Comments improvements

Dear all,

We would like to share with you some ideas for improvements in Comments that we are discussing internally. Some of these will be included in the coming Sitefinity 6.2 release.

In short, our aim is to provide an easy way to enable Comments for Pages, Dynamic Modules, Images, and Videos, and basically everything in Sitefinity. Also, we are planning to address some popular requests from the community.

To see the wireframes, visit this link.

In more detail, the rework is planned to include,
for Sitefinity 6.2:

• A new backend section dedicated to Comments (link)
• A unified Settings page with option to set preferences per Content Types (link)
• Comments in Content Widgets Templates (view mode, detail mode)
• Comments for Dynamic Modules
• Comments for Images/Videos (frontend,  backend)
• Comments for Lists (frontend)
• Comments for Pages via a Comments Widget which can be dropped to a page (link)

for Next releases:

• Option to reply to comments (link)
• Option to display comment in hierarchical view (link)
• Flagging and Voting on Comments (link)
• Ability to subscribe to comments (link)
• Comments feeds (link)
• Akismet Spam protection (link)
• Sharing Comments

 Some questions to you:

• In terms of backward compatibility we were wondering if many projects use the setting “Close Comments for Old Items”. Would it be OK to discontinue it temporarily?
• How critical is it for  users to be able to fill in field "website" when posting a comment? Can we hide this out of the box ?
• Are custom fields needed for comments ?
• Would it be critical if the first iteration doesn’t have granular permissions? Access to the Backend Comments can be limited but once there, users can update all comments?

We look forward to recieving your comments and questions. 

Kalina
Sitefinity Team

Dear Kalina

I work mostly with small businesses and none of my clients use the functionallity to have people comment. I have only one using a blog. 

This said I have a whole different priority list for SF (can mail you the list if you want)

What I can see this is a huge deal from a functionality work wise point of view and while it looks amazing I am not sure if there will be another box opened before others are closed.

If I would use comments:

a) close comments disabeling would not be an issue because I would not have many. If you have 300 comments a thread this might be an issue
b) website not needed (rather have the name mandatory option for newsletter)
c) I would not need custom fields
d) I would not have problems with the granual permission either because again usually 1 or 2 persons do the whole admin anyhow.

This feedback is not much worth. Guess you really nead the big shots large site users.

Image post. for me its not so important if we have 1,5 or 99+ comments. I rather have an Icon as you have it in on the pinguin image. Add a + to it if you have no comment and keep it that way if you can read comments (assuming that where you read you can also add)

Sorry no way to add images here otherwise I would have made a mockup

Markus

PS: I wished we would be invoved the same way for new features. Kind of would you rather have a or be next in Sitefinity.

I'm over the moon with this, so much needed...I really only use disqus because the native functionality is just so bad (but you know that, which is why you're re-doing it)

1. I would rather see eComm products get comments over images and videos.  Do we even know the uptake on the videos module?...but defiantly ecomm over images....or at least ecomm over lists? Please don't point me at the nuget ratings and reviews module..it's not the same thing as a native comment system.
2. We need this for ratings...so "voting" wouldn't just be for comments, but more for like on amazon where you comment and rate the ITEM you're looking at.  Perhaps expose for us an event in which we could hook into the "comment (rating)" and save\increment the values on a custom field of the blog\dynamic item.  Or ideally just give us an easier way to do this, maybe a method in the comment API.  Because clearly you wouldn't want to query comments for top items, then go get the items...partly because you can't do a sortexpression on the type that way.
3. I disagree with markus, we need custom fields...not every "Comment" on every site is the same.  
4. Settings: The "Options" on that screen are what show up when you click "edit" right?...if not, they should be, I want to config these for every type :)
5. Kendo editor on the front end, not the radeditor...but I see by the wireframe you're likely using the radeditor :/
6. If comments are enabled for a type, sidebar filters need to be there on the type itself if we could...
7. Never used Close comments
8. I wouldn't even use a website field in 95% of the cases...
9. Don't need granular on first iteration, but when you do put them in we'd likely need to define a moderator per TYPE, not just on "Comments"

Hi Markus and Steve,
Apologies for the late reply, I was on vacation. Now on your feedback:

Markus, thanks!.The best way to participate in features for next releases is via voting in PITs. However, we will think of a way to invite more feedback from the community.

Steve, on your suggestions:
1- We will provide a sample on how to turn on comments for Products.
2 - We are planning to implement a Voting service in the future. In the meanwhile, we will follow your suggestion to provide the means to implement this easily through code. 
3- Custom fields are in the plans for the next iteration .
4- In this version we are planning to have Comments options for the whole application. Ability to set them per content type can be added later.
5- We are planning to user Kendo Editor.
6 -When comments are enabled for a content type, links to Comments for this content type will show automatically in the Backend Section of the Content Type .
7 - Ok, we are planning to discontinue it as of now.
8 - Ok, we will discontinue it as of now.
9 - I agree with you that this will be helpful.

Thanks again for the valuable feedback and the provided details and justification.
Kalina

Thanks :)  Looking forward to this module a lot

Hey Kali, 
This just came up in planning...if we have a dynamic page will this still work by unique URL?

So like /articles/5 or /articles/detail/some-name

Where the dynamic route is NOT sitefinity content but a custom widget who's reading the ID to load from the url.

Could the comment widget be used just like disqus (where each thread is by "url")?

Does this make sense?

Steve

Hi Steve,

Out implementation will associate Comments to content item (which we will resolve by item URL). Thus, in the backend we will be able to show comments associated for a certain content item.

However, we to plan to handle comments for items which are not present in Sitefinity.
In such cases user can drop the Comments Widget to a page and associate it to some custom type or id that he types manually (see attached screenshot).

Let me know if this can work in your case.
Kalina

So are you saying I could put the URL of the page into that ID field then?

Yes, this will be possible!
Best,
Kalina

Fantastic :)  Hey, do you think this could be "Default" behavior?

So users can just plop them around without needing to remind them to set anything?

Steve

Hi Steve,

We discussed the default behavior of the Comments widget and it seems that the best option is to have PageNode.Id for Thread.Key. We decided to use the Id of the page instead of the URL, mainly because one page can have more than one URL (i.e. additional URLs) and in the same time is expected that the page lists the same comments. 

Kind Regards,
Tihomir

...this will be transparent to the user though right?  Drop and go?

...and the backend will show the page\url it lives on?

Hey Steve,

Yes, it will be as simple as possible. The new comments widget will not require any additional configuration by default and also there will be a new backend section regarding the comments functionality.

Regards,
Tihomir

Uh wait, hang on...pageid won't work if it's a handled routed url " RouteHelper.SetUrlParametersResolved(true)"

Then the page ID is always the same, but the url can be what the heck ever I want. 

So like I said, for externally served content from another database
/articles/detail
The detail page contains the comments widget and a "Custom" widget to pull articles via the URL like this
/articles/detail/article-1
...article-1 doesn't live in sitefinity but an external database, and I don't want every article to have the same comments

???

Hi Steve,
To clarify a bit more, comments widget can be used in two main cases:
1.    To comment on content items
2.    To comment on static pages
In case 1, the comments widget is included in the template of the content widget, so it will be displayed as part of the content widget on all pages where content items are displayed. The comments widget requires parameters -  the type of the commented thread (e.g. typeof(NewsItem).ToString()), the key of the commented thread (e.g. NewsItem.Id.ToString(), “random-text”, “sitefinity.com\page1”)  and the content language (e.g. “de”). It creates a thread based on those parameters.
In case 2, the comment widget is available in Page>Toolbox, and shows on all pages where it is dropped. This comments widget uses the id of the page, and displays a thread based on that.

In your case you need to use approach 1 and add the comments widget to the template of your custom widget.
Let me know if that makes sense.
-    Kalina

Yes, that works

Hmmm, do I make up a type then?  ...like it's just a plain string for grouping purposes?  Because it's not a valid SF content type.

Steve,
You can make up type with any name as long as it is different from the generic Sitefinity Types.
It will be used for grouping purposes.
-K.

@Kali
Would you consider allowing us to add arbitrary groupings?

An example would be the ability for us "Group" comments into not just content types....which would be aggregated automatically into the sidebar filters.

So we have "Clerkship"  which contains about 9 subclerkships like peds, surgery, selectives, etc etc...

I'm not seeing a way for us to give clerkship admins a way to see and manage just their comments.  I know granular permissions will come later, but if we have 20 clekership pages (so 20 arbitrary url "keys")...it would suck to have to add permissions to every widget because its not a content type to globally permission.

Steve

Hi Steve,
Once we have permissions for comments per content type, we will try to make these work for custom content types as well.
Until then you can use some workaround:
In section Comments, all comments in threads associated to content type “Clerkship” are loaded on Backend URL: “~/Sitefinity/Content/Comments?threadType=<Clerkship>”
So, on the dashboard (which will be customizable in this version) you can place the following links in content blocks restricted per role:
•    Comments for Clerkship - visible to  user role “Clerkship”, links to “~/Sitefinity/Content/Comments?threadType=<Clerkship>”
•    Comments for Peds - visible to  user role “Peds”, links to “~/Sitefinity/Content/Comments?threadType=< Peds>”
•    Comments for Surgery - visible to  user role “Surgery”, links to “~/Sitefinity/Content/Comments?threadType=< Surgery >”
Thus user with each role will see only links to Comments relevant.
You can hide Comments from the Menu.
Of course, this is not a real protection but can work for users who are not so advanced as to know how to manipulate URLs:) This is a temporary solution until we are done with the permissions.
Let me know if you have more questions,
Kalina