Blog Comments and Adding a Forum to your website question

[goldtoe360]

Hi,

I am working on a website for blogging and wanted to know what is the best way to add/regulate the comment section.

1) Should I have people register before commenting in order to ward off spammers?

2) How do sites normally log member profiles/info/comments? Do sites create a MySql table for each user? Or is it a single table listing each individual user information?

3) What is the best way to filter out profanity in comments as well as user names?

Also, I wanted to implement a discussion forum, but not sure how to go about moderating it (for profanity, abuse, spammers,...etc).


Any tips on how to go about implementing all this?

I am using u2-web for hosting.

[jamestl2]

1) No, not when you're just starting out. Most won't even bother to register to post just one comment.

2) You'd have to ask a database expert about that

3) I'd say you have a couple of options (I'm assuming you're using wordpress here, so):

A) Have your settings to "Moderate First time commenters"
OR
B) Create a stoplist containing all the words you want filtered out and those will have Premoderated comments.

All of those settings are configured in:
Dashboard > Options > Discussion

Concerning Forums, it's really personal preference. And it depends on what forum software you're using.

[Brutha]

In general you don't have to hardcode a comment system yourself. You should use wordpress or another content management system that does the work for you.

These days registering doesn't protect you from spammers. Spammers use software that does the registering stuff for them.

[ellie]

wordpress is good, you can get a lot of spamming ad ons, such as typing in a alphabetical and numerical text before you can post, plus you can moderate prior to message being posted.

[goldtoe360]

I already signed up for web hosting so it looks like I cant use wordpress. Seems like I'm gonna have to hardcode it.

[ellie]

wordpress.org is for when you want to use your own domain and host.

There's a huge demand for customised wordpress themes, you can get heaps of design templates online.

No need to handcode.

[yogesh sarkar]

Originally Posted by goldtoe360

I already signed up for web hosting so it looks like I cant use wordpress. Seems like I'm gonna have to hardcode it.

As long as your host allows php and mysql, you can use wordpress. Just download it from WordPress › Blog Tool and Weblog Platform. Wordpress has a pretty good spam catching tool called Akismet, does the job of stopping almost all the spam.

[goldtoe360]

Thanks for the information. I'll check it out!