I used to use CityDesk to manage my blog and I wrote code to handle comments for each article. So I thought I’d share the code to demonstrate how I did it.

The template I’ve created for this site is based upon the basic one I describe here, so familiarise yourself with that article first. And don’t be a Smart Alec and download the template and preview expecting it to work. It won’t! You just need to spent a couple of minutes reading this article, if you please…

Prerequisites

If you want to use my comments system on your own CityDesk site then you’ll need to have a couple of things. You’ll need to be able to run PHP scripts (check with your ISP) and also have the mySQL database installed on your server (again, check with your ISP). One thing to note is that if you want to test it you’ll need these installed on your own PC. You’ll no longer be able to use the preview option in CityDesk to see your site (as my scripts are .php and need to be run on a web server). I’m not going to explain how to install PHP and mySQL on a windows PC, but you should check out their websites (I’ve linked to them above) and follow their instructions. I found it to be pretty straightforward on my copy of Windows XP Professional though for what’s it’s worth.

The First Step

The first thing to do is download my CityDesk template:

• weblogwithcomments.zip (57.6KB)

Next, open it up and check out the variables (click View > Variables). You need to ask your ISP for the following values, although I’ve given a hint to what they probably are:

• UserName - this is the mySQL user name that has access to the database.
• DatabaseName - the name of the actual database.
• Password - the mySQL user’s password.
• HostName - normally ‘localhost’ but your ISP may have other ideas.

Now that you’ve got that sorted you’ll need to set up a publish location - I’m afraid that the site won’t work if you hit the ‘Preview’ button as I mentioned above. Check out the CityDesk documentation to figure out how to do that (it explains it better than I ever could).

Create The Database Tables

Now you need to create the tables in your mySQL database. If your site has uploaded correctly and you uploaded to ‘www.mysite.com’, then browse to ‘www.mysite.com/createtables.php’. If all goes well and you’ve correctly configured the three variables I mentioned above, then all you should see is the message ‘Done!’. If there is a failure message or nothing at all, then I’d advise you to talk to your ISP. If they’re no help, then drop me a line.

All the script does is create the tables that the comments system uses. One, ‘ArticleIndex’ maintains how many comments each article has and the other, ‘ArticleComments’ holds the actual comments. Your mySQL admin tool should let you browse the fields, although they’re not very interesting.

Once the tables have been created, just browse to ‘www.mysite.com’ (well, whatever your site is) and the site should work perfectly. If it doesn’t for any reason then drop me a line, because it works perfectly when I publish it to any location!

Using The Comments

Note that at the bottom of each article is the comments link and the count of how many comments there are in brackets, which should all be zero at first (unless it’s all gone wrong). You can now post comments in just the same way you can on most blogs.

Epilogue

If you’re not the techy type then you’ll notice that there’s some fairly complex stuff going on and you’ll probably not want to get too involved with how it all works. But don’t be scared! If you are the techy type and you notice any bugs or have any suggestions then don’t keep them to yourself.

Feel free to use the template as you see fit and if you use my comment code then all I ask is you let me know where your site is so I can take a look. Enjoy!