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Guest commenting only?
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Hello everyone,
I've through a number of discussions here but didn't quite find the information I was looking for, and was wondering if anyone could perhaps solve this conundrum of mine.
I'm looking to simply allow Guests to leave a comment on discussion pages without having to register first. Not to post new threads or do anything fancy. Comments and that's all.
Is there any code I could manipulate within the Vanilla system to allow for this to happen? I'm honestly not even sure where to begin.
Thank you very much for your time and response, I appreciate it.
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Comments
you could look at anonymouse plugin and try to re-work it. nothing fancy
just re-work it so it works with 2.1. I suspect this would not be easy since no one else has accomplished it. but it would be a start for you, since you are asking.
why don't you just use put up a message with a guestlogin name and a password and allow that role to make comments. unless typing in guestlogin in the user name and password123 in the password box is too much for commenters.
this does seem like something several users have asked for. maybe if enough of you put up a pledge amount some developer with ability to do it, might take it on.
but you would need some specs as well.
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Thanks for the info.
I wish I had the talent to be able to be able to rework a plugin in order to accomplish this. I've made a go before, but it seems to be a bit beyond me.
I was indeed entertaining the thought of a guest log in, and feel your suggestion is a good one. I just wish I could set things up so that a guest could simply arrive at the website and leave a comment without any extra work between arrival and commentary.
Could you elaborate on the pledge idea and the "specs" part when you get a moment?
Thanks, appreciated.
it might incentivize a developer to know exactly what you want and what exactly a user need to do to make an anonymous comment and how it plays in with other things.
if you defined more specifically what you wanted (spam prevention, separation of anonymity by posters etc.)
And how much you would be willing to contribute. e.g. if you said $50 (or whatever amount you wanted) and someone else said x amount of dollars , if enough people said they would pay a certain amount for a plugin and enough people pledged after the specs were made. then someone might choose to develop with the expectation that the people who pledged would honor the pledge and send the donation to the plugin author upon completion, or perhaps before completion.
I was thinking @mtschirs (and possibly others) might be interested in doing it.
he wrote a
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/commentbeforeregister-plugin
this could be enhanced with alot of extra programming or just a new plugin...
if somehow the Session user was assigned a number (some anonymous user id) and some cookies were set then a comment could be made and immediately after comment was made the anonymous user was signed out.
specs meaning -
do you want them to have a certain name like the old anonymouse plugin
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/anonymouse-plugin
worked e.g. "anonymous user joe" or "anonymous user mary" (they woukd need an extra field stored some where if you wanted additional info tied to things. Otherwise the name would just always be anonymous user and either way the userid for anonymous user would always be the same , so all anonymous comments (although posted by different users would be reflected by the same user id.)
But then you need some kind of spam prevention for anonymous comment otherwise someone could program something to post 20,000 anonymous comments to a discussion or discussions. so you would probably want some throttle or a captcha of some kind.
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Thanks for all that very useful information.
I'll check out that plugin and see what sort of solution I can drum up with all the information you've given me here.
Has this changed in 2019? I wanted to use Vanilla but guest posting is a must for my community, and the plugin referenced is outdated, nor I've seen any way to allow it in the config panel.
For role "Unregistered / Not logged in" select "Add > Comment" for the categories they should be able to comment in.
(I have not tested but would expect that is all needed).
It is more complicated than that. That feature is for folks who are already members. Then they would be able to Comment as ... and comment without first logging in.
But if you are using SSO, things could be a lot 'less' tricky. Give stripped-down member role to all guests members and log all of them in automatically into one account. And find a way to log their ip
What's SSO?
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=vanilla+forums+sso
That's interesting. I remember that I was once active in another forum which has deactivated guest commenting and I was really upset. I liked that feature. Not sure how hard it would be to implement it or if I will really try my hands on that, but at least I will think about it...
I guess the main question has only been answered indirectly by now: no, Vanilla doesn't have this feature.
I see, so basically anonymous/guest posting is not a feature in Vanilla forums in 2019, if anyone google is looking for it.
It's very useful for some communities.
Could you use something like Disqus Comments, and add it in as a snippet of code in Pockets? This is how I used to deal with it on another CMS.