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General Comments

11 general comments

  1. I think this works great….

  2. After installing commentpress and following the directions, I’m getting a “fatal error” in the coding. Any advice on this?

  3. The theme is broken with WordPress 3.0. I did adapt it so that it works to some extent (see the site URL I’ve given), but I couldn’t get the paragraph-level commenting to work and so I removed it altogether from the plugin & theme. I left “General Comments” enabled and renamed it “Comments on the Book.” Let me know if you want the code and I’ll be happy to give it to you — I like the “bookishness” of the CommentPress theme enough to forego the paragraph-level commenting.

  4. Any outside chance that you guys could do a Blogger version?

    1. I don’t see how that would be achievable. Blogger is a closed system.

  5. How so? You can edit all the code without paying, unlike WordPress.

    1. CommentPress is for self-hosted WordPress installs, not wordpress.com

  6. I’ve been using CommentPress for my site for some time now.  I think it’s a brilliant tool.    I thought I’d give my 2 cents on what could be improved.

    I think the major “problem” is with the layout of the front page.  It’s not very “inviting”, as some of my readers have said.  And I agree.  

    First, there needs to be an easy way to change the colors.  The current ones are too dark. I know I can create a child theme, but that’s not exactly straight-forward with CommentPress.  It’s hard to figure out the style sheets.

    More importantly, I think the general layout needs to change.  I think it would be better if the items on the left-hand side were moved to the Header.  Table of Contents could be a drop-down menu of some sort.  The items under “Special pages would go to the right of the Table of Contents.  It would probably make sense to move “Activity” to the header as well.

    This change would solve two major issues. First, it would provide more reading room for the page.   That would make the page easier to read, and not look so squished.  Also, the items under Special Pages would be much easier to find.   And it would focus attention on the main point – the text and the comments.

    Just something to consider, just my thoughts.   I know making these type of changes would be difficult.  CommentPress is complicated (I’ve been looking through the code! Whoa.)

    1. Many thanks for your thoughtful comments, Steve, you feedback is greatly appreciated.

      I certainly agree that the homepage template needs to be more inviting and/or functional. It has always been assumed that people would do that themselves, though perhaps too much technical knowledge has also been assumed. I will have a think about that, however, and see if I can make some quick improvements.

      As far as child themes go, there is a starter child theme which even I use to customise sites to suit a particular colour scheme. The default grey palette is deliberately muted so that it doesn’t get in the way of designers too much. I am reluctant to go too far down the road of offering back-end configurable color schemes for a number of reasons, but mostly because it would require considerable effort. Time for a crowdfunding campaign, perhaps?

      Regarding the design changes you suggest, I have taken them on board and whilst I’m not promising to implement them, I will bear them in mind when I do get the opportunity to do further updates.

      Thanks again for your feedback.

      1. Thanks for taking to the time to respond.  I’m not sure my suggestions would be helpful in reality, but something to think about anyway.    And yea,  I understand the amount of work.

        I was checking out my site on my new android, and i see that NAVIGATE, CONTENTS, DISCUSS appear in the footer. interesting.  that seems to work well.  i like it. 

        I started to look into making some modifications myself, but quickly found it was a bit over my head.  I was able to install a child theme, and edit the CSS a bit, although i found even that a challenge.  I decide to work on some simpler themes first, do some reading, and return to it when i understand it more.  I’m starting to get a much better idea of how to go about things.

        1. Happy to hear you’re getting the hang of things. CommentPress is not as friendly as it could be for less technical folks. Hang on in there and it will become clearer.

          Glad you like the responsive elements to the design. In fact, you could trigger them at larger screen sizes if you prefer the layout. Try making your desktop browser window smaller and you’ll see the design change to be a bit more like what you’re seeing on your mobile device. I’ll investigate how straightforward it would be to make that an admin option if it appeals.

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