yvComment 
- This extension inserts a hidden backlink to the developer.
It has two required parts (i.e., extensions): component + plugin. It also has a lot of optional extensions, including Module, Community Builder plugin, Content Subscription plugin and 35 Language packs, so the resulting solution may be very simple or more complex - it's up to you.
yvComment supports Captcha (secret word) extensions, Smileys, BBCodes, WYSIWYG editor, Community Builder, JNews and many content plugins and tools designed to work with Articles of Joomla! (e.g. GeSHi). yvComment allows users to add Comments to Articles (and optionally Comments to Comments also). Comments may be stored in the same database table used by content (where they are treated as a special type of Article), or in their own table. (Read more on the Homepage).
Replying to the Editor's note above: This extension does NOT have any hidden links. It does have the only visible link of the form: "yvComment v.X.XX", which appears below the list of comments. The link leads to the yvComment's Home page. This behavior is exactly the same as of Joomla!'s core: look at the bottom of the page in built-in Joomla! templates!
BTW that yvComment's Home page hasn't had ANY advertisements in the previous 6 years ;-)
February 2013 v.2.1.0
^ Updated for Joomla! v.2.5. No "strict standards" warnings any more.
+ Added support for the native Joomla! v.2.5 Captcha plugin (ReCaptcha)
yvComments indeed is one of the best Joomla! extentions I've ever used!
One item I noticed though is that when commenters add their email address (or it is required), that email address is unmasked and asking for a truckload of spam. If it is outside the article content ("Below Article Box" in the settings) the mailto: link works but is unmasked for spammers to have fun with.
If it is inside the article content ("Inside Article Box" in the settings) and you have the default joomla email masking turned on (which hopefully you do) the email link doesn't work and you get the page echo-ing part of the script tag.
I have figured out a hack around this for the time being. If you want your commenters email address masked (ad you should) modify com_yvcomments/views/tmpl/default.php on line 240. Replace:
echo '';
With:
echo $link;
You should also take out the closing "a" tag from the echo on line 251
This will display the commenters email above the name, while still masking it from spammers with the default joomla bot.
You can also modify line 2151 of helpers to read $link = $link; if you want to get rid of the "mailto:" part, which just makes it look a bit better.
Pardon the hack-y code, but I'm hoping this is just a quick fix until Yuri puts out the next version.
Thanks for the review, sf_gabe.
The hint you are describing is about the bug of Joomla! core, the "Email Cloak" plugin. See e.g. "Upgrade to 1.5.9 Emailcloak not working" here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=1558499#p1558499
If all developers were this thorough and attentive there would be far fewer failed projects.
The instructions cover virtually every possible scenario a user may encounter. I don't believe I have ever seen anything as complete as this! As I was reading it, I opened up the plugin and simply did the configuration. The plugin configuration screen itself is better than a lot fo the work I;ve seen, including commercial products.
Bravo, Yuri!
Thank you!
Hi, as you may see in the "Your contribution is needed!" section on the Homepage,
yvComment project needs help in this area:
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Quote:
Create content subscription extension for Joomla! (or find existing one...)
There is a need for the option that every user can choose some commented articles where he will be notified if there is a new comment. So the user will be notified only if a favoured article had new comment.
I think, that this should not be "yvComment's feature" and some more general 'Joomla! content subscription extension' should be created (or existing found and adapted...), that would allow user to subscribe to new articles (and updates...) by: Section, Category, relation to specific Article (e.g. "Subscribe to Comments of this article") etc. I don't know about such extension yet.
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My current opinion is that some plugin to Community Builder is needed (to integrate CB with yvComment to allow user's preferences) or maybe next version of Joomla! will include some "suscription API"...
it displays a comment box under articles chosen by you - this can be done by choosing individual articles, sections or categories.
this makes it perfect for me!!
it also allows the comments to show up on the same page which is great because that's exactly what i need.
thank you so much, i can't say enough about this great extension!
I was just looking to add comments to my General/News articles, and to do something like that you only need the component and plugin (not the module). The plugin is where you do all the configuration for the extension, but the options don't do what you'd expect....
I had all my sections within one General category, but when setting the General section and Comment category in the plugin to store all comments, yvcomment considered everything in the General section to be a comment and gave errors. So I had to create a new Comment section just for a Comment category.
Also, the options which determine whether or not comments are allowed on certain articles are phrased as "list of ... articles which may or not may contain comments". Then later on you have an option called "Exclude ... selected above". It would have made so much more sense just to have separate blacklist/whitelist fields.
Overall, this is a very good extension and once you get it configured, it works great. Comments are nicely stored as articles and the interface integrates very well with my site's styling.
Of course, it didn't work for me. Looking at all the feedback I noticed that someone said that they were using Yoothemes and that it didn't work because of that. That got me thinking that it may be a template problem.
So I went ahead and installed it on another website that I have that uses the Joomla stock template and sure enough it work.
I'm really bummed because there's no way that I'm going to change the whole look of my site with a new template just to get this thing to work.
I'm using a BlackBear Pro template if anyone has any ideas for me. I really want to use this but at this point I think I need to cut my losses at 3 hours.
Thanks
My advice is to ask developers of the "BlackBear Pro template" to support yvComment. This means, that they will probably need to create custom CSS for yvComment, compatible with their product.
I was able to get everything working fairly quickly.
I have some trouble enabling comments on articles that are in a blog layout,but if I switch to a list layout then the comments form appears below the article.
The link to the first recommended captcha extension has been removed, but the second recommended extension OSTWigits works.
All in all a very cool extension. It does what I want it to do. Thank you.
Thank you for the tip: I can't fix BigoCaptcha description here in the JED, but I corrected links to it on the yvComment's homepage, so you may find live links to the BigoCaptcha again.
I followed the instructions carefully by spending nearly two hours checking all settings and configurations.
Sadly it behaved poorly for me, perhaps because of the template I am using (YooTheme) or simply there is a bug somewhere - btw I am not a Joomla newbie and had installed other extensions without any trouble in the past.
I admit the instructions was a little too long, however it is probably because of the numerous feature requests from other users, so likely not the developers fault. And as a freebie I did not expect too much. Instead I am now looking at a commercial version with a smoother and easier installation process.
Being licensed (and being free) exactly like Joomla! core is, yvComment has commercial support just the same way. Moreover, the GPL gives you as a Customer much more flexibility in selecting the source of support (comparing to support of commercial products/extensions).
In your case the support may come from a Web designer in general and from developers of the template that you are using (YooTheme) in particular.
Good luck, gavman, and thank you for the review!
Thank you for going through all these installation steps. Of course I agree that single install package for all needed features is more convenient than “integration” of several selected extensions. The problem is that different people need different “single install packages”. Even for “commenting” that seems so simple and that in fact is not simple at all. – This is why yvComment documentation (including history of changes) is so long.
Let me ask you if you want _one_ Captcha for your site (for Comments, for Login form, for some Contact form…) of you prefer different Captchas for different tasks? Or maybe you like to have one set of Smileys for comments and another – for News? … This is exactly why such extensions like Captcha and Smiley are not built into yvComment package: they are for the whole Joomla! site a not for Comments only.
For discussion please press "Support" button.
Only problem I had to solve was that the captcha does not work. I used an captcha-extension (bigocaptcha) and this worked fine together with your comment-extension.
Thanks for the good work!
I have some suggestions on some feature to add to it to make it even greater:
- ratings (multiple parammeter ratings would be even better) when you post comment
- rate this comment for each comment
- Some better way to manage existing comments. Filter comments per status(aproved, pending ...), per user, per category, section. Backend Ajax would be great.
That would be it for now. I'll play with it more.
However my one problem is the way that outputs the code. I have ended up creating a template override to get the code like I want. It outputs with tables (I claim to code without tables, and what would my clients say!), but I was able to make the override without too much trouble. I think this could be an improved section of the program, but I'm sure this isn't a concern for everyone so unless you desire tableless layouts there is little to complain about here.
Thanks for a great extension, and I hope it stays up to date!
Thank you for reminding us about 'table vs. tableless design' decision. There is no single answer, what's better. As you may see even in Joomla! two of three 'core' Joomla! templates use tables for layout.
So maybe the best approach will be to have two template sets: table and tableless.
For now, it's quicker for us to complete 'tableless set', because yvComment has only _two_ different tables.
May you contribute your implementation for the yvComment project?
