# Comments and Attachments

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/comments-and-attachments/97795>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [July 10, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/comments-and-attachments/97795 "2006-07-10T17:02:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sfwalter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@sfwalter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sfwalter)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/comments-and-attachments/97795/1 "2006-07-10T17:02:56Z")

</div>

I don’t mean to beat attachments and comments with a dead horse. These  
are two features that I need (and most others from the sounds of it).  
There really hasn’t been a consensus on how they should be done. So I  
thought I would re-open the issue to see if we can come to a consensus.  
Please critique my designs:

Attachments: First of all do we need attachments? What if we had  
asset tab as a top navigation item in the admin console? Basically the  
“Asset Manager” would be a tree hierarchy of all the assets for the  
website. The assets would be stored on the file system with some  
metadata stored in the database. Then radiant tags would be used to  
either display links to the assets or to include the assets inline.  
With this approach we may not need to actually associate attachments  
with pages. Once an asset has been uploaded, it would simply require a  
radiant tag in a page part to display the asset.

Maybe people would like attachments for pages. One reason I can think  
of is for work flow processes. If someone is creating a page in which  
they want to add an image, instead of going to the assets tab it would  
be nice to add the image during the page creation process. If this is  
the case then we could have a “specialized” page part that allows the  
user to add attachments. In reality the attachments would really do the  
same thing as if the user uploaded the asset via the assets tab.

Comments: Comments fall into three areas:

1. Infrastructure–The storage of comments. Probably a table(s) right  
off the pages table.

2. Presentation–Radiant tags to draw the comment form as well as  
display comments. I would not make it a behavior, which in my opinion  
should be for “one-off” situations. Since most pages will have comments  
in a blog you wouldn’t want every page to have a “comments” behavior.  
Instead there can be core Radiant tags to render comments.

3. Admin–Not needed in the first cut of comments. Probably a plugin  
to the admin console to admin comments.

John–Since you are the father of the Radiant CMS. Please let us know  
how you have envisioned these components. I am very happy to work on  
either comments or attachments, but I don’t want to go down a path and  
later find out that another approach will be the official version.

I’m eagerly awaiting everyones input

cheers,

scott

* * *

What’s an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lor more that it’s ever  
done in a PC.

My Digital Life - [http://scottwalter.com/blog](http://scottwalter.com/blog)  
Pro:Blog - [http://scottwalter.com/problog](http://scottwalter.com/problog)  
Snippets - [http://snippets.scottwalter.com](http://snippets.scottwalter.com)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sfwalter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@sfwalter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sfwalter)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2006, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/comments-and-attachments/97795/2 "2006-07-10T20:17:02Z")

</div>

Scott W. wrote:

> Attachments: First of all do we need attachments? What if we had asset tab as a top navigation item in the admin console? Basically the “Asset Manager” would be a tree hierarchy of all the assets for the website. The assets would be stored on the file system with some metadata stored in the database. Then radiant tags would be used to either display links to the assets or to include the assets inline. With this approach we may not need to actually associate attachments with pages. Once an asset has been uploaded, it would simply require a radiant tag in a page part to display the asset.

I’m pretty keen on the idea of attachments instead of regular asset  
management. Matt McCray and Xavier had agreed to work on this, but I’m  
not sure what the status is. I’d suggest that your team up with them,  
or, if you prefer, work on an asset manager plugin. There seems to be a  
great desire for something of this nature and perhaps it could be a stop  
gap measure until attachments are fully implemented.

> Maybe people would like attachments for pages. One reason I can think of is for work flow processes. If someone is creating a page in which they want to add an image, instead of going to the assets tab it would be nice to add the image during the page creation process.

Workflow is a big part of the reason I like attachments.

> Comments: Comments fall into three areas:
> 
> 1. Infrastructure–The storage of comments. Probably a table(s) right off the pages table.

Right. They should be a full fledge model object.

> 1. Presentation–Radiant tags to draw the comment form as well as display comments. I would not make it a behavior, which in my opinion should be for “one-off” situations. Since most pages will have comments in a blog you wouldn’t want every page to have a “comments” behavior. Instead there can be core Radiant tags to render comments.

Agreed.

> 1. Admin–Not needed in the first cut of comments. Probably a plugin to the admin console to admin comments.

Good idea. Though I suspect we will need some SPAM controls fairly  
quickly.

Bruce W. ([http://codefluency.com](http://codefluency.com)) wanted to work on the comments  
system as well. I have high hopes that it can be implemented as a  
plugin. Perhaps you could collaborate with him?

–  
John L.  
[http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com)
