It was nearly a month ago for the first official release of the Disqus Module for DotNetNuke. The initial releases focuses on just getting some minimal functionality out there to gauge interest in the module, and to attempt to get a deeper knowledge of Disqus itself before the deeper levels of integration were attempted. Well, that time has come… Welcome deeper integration!
I am hoping that DotNetNuke will soon be published on the official Disqus list of compatible platforms (that ball is already rolling). In the meantime, I am having quite a bit of fun playing with their comment engine. It’s really quite robust in terms of the amount and type of features it has.
The fun part does exclude the code base though… This is my only extension that I am working on that sports a 100% C# core. Bleh! I want to give C# its due tire-kicking. While I can translate, read, and write C# just fine, I’ve never written and managed a project from the ground up on C#. I am not opposed to the language, but I do feel a lot more comfortable writing code using my good ol’ friend, VB.
Enough of the mumbo-jumbo… What’s new?
New Features
I was able to implement all of the features that I had road-mapped, except for one. There isn’t a comment export utility in this release. I fully intended to write one, but the scope of it really validates its own release. It’s nothing short of complicated when being done outside of the module that it’s pulling data from. I think I will simply build another project to perform that function.
I was able to create four more Disqus views for your enjoyment. You can now not only display the comment engine to read and contribute comments, but now you can also use the following Disqus widgets:
- Recent Comments – Display all of the recent comments from across your site.
- Popular Threads – Display a listing of the most popular threads from across your site.
- Top Commenters – Give credit and show those who are participating the most on your site using this view.
- Combination – This is a view that combines the views above into a single tabular view.
All of the new views above come with customizable features that you can manage right in the module itself.
Another notable feature includes the ability to create and specify a “cross domain receiver file” for Disqus to use to make your implementation more usable. It reduces the number of times that the page will need to be reloaded. This is done by creating a blank HTML file in your portals directory. All you have to do is copy the URL from your Disqus Module settings, and paste it into the site settings in your Disqus account.
Finally, if you run your website in debug mode, the JavaScript snippets this module generates will be emitted using logical line breaks.
That’s all for this release… Now go and download the Disqus Module for DotNetNuke today!
This blog entry is cross-posted from my personal blog site.