Comment Framework
Posted in Django
on April 1st, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
When I was considering how to integrate the Django comments framework into my site, I swear to God that either a lot of the docs that are there now weren't there then, or I must have missed a lot of stuff. Either way, it seems like the documentation that was there was very scanty and I had to dig into the source code a lot to figure out how the framework worked. I missed all the useful stuff that's in the docs now for customization.
This had some important effects on the way comments are implemented on my site.
For one thing, I didn't want to deal with comments spam, and while this site was designed somewhat with extensibility in mind, the model I followed was for an individual or small group to use the site to post feature-rich one-off pages organized by topic, an arbitrary number of blogs, and an arbitrary number of photo galleries. I intended for comments to potentially attach to all three basic types of content. So basically, I didn't want to get into too much in the way of having to moderate comments, not expecting to a) have many comments or b) have much time/manpower to moderate them anyway. My guestbook is basically just implemented as a "Page" with comments enabled.
So I kind of circumvented parts of how the system is supposed to be used. For one thing, I eliminated the ability to post an anonymous comment. To post a comment you have to be logged in. So there is one kind of comment form. I am using Recaptcha to protect my user registration page, and I hoped that combined with the anti-spam features already built into the comment form, the scope for comment spam would be virtually eliminated.
For another thing, the moderation system basically consists of registered users having the ability to "flag" a comment, which sends an email to the site administrators asking them to review the comment. Admins can "delete" a comment, which flags it as removed and causes it to not appear in the list of comments.
I'm wondering if I should give the ability to post anonymous comments, but extend the comment form with Recaptcha. I'm a little bit concerned that requiring login to leave comments is making it that much less likely that anyone will leave comments on my already very low traffic web site. 
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