question on an employment profile for a job I was applying for. There was one question that stands out in my memory. It asked to complete this statement:

“The last time I changed one of my basic beliefs was…”

People who know me, know that I have a tendency to be extremely stubborn when it comes to convincing me to change my mind about anything let alone one of my basic beliefs. I have always considered this to be a strength of my personality, so to complete the sentence I wrote,

The last time I changed one of my basic beliefs was when I knew that I was going to be a father. I made a conscious decision to take a firm stand on beliefs that I would otherwise have been passive or timid about. I want my son to see his father as a man with a strong set of beliefs.”

Looking back at my answer now, it seems kind of funny that I said that the last time one of my beliefs changed was when my beliefs became stronger. It is kind of like the trick interview question where they ask you to name one of your weaknesses. You always feel like you are dodging the question when you answer, “I am too much of a perfectionist.” The truth is our weaknesses are all too real, and our beliefs aren’t as firm as we like to tell ourselves.

The reason I have been thinking about this lately has to do with blogging. The audience for my other two blogs has really exploded and that comes with the exhausting side effect of having to be willing to backup everything you say. I say “exhausting” because knowing there will be opposition to your statement makes you think twice before you publish something. You have to ask yourself if it is worth the effort? I think that is part of the reason there are so many blogs that would rather just give you a link rather than commit to making a personal statement about it. That is where conviction comes in.

It really doesn’t matter what you say, somebody will disagree with you. This came as a surprise to me, because I came into blogging with the naive belief that a well written essay could change the minds of people who would disagree. Sadly, this is rarely the case. I think most people are as unwilling to change a basic belief as I am. People rarely change and that can be seen in most blog comments. Usually only one of two things happen. Either an argument arises that can’t be settled, or a compromise is made and both people half-heartedly accept a watered down middle ground. It might seem like the second scenario is preferred, but I would argue that this is the more dangerous scenario because it involves someone changing a basic belief. That person’s belief is now closer to what they recently strongly opposed. “Peacemaker” commenters see that as a victory, but the reality is that they have helped to create a place where there isn’t anything left to believe in. To be honest, I find the “peacemaker” commenters more annoying than the person I am disagreeing with. I can respect a person who believes strongly enough to disagree with me. The people that want to find a middle ground where everyone can “just get along” are unwittingly creating an atmosphere of complacency, antipathy, relativity, and mediocrity. In other words, a place where the only people who aren’t welcome are the people with conviction. That is extremely dangerous especially when you consider that one of the common traits of great people in history is conviction. Jesus, Marin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, the list is endless.

So here is my request of the blogosphere:
If you disagree with me, don’t be afraid to say so. Let’s be respectful, but don’t think less of me when you don’t change my mind. If you are the “peacemaker” type, be considerate of the conviction of the people on both sides of the argument. Don’t be afraid to pick a side in a disagreement and stand behind your decision. Blog with conviction and never compromise your beliefs!

How To Harvest Email Addresses From Movable Type

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

If you have a blog, you probably require that commenters enter their email address before they can leave a comment. This is obviously a good way to control comment spam, but it also a good way to gather email addresses and create a database of email addresses from your blog readers. If you use Movable Type, there isn’t a built-in way to gather all the email addresses of your commenters, but it is possible. All you have to do is create new template. Go to the template section in your Movable Type interface and click on “Create New Index Template.” Give your new template a name like “email-Addresses” and name the output file something like “blogemailaddresses.html.” Uncheck the box that says “Rebuild this template automatically when rebuilding index templates.” Since you will only be using this template periodically to gather email addresses, it is better to rebuild this template manually so you aren’t putting unnecessary stress on your server. Next paste the following code in the “Template Body.”

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body>
<table width="750" border="0" align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<MTEntries lastn="300"> <MTComments>
<tr>
<td width="250"><MTCommentDate format="%B %e, %Y"$></td>
<td width="250"><MTCommentAuthor default="Anonymous"></td>
<td width="250"><$MTCommentEmail$></td>
</tr>
</MTComments> </MTEntries>
</table>

</body>
</html>

Next click “save” and then rebuild the template. Type the address of the file you created in your browser, and you will see a page with a table containing email addresses of everyone who has commented on your site! You can save this page and open it in Excel, or Word, or whatever program you use. To change the template to gather email addresses from more or less entries, change “300″ in <MTEntries lastn="300"> to a larger or smaller number.

Now you are ready to send a mass email with your new database of email addresses. It is probably a good idea to delete the page when you are finished just in case it gets found by a search engine or spammer. When you send out mass emails be polite, and be sure go give them a chance “opt-out” so that your email isn’t perceived as spam. Also make sure you BCC (blind carbon copy) your email recipients to further protect your list. If you do use this template to gather email addresses, protect your reader’s email addresses at all costs. Remember that your reputation with your readers is on the line!