ikiwiki/doc/plugins/comments.mdwn

[[!template id=plugin name=comments author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
[[!tag type/useful]]

This plugin adds "blog-style" comments. Unlike the wiki-style freeform 
Discussion pages, these comments are posted by a simple form, cannot later
be edited, and rss/atom feeds are provided of each page's comments.

When using this plugin, you should also enable [[htmlscrubber]] and either
[[htmltidy]] or [[htmlbalance]]. Directives are filtered out by default, to
avoid commenters slowing down the wiki by causing time-consuming
processing. As long as the recommended plugins are enabled, comment
authorship should hopefully be unforgeable by CGI users.

The intention is that on a non-wiki site (like a blog) you can lock all
pages for admin-only access, then allow otherwise unprivileged (or perhaps
even anonymous) users to comment on posts. See the documentation of the
[[opendiscussion]], [[lockedit]] and [[anonok]] pages for details on locking
down a wiki so readers can only post comments.

Individual comments are stored as internal-use pages named something like
`page/comment_1`, `page/comment_2`, etc. These pages internally use a
[[comment_directive|ikiwiki/directive/comment]].

There are some global options for the setup file:

* `comments_pagespec`: [[ikiwiki/PageSpec]] of pages where comments are
  allowed. The default is not to allow comments on any pages. To allow
  comments to all posts to a blog, you could use
  `blog/posts/* and !*/Discussion`.
* `comments_closed_pagespec`: [[ikiwiki/PageSpec]] of pages where
  posting of new comments is closed, but any existing comments will still
  be displayed. Often you will list a set of individual pages here.
  For example: `blog/controversial or blog/flamewar`
* `comments_pagename`: if this is e.g. `comment_` (the default), then
  comment pages will be named something like `page/comment_12`
* `comments_allowdirectives`: if true (default false), comments may
  contain IkiWiki [[directives|ikiwiki/directive]]
* `comments_commit`: if true (default true), comments will be committed to
  the version control system
* `comments_allowauthor`: if true (default false), anonymous commenters may
  specify a name for themselves, and the \[[!meta author]] and
  \[[!meta authorurl]] directives will not be overridden by the comments
  plugin

## comment moderation

If you enable the [[blogspam]] plugin, comments that appear spammy will be
held for moderation. (Or with the [[moderatedcomments]] plugin, all
comments will be held.) Wiki admins can access the comment moderation queue
via a button on their Preferences page.

The comments are stored in `.ikiwiki/comments_pending/`, and can be
deleted, or moved into the wiki's srcdir to be posted.