Nerve Endings Firing Away

UPDATE: Problem fixed! Tinkering around even with PHP code works best. But remember to take backups of any template file you are trying to change. You can preview your comment as you type and subscribe to comments as well.

This theme change will stay for a while. I’ve grown to like it and will avoid yet another change although there are quite a few beautiful templates out there that are too good to resist. However one aspect of this design irks me. It is the comments template. It just isn’t that versatile and doesn’t do things that WP comments do. When I first installed it, it wouldn’t let any comments through and promptly dump even the valid ones in the spam folder. I realized that it wasn’t compatible with Spam Karma. I pointed this out to Kaushal, the theme creator and he has promised to fix it. But I guess he is a busy guy and hasn’t done so yet. Anyway, it isn’t fair for me to expect that of him considering the rest of the template rocks and is available for free.

However, the comments template needs fixing and I can tinker with CSS but can’t do major changes with PHP code. I would appreciate it if anyone steps up to fix it. I’m throwing in a $5 Amazon gift card for anyone who does. I am looking for the following features and they are marked by importance:

• Allow commenters to be logged in when they return and not ask to re-enter their information each time they visit (***)
• Be compatible with the ‘Subscribe to Comments’ plugin (***)
• Be compatible with the ‘Live Comment Preview’ plugin (**)
• Have the option of quick-tagging (bold-ing, italicizing, block quoting) your comments (currently does; ***)
• Be compatible with ‘Auto-Close Comments’ plugin (currently is; ***)
• Display their Gravatar/MyBlogLog avatar (*)
• Be compatible with Spam Karma (*; Akismet is doing a fine job for now so not really needed)
• Make comments AJAX-fied (don’t know if this is possible in a non-K2 theme; *)

*** – must-have ** – would love it * – preferred.

If there is an easier solution like replacing the comment template file with that of another theme and modifying the current template is redundant, let me know. Else drop me a line and I’ll send you the current comments template. It’ll save me $5.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, themes, comments, editing, subscribe to comments, PHP