commentpress update

Since we launched Holy of Holies last year, we’ve made a lot of progress with the paragraph-level commenting system we’ve been building on top of WordPress. We’ve taken to calling it “Commentpress,” and until we get significant pushback (or a great alternative suggestion), we’re sticking with it. This is a pre-announcement to say that we’re pursuing plans to open it up as a plugin for WordPress in March (middle to end of the month).
The original instantiation was put together very quickly over the course of a week and was the dictionary definition of a hack. Still, we knew we had something that was worthwhile from the feedback we received, and we were excited to figure out the next step for Commentpress. That was almost two months ago. In that time, we’ve launched three other sites in Commentpress (1 2 3). Each new installation has seen additions and refinements to the Commentpress functionality. But we haven’t released it.
Why the delay? It’s not because we are reluctant to let it go. No, it’s just that we feel a responsibility to present a project that is ready for the community to act upon. And that means taking a good crack at it ourselves: we want to have a minimum level of ease of use in the installation, a little documentation, and a code package that looks like something constructed by humans rather than something that crawled out from the primordial ooze. That will take a little time due to all the other projects and launches we’ve got throughout the spring. We’re also spending time trying to figure out how to manage an open-source project. Since we’ve never really done it before, suggestions, case studies, horror stories, and revealing of miracles are welcome.
Thanks for your patience, and we’ll keep you informed.

9 thoughts on “commentpress update”

  2. drspkelly

    I’ve been hoping to contact the Institute about licensing some of your technologies for a new academic project funded by Britain’s equivalent of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It’s excellent that this is going open-source.

  4. Troped

    Wow. That is very exciting. I have really liked the functionality of those sites for some time. The idea of being able to implement the same feature on my hypernovel is very exciting! Hurry up! I suppose I can just watch the IF feed closely but I wish you guys had a sign-up list. 🙂

  8. ben vershbow

    Apologies to all who have been waiting so patiently for CommentPress. Many of you have told us of specific projects you’re dying to start if only you had the plugin… Believe me, we can’t wait to get it out into the world so people can start playing with it (and improving it). We’re sorry this has gotten so delayed.
    Unfortunately, what with Sophie, MediaCommons and the pressing task of raising more funds to keep the Institute going, finishing up CommentPress keeps getting relegated to the back burner. Add to that a more or less lost month of June with many of our number scattered around the world for weddings and long overdue vacations.
    The good news is we have been making progress all along, slowly but surely cleaning up the code, streamlining the interface, and making a simple, clean out-of-the-box design. It looks like we’re nearly there. I can say with 99% confidence that we’ll have this puppy ready by mid-July, probably sometime in the week of the 16th through 20th.
    Thanks again for your patience. We’ll have this for you soon.

  9. mac training

    It sounds cool and I love wordpress, but I really don’t understand what your idea does having looked through the Iraq blogs that you posted. Is this supposed to implement nested comments like the new digg.com comment system?

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