# Pondering comments and logins

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [July 8, 2006, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622 "2006-07-08T19:29:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2006, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/1 "2006-07-08T19:29:45Z")

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I’ve been playing with Radiant for a couple of days – actually, I  
stared cross-eyed at it for a day and a half, and finally understood it  
well enough to do things with it for half a day:-)

I want to start off by using it as a blog, but I need to add the ability  
for readers to add comments. It was easy enough to display comments  
added as children of a main page by adding a few lines to the layout in  
the “\<r:if\_content part=“extended”\>” section:

\<r:children:each\>

-- Posted by on

It looks fairly easy to add an “Accepts Comments” behavior following the  
general design of Oliver B.'s Search behavior. This would provide  
an “Add Comment” button and associated text field, maybe using AJAX. It  
looks like pages aren’t meant to be created except by a logged-in user,  
and this might be a problem. I’d like to be able to allow someone to  
post a comment without making them a full-fledged user. I don’t  
understand the permissions system very well yet, though.

But that brings me to my main point. The login system seems thoroughly  
embedded in the structure of the application. However, I’d really prefer  
to use OpenID [http://openid.net](http://openid.net) or my own OpenProfile extension of  
OpenID [http://openprofile.net](http://openprofile.net) in place of some or all of it. (I think  
OpenID provides about as much authentication as you can get in a web  
app, and it’s nice for the users.)

So I thought I’d ask more experienced people about these issues here  
before I started slicing and dicing. Is there a better approach to  
allowing comments to be posted? Is there a non-violent way to swapping  
out the login/authentication system?

–Al Evans

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 6:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/2 "2006-07-09T06:10:01Z")

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Al Evans wrote:

> It looks fairly easy to add an “Accepts Comments” behavior following the  
> general design of Oliver B.'s Search behavior. This would provide  
> an “Add Comment” button and associated text field, maybe using AJAX. It  
> looks like pages aren’t meant to be created except by a logged-in user,  
> and this might be a problem. I’d like to be able to allow someone to  
> post a comment without making them a full-fledged user. I don’t  
> understand the permissions system very well yet, though.

Commenting is on the official roadmap, but I’m not sure what to tell you  
in the meantime. It should be possible to make an “Accepts Comments”  
behavior like you describe. You just need to call the appropriate  
methods on the model objects when the form is posted. Matt McCray’s  
mailer behavior might be a good one to look at  
([http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/ThirdPartyBehaviors](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/ThirdPartyBehaviors)).

> But that brings me to my main point. The login system seems thoroughly  
> embedded in the structure of the application. However, I’d really prefer  
> to use OpenID [http://openid.net](http://openid.net) or my own OpenProfile extension of  
> OpenID [http://openprofile.net](http://openprofile.net) in place of some or all of it. (I think  
> OpenID provides about as much authentication as you can get in a web  
> app, and it’s nice for the users.)

I’m not very familiar with openid, but I think you could write a plugin  
fairly easily. Just require the WelcomeController and override the  
login and logout methods to do what you need.

–  
John L.  
[http://radiantcms.org](http://radiantcms.org)

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 10:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/3 "2006-07-09T10:13:57Z")

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/Commenting is on the official roadmap/

Is Radiant going to become a blogger CMS like all the rest of them?

Josh

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/4 "2006-07-09T14:45:48Z")

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Josh F. wrote:

> /Commenting is on the official roadmap/
> 
> Is Radiant going to become a blogger CMS like all the rest of them?
> 
> Josh

Adding a capability doesn’t eliminate any existing capabilities…

–Al Evans

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/5 "2006-07-09T18:04:26Z")

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I’d think it’s more like comments:ok, integrated flickr/ma.gnolia/cork’d  
support = blogging app. Now as plugins, sure, but…

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 7:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/6 "2006-07-09T19:12:45Z")

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Josh F. wrote:

> /Commenting is on the official roadmap/
> 
> Is Radiant going to become a blogger CMS like all the rest of them?

Somewhat. It will be more of a CMS that supports blogging (unlike  
Textpattern which is a blogging system that seems like a CMS).

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

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**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 8:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/7 "2006-07-09T20:26:44Z")

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I don’t suppose we could move the admin pages to have parts like pages  
on normal sites do that we could just turn off if we didn’t need it? My  
issue is not that commenting is a bad thing to have, heck I need  
commenting for my blog, it’s that I don’t like adding things to the  
admin interface that are useless and confusing to people who aren’t  
using it… I mean it would be nice to have a settings page with a list  
of ‘base settings’ and ‘extensions’ where I could turn on and off form  
fields and stuff that were part of those extensions that I did not use.

I guess I could write it.

Josh

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/8 "2006-07-09T20:47:56Z")

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Josh F. wrote:

> I don’t suppose we could move the admin pages to have parts like pages  
> on normal sites do that we could just turn off if we didn’t need it? My  
> issue is not that commenting is a bad thing to have, heck I need  
> commenting for my blog, it’s that I don’t like adding things to the  
> admin interface that are useless and confusing to people who aren’t  
> using it…

I’m sensitive to this issue as well. If possible I’d like there to be  
enough hooks in the admin system that commenting could be implemented as  
a plugin.

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

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2006, 9:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/9 "2006-07-10T09:18:27Z")

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++ on openid (or openprofile, for that matter.)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@al-evans](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/al-evans)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 4:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pondering-comments-and-logins/97622/10 "2006-07-09T16:34:37Z")

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I agree. In addition, commenting will be very useful, for example, for  
documentation sites where users could add comments to existing manual  
pages or other social network type sites, like comments on a certain  
product, itinerary, etc. --M