Comments section, coming soon!

[Rob Williams]

Hi all:

There will be a little bit of site downtime this coming Saturday as we'll be changing the site's backend (CMS). When we come back, the site will feature a brand-new, long-awaited, highly-necessary and long-overdue feature: comments.

At first glance, that addition may seem minor, but it results in a rather major change: content discussion will no longer take place on the forums, but instead inside of the article itself.

We mulled over some ideas of how we could tie the forums to our content even with a comments section, but in the end, every idea seemed to be nonsensical in the end. Fragmented discussion does more harm than good.

As someone who loves our forums, I hate the fact that content will no longer be solely discussed here, but for the health of the site and its future, having the discussion inside of the article itself is important. Plus, it does avail us some other nice perks:

• You can log in via Disqus, Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

• You can "like" comments, if that's your thing.

• You can see popular discussions and site content underneath all the comments, along with outbound links (which benefit the site when clicked).

• If you use Disqus elsewhere, you can track your replies and such from inside any comments box.

It's important to note that this move doesn't mean the forums risk being shuttered, as that'll never happen as long as I'm alive. The only difference is that our site content won't be discussed here; instead, the forums will be for everything else. Of course, if we post content you like, you are more than welcome to create a thread. It's just not an official thing we'll be doing in a dedicated sub-forum anymore.

Any questions, thoughts, rants and suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks!

[Doomsday]

Oh dude, freakin' Awesome! Finally! Loooooooooooooooong overdue that is yes yes!

[DarkStarr]

>.> NOOOO!!! Its too much CHANGE! LEAVE TECHGAGE ALONE! Seriously though, I though it was fine how it is.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Doomsday

Oh dude, freakin' Awesome! Finally! Loooooooooooooooong overdue that is yes yes!

Glad to hear it man, and yes, overdue is an understatement.

Originally Posted by DarkStarr

>.> NOOOO!!! Its too much CHANGE! LEAVE TECHGAGE ALONE! Seriously though, I though it was fine how it is.

Well, I agree. But this boils down to doing what's best for the site, not personal interest. I'm like a stubborn old man... we're still one of the few sites that don't even have a Facebook group (that'll come at some point), and it's because I tend to just hate Facebook (even though I use it).

A comments section like this is something that's just expected nowadays. It offers a new level of convenience that will encourage those who never come to the forums to comment, to comment. They can log in with an account they assuredly already have, for the sake of not having to sign up for another.

Our forum implementation has just never been that great. Even though we state otherwise, a lot of people are going to assume that an account will be required to comment. Then there's the fact that our mention of a forum thread isn't seen until the end of the last page.. that gives us one op to tell people that it's here, and a lot of people overlook it. There's also the fact that people just don't want to go to another page to comment, and I don't blame them. Having the comments on the same page is just easier all-around. This is especially true with the increase of mobile readers on the site (8% per month).

[Tharic-Nar]

IT'S (A)LIVE!!!

[Rob Williams]

And nothing appears broken so far. I am so excited that I need a shower, then I'll pour over things afterwards.

[DarkStarr]

Its broken

Error establishing a database connection

Clicking a comment tries to send you to beta.techgage.com which gives that error

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by DarkStarr

Its broken

Clicking a comment tries to send you to beta.techgage.com which gives that error

Looking into it. I just clued into the beta tag.

DarkStarr: Are you able to PM me a screenshot of this? I am looking up and down and can't find a beta reference on our live site. I need to go log in and grep the entire server to find it.

[DarkStarr]

Seems to be fixed, I think it may have been just the old comments, even though they showed up on the live articles. When you clicked the comments they sent it to the beta site. Seems fine now though (for all the new comments, the old ones are gone).

[Rob Williams]

Great, thanks a lot man. I searched all over the place and couldn't find anything out of place. I'd say it's your browser screwing up with you, but the fact that you saw a beta tag proves otherwise. I really have no idea what happened there.

Hope it keeps up, and if anything at all seems out of place, please don't hesitate to speak up. Most of the problems people tell me about I can't even see for whatever reason, so it helps a lot.

[Rob Williams]

So, the comments are alive and well. But I realized something, a lot of people on our forums who used to comment on our news postings likely saw the posts here first, rather than on the site itself. I am trying to figure out a solution to have a dedicated forum that posts a link to each new piece of news or content for those who want it, but it's proven to be a bit of a pain so far (vBulletin is refusing our RSS XML that would have it work fine).

I'll figure out a solution sooner than later, though. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd be interested in hearing them.

[Rob Williams]

Solved... the top-most forum will now display our content as it trickles out.