More on Cocomments and our use of them

Ok to answer questions around the coComments implementation, here are some of the issues we had implementing them as promised.

Given that the comments are stored within the coComments user account on coComments servers we have to acquire them remotely. Our solution is javascript based (we have good reason for this, including zero platform dependence), we read the RSS feed for our site/blog from the coComments server. One can't easily do that in javascript because of security constraints in the browser (same domain source restrictions). Thus even though we are using AJAX techniques to get at and display the data, doing so from another domain is tricky. We get around this by using tricks like Mod_Proxy on the server side, providing access to another domain through a sub path of this domain using a server side proxy setting. Although such proxy settings are trivial, not everyone has access to or the skills required to change or set this up making this solution tricky to repeat in many cases.

The solution is easy, coComments could provide a script on their server/s under their domain that could be called upon to achieve the same effect (by pulling the required data into say a JSON memory variable). However if you guys (Mocha ?) do implement this, please, do so in a way that enables bloggers/web site owners to place comments in their site and still have full presentational/programatic control, that means don't embed lots of coComment branding etc.., leave that as our choice, we will pay due respect for being open, we will also add to your cause around comment joint ownership (Although I prefer comment responsibility as a term rather than ownership).

Also in order to set this up, one needs to discover the URL of one's site's RSS comment feed, there is no way of knowing this in advance as this is kind of a hack. What we did was create a comment here first and then quickly switch over to the latest comments by sites view and clicking on the discovered link. This then provide the required ID for our site and hence enabled us to build the correct url to pick up on our site comments feed.

Thus if you could make discovery/setup of a facility such of this more straightforward more users would bloggers may go for it. After all coComments is much more important to us here now than it ever was before.

There are other things that could be added to make the service even better of course are things like; Statistics , Analysis , Comment correlations and even relationship tracking. What about Techmeme like features for us bloggers on our blogs?. Conversation tracking and all sorts of other useful intelligent services for bloggers and site owners. Of course the major win here is the widening of the conversation across the web through more and more sites.

Update when I use the term 'Blogger' or 'Bloggers' I mean peoeple like myself who have blogs and who comment on other blogs and sites, thats quite important I think in all this. One can't just play at home one has to play away also to really be part of the conversations taking place.