Using comments outside of vanilla.............

waynem80

Hey guys, Does anyone know of a way how i can use a php code snippet to insert comments on a page outside vanilla, and that page will also allow people to comment too... Thanks, wayne

Grahack

You mean like the "lussumo bot" does in the add-on discussions ?
I think that starting a discussion would be easy without the Vanilla framework. But if you want to add comments, you'll have to use the framework (eg: there's a field that counts comments in a discussion, and I guess you want it to be updated too).

waynem80

Ok, that's fine with me, so how could i use the vanilla framework, but get rid of the header and side panel, just so the comments are inserted..??? wayne

waynem80

I do see how the lussumo bot works with the add-ons, so would that be easy to put into a page, that's outside vanilla? FYI, all of my pages use vanilla's people. wayne

Grahack

Ok, I think I understand now. I though 'insert' meant 'create one in the database'. But maybe it is 'display the comments and the form for adding comments'.
I could give a more precise answer if I knew what you have to see around the comments grid, but I guess you can tweak the head and foot templates for them to include you php or html code.
Note that my trick is rather including your 'outside Vanilla' code in Vanilla, but it should have the same results.

waynem80

yes, we're more on the same page now ... Basically my problem is vanilla's layout doesn't work for me everywhere on my site. But if i could use the framework to "Display comments in places and the form for adding comments" and Maybe also Display Topics for certain categories this would be great. There's got to be some type of code snippet i can come up with, i just need some help with a push in the right direction. I'm still new to coding in php, but learning alot Any suggestions on how to go about solving these two problems. Also for the two mentioned above, this will be all that is shown, i wont need the panel to be displayed or header in these circumstances. "I guess i'm just trying to use vanilla, for pages that are outside vanilla as a commenting system too" ;0)

So here's how it should at least be setup. I will want to include a specific Category along with a specific topic within that category only displaying the comments from Category->Topic on a page outside vanilla also allowing one that's logged in to comment

Since these comments will be on my custom pages, i'll probably want to hide the category from the actual "forum" to prevent duplicate content.

I hope this is clearer to what i'm trying to accomplish.

Thanks, Wayne

Grahack

Maybe you could have a look at what happens at the beginnings of the execution of Vanilla (see /comments.php), and just choose what you need for inclusion in your code (!GPL!). I don't have time to investigate deeper for precise answers, sorry. Have fun!

waynem80

Thanks, yeah i don't need a step by step, i'm atleast descent at php. I just need to know what files parts of the vanilla framework i should use for this :). thanks, wayne

waynem80

I've looked at the comments.php and the vanilla commentgrid class. Maybe i should work on just trying to display the comments like the lussumo bot first, how might i go about that? wayne

Grahack

When I talked about the Lussumo bot, I was talking about "comment insertion in a discussion", not "comments grid insertion in an external page" or display stuff. Now that I understood your goal, the bot is not related at all I think.
I just think that inclusion this way it's kind of tricky, I still don't get why you cannot include your code in the header or footer templates...

waynem80

Because i don't want it to apply to every discussion or the whole "theme" in vanilla.. only certain discussions... wayne

waynem80

Ya know it would be absolutely great if i could just display comments from a discussion topic outside vanilla... Wayne

Grahack

Did you try to mimic comments.php ? What did you try ?