How to enable comments on blog posts

If you want readers to comment on your blog posts, make use of any third-party social commenting service. When you are writing your post, make sure to choose to display the comments by enabling its corresponding option.

Let's take a closer look at using the DISQUS as your commenting service for your blog.

Registering with DISQUS

First of all, you should register with DISQUS. The registration serves two purposes: you create an account with the service (as a moderator) and you register your website where you are going to use the DISQUS comments.

To register with DISQUS, visit http://disqus.com/register/.

For your website where your blog is, you should provide: Site URL, Site Name and Site Shortname.

The Site Name can be anything you like. The Site Shortname must be a unique identifier for your website. If the Site Shortname is in use by other accounts, you'll need to come up with another one.

Make a note of the shortname because you are going to use it when enabling the comments in your blog.

Making note of the site shortname

If you already have a DISQUS account and have registered  your website, then:

1. Log into your DISQUS account.
2. Open the Settings of your website.
3. Copy or make a note of the site shortname under Site Identity.

Once you have the shortname handy, you are ready to enable the comments in your blog.

Enabling the DISQUS comments in your blog 

Your blog uses a specific C1 function to present the list of posts as well as show an individual post on a page.

To enable the comments, you need to specify the shortname in one of the function's parameters:

1. Log into the C1 Console of your website.
2. Launch Page Browser (Tools (top right) / Page Browser).
3. Browse to the page where your blog posts appear.
4. Click Edit on the toolbar to open this page in Visual Editor.

There is a green box of the Composite.Community.Blog.BlogRenderer function on the page.

1. Double-click the function's box to invoke the function's properties.
2. Select the Comments Service Keys parameter.
3. Click Constant for the Parameter Type.
4. Enter the site shortname.
5. Click OK to save the changes
6. Save and publish the page.

Now the comments are enabled in your blog.

Displaying comments on a blog post 

If you don't see the comments under an individual post, your blog post is set not to display comments (default for a newly created blog post). So you have to enable this option on the blog post.

1. Create a new blog post or edit an existing one.
2. On the Settings tab, enable the "Display comments" option.
3. Edit your blog post if necessary.
4. Save and publish it. 
   

Displaying the number of comments for blog posts in the list 

If you want to show how many comments are on each blog post in the list, you should enable the corresponding option on the BlogRenderer function.

1. Double-click the function's box on the page to invoke the function's properties.
2. Select the List options parameter.
3. Click Constant for the Parameter Type.
4. Enable the "Show Comments Count" option.
5. Click OK to save the changes
6. Save and publish the page.

Now next to the title of your blog post in the list a box will appear showing how many comments (and, optionally, reactions) there are on this blog post.

If you don't want the number of reactions - just the number of comments, that's all - disable this option in the Settings of your website at DISQUS.

1. Log into your DISQUS account.
2. Open the Settings of your website.
3. Under Social Platform Integration, uncheck the "Enable Reactions" option.