XF 2.2 [UW] Forum Comments System 2.0.7

valai · Saturday at 10:33 AM

This Forum Comments System add-on allows users to post comments under a reply in the forum. The add-on is already feature complete and in stable condition without any known bugs. This FCS add-on combines similar functionalities as you can find in vB5, Facebook and xF2 profile comments.

There are already 13 user group permission options available now organized in a dedicated section. Notification, alerts are sent no matter where the comment is written, whether it is in a new or an old reply.

USE CASE #1

Here I've made first example of using this FCS in a forum. There are two threads. Both with exactly the same posts in the same sequence. One thread is with comments and the second is done the traditional XF way, using quotes, without comments (never mind the content, it's just an example not real opinions).

This thread is with comments:
- all responses nicely stacked under one post. well organized, space saving, easy to read and see what other people think about the post.

This thread is without comments: This thread is done the traditional XF way using quotes, without comments:
- Now, you decide what looks nicer.

NOTIFICATIONS / NAVIGATION / ALERTS
There are several ways how you get notified about a posted comment in watched thread. E-mail notification. You will get an email notification for the first unseen comment for each reply. A link in the email will bring you straight to the comment.

So, let's say person A, B, C is watching a thread.
A posts a comment under a reply in the thread.
B and C gets notification about that comment.
A and B stars conversation under that reply and create 20 comments.
C will not get any other email alert, except for the first one. Once C visits that thread, only after that he will be notified again if first unseen comment is made again under that reply.

Only one comment email notification per thread. By checking this option in user's preferences, a user will receive only one email notification for the first unread comment in the whole thread.

New features regarding comments notifications. Receive a notification when someone…

- Comments on others' posts in a watched thread
- Comments on your posts in a watched thread

Alert pop-up window. A link in the alert pop-up window will bring you straight to the comment.

Notification in Forums Main category. Normally when a reply is posted, the thread links in the forum are bold informing you that those threads contain unread posts. So the same applies for comments as well. When a comment is posted in a watched thread, the tread link will bump to the top and become bold informing you that you have an unread post. And clicking the bold link or the "time" link, will bring you straight to the comment.

Notification in "What's new". The same way as you get informed about replies, you will get also informed about comments in "What's new" section. When a comment is posted in a watched thread, the tread link will bump to the top and become bold informing you that you have an unread post. And clicking the bold link or the "time" link, will bring you straight to the comment.

Notification in "New posts". After posting a comment, you will be informed also in "New posts" section.

Latest activity. Comments appear in "Latest activity" section as well. A comment link there, will bring you straight to the comment.

Behaviour of a notifications once the a comment is deleted and then undeleted.

When a comment is undeleted the plugin will check for thread's last activity, If the thread's last activity is before this comment was created then the plugin will mark the thread as unread and will set its position to this thread.

Otherwise if the thread's last activity is greater than this comments' date then it will not make any change to thread's state.

A "New" post indicator for comments. Regular feature for a reply works also for a comment to help with the notification.

Option in the admin area to count also comments to the total message count. By default unchecked. This option will include also the forum comments under replies in the total messages count. And also the user's total message count will be updated.

MODERATION
There are already 13 permission options now organized in a dedicated section.

Moderating functions activated also for comments You can now delete, undelete, approve, unapprove, move and copy comments using the moderation checkbox/moderator's toolbar

Enhanced comments deleting. You can use the same functions for deleting comments as for regular replies. You can remove the comment from public view, permanently delete it and also notify the author .

Enhanced comment editing. You have the option to edit the comment the same way as a regular reply with a "History" link too.

History and revisions for comments. After editing a comment also the "History" button will appear with the same functionality as for a regular reply.

Time limit on editing/deleting own comments. Please note that this permission works with the combination of permission "Edit own post/comment". If someone has the permission of editing any comment/post, then this permission will not take effect.

Approve/unapprove comments per forum. By default FCS add-on will allow comments in all forums. But with this feature, you can disallow posting comments for any forum you want on your website and for any user group.

Navigate to Forums -> Node Permissions (select any forum) -> Select a user group (for example Registered) and you disallow for this group in that forum to post comments.

MOVING COMMENTS

Moving, merging, creating replies and threads from comments. With properly set permissions, you can move, merge or create a new thread out of the reply with comments.

You can move a reply with comments and create a new thread out of the reply. The reply will become first post (OP - original post) and the comments will become regular replies.

Or you can move the reply into another thread with two options:

1. Selecting just the reply will move the reply the way it is - comments will stay as comments, except when you are creating a new thread. In that case comments will always turn into replies even if they are not in the first reply.

2. Selecting also the comments - comments will turn into replies when merged with another thread.

You can also merge one reply with a comment to another reply and this way the comment will merge too. In this example you can see Reply one with a comment to be moved to Reply 2 without a comment :

Moving comments under another reply. This feature allows you to move a comment from under one reply to another reply.

1. First select a reply where you want to move a comment.
2. Then select a comment you want to move.

3. Then select a “Move comments...”.

And the comment will be moved under reply #1 :

The pagination works similar way as in XF2 profile comments.
There is added extra top row, on the left side you can see the total number of comments in the reply. And on the right side is the link to get to the rest of the comments.

By default, last 3 comments are always visible. In the settings you can set how many comments you want to keep visible. However, unread comments are always displayed all on a 1st visit.

In the first option you set the number of latest comments you want to see under the reply on a page load. Setting it to 0 will load all comments.

With the second option "View previous comments", you can set the number of comments loaded when "View Previous comments..."link is clicked. Setting it to 0 will load all comments.

Option in the admin area to count also comments to the total message count. By default unchecked. This option will include also the forum comments under replies in the total messages count. And also the user's total message count will be updated. NOTE: You need to rebuild the threads and user caches.

UNINSTALLING FCS

Once you decide not to use this add-on, there are several options.

Use of importers. If you know about any other comment add-on you would like to use instead, just the importers needs to be built and you will be able to import your comments to another comment add-on.
Approve/unapprove comments per forum. Or you can just disallow using this add-on to all user groups and just keep the existing comments as is. By default FCS add-on will allow comments in all forums. But with this feature, you can disallow posting comments for any forum you want on your website and for any user group.

Navigate to Forums -> Node Permissions (select any forum) -> Select a user group (for example Registered) and you disallow for this group in that forum to post comments.

Add-on uninstall with preserving the comments data. The default behaviour is that on uninstall all the data, including the comments, are removed. But with this feature, you have the option to preserve the comments data by ticking the checkbox "Don't remove comments data" when the uninstall window pops up.

This way a comment will be converted into a reply with a quote of the reply under which the comment was posted. For your convenience this checkbox is checked by default.

Here is an example. This is a reply with comments before uninstalling the FCS add-on :

And this is the same reply with converted comments after FCS add-on uninstall :

I recommend to try this option on a testing website before you start using this add-on on a production website.

NOTABLE FEATURES

BB code and rich text editing. Creating forum comments allows you to use the rich text editor, full BB code (and Markdown ), smileys and everything that comes with it. This is the same editor as XF2 is using for profile comments.

Functions of Reply an Quote links preserved
Mentions support with alerts

Just like in XF profile comments, also here the only way how to insert an image is to use the image tool (using a link to the image). No attachment function here. It is not possible to copy and paste an image here.

Reactions. Default XF reactions also available for forum comments with the same use and functionality.

Permissions "React to comments" added to Groups & permissions
Reactions will be preserved also after uninstall, if "Don't remove comments data." selected.
With notifications in alert window.

Commenting a comment.

Now you can comment a comment. It works similar way as in the second level for Facebook comments. A comment will include the user's name you are commenting, plus (what Facebook doesn't have), the back button icon when clicked, will bring you to the commented comment.

Edits made to fit buttons also for responsive mode.

An option in the setting has been added that allows to keep only the comment icon in responsive mode. This way all links in comment action bar will fit in one row even in responsive mode.

This is how it looks in responsive mode :

Text editor added also at the end of the comments.

There is a "Comment" link in the post action bar. If you've got a long list of comments then you would have to scroll up to click the Comment link. As you can see above we now have a "Write a comment..." input directly below the list of comments. Clicking this, as mentioned above, loads the editor which, again, also supports rich formatting.

Worth to mention: Comments don't count to the total number of messages, because comments are just comments. Not regular messages. Also this is already a feature complete add-on. Not major features are planed. Mostly just keeping it updated, bug free and improvements of current features. So please buy this only if you are OK with the current functionality and features.

[UW] Forum Comments System 2.0.6 : Fixed: Moving a comment to its own thread doesn't retain the attachments.

[UW] Forum Comments System 2.0.7 : Fixed conflict with chat plugin.

Importovat to update to this version.

Extra check in our plugin was added to make sure none of the plugins skips the attachments permissions check from the comments end.