To Sara, from Gretchen (via Michael‽)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/04/13 03:00 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/04/13/575529.aspx

(If there was ever a use for the INTERROBANG, this post would likely be it.... I wish it would work in the title of the post!)

I am not sure where the term 'blog pimping' came from, but I guess it is time that I used it, since everyone else seems to be....

The process first started for me when I got some help in making my blog look more like I wanted it to from Josh Ledgard, as I described here.

In other (sad) news, the better half of blogging power couple #2 (Gretchen) is leaving Microsoft, and her last day is Friday. :-(

But the reason I am posting right now is that Sara Ford (who as an aside now reports to Josh) asked Gretchen

How did you get this on your blog?  CSS override?  New Community Server feature?

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Of course what was funny was that Sazra asked the question about an hour after the change went live on JobsBlog!

I actually started doing it because of the problems I was having with anonymous comments just this last February, some of which have been resolved by some of which have not yet. Anyway, this last Friday Gretchen noticed and asked me how I did it.... so I sent her the code and a few days later she went live with it (check any recent post on JobsBlog to see what she put right above where you enter comments!).

I'll have to ask Gretchen how she gets people noticing the bottom of her posts so much more quickly than they notice mine!

So Gretchen answered Sara's question thusly:

It's an addition of some code in the "news" section. Michael ... I sense a blog hacking post in your future. ;-)

You can think of this post as a present for Sara, from Gretchen. It never would have occurred to me to write this up if she hadn't had this premonition. Or does it not count as a premonition if the person being psychic suggests it? :-)

Anyway, for the how it works piece, the actual pimping in this post....

Two parts to the script I added:

• One piece for posts where comments are closed to replace the "New comments to this post are disabled" text that Community Server generically adds, and
• One to handle the posts that are still taking comments (where Community Server adds the generic "What do you think?" text in an H3).

The script:

<script language=javascript type="text/javascript"><!--
window.onload = function() {
  // Enumerate headers after document is loaded.
  var i, h3s = document.body.getElementsByTagName("h3");
  for (i = 0; i < h3s.length; i++) {
    var elem = h3s.item(i);
    if (elem.innerHTML == "What do you think?") {
        elem.innerHTML = "<big>So what do you think about it?</big><br><br><small><small>A few words about comments:<ul><li>No HTML tags are currently supported;</li><li>Comments can only be made up to 90 days after the post originally went online.</li></ul></small></small>";
    }

  // Enumerate italics after document is loaded.
  var k, EMs = document.body.getElementsByTagName("em");
  for (k = 0; k < EMs.length; k++) {
    var words = EMs.item(k);
    if (words.innerText == "New Comments to this post are disabled") {
      words.innerHTML = "Comments are closed after 90 days. Frustrating? Perhaps. But you could maybe <a href="/michkap/articles/512061.asp">Suggest a Topic</a>, instead?"
}

And that's it -- you can put as much or as little text as you like, or even HTML if you want to....

Enjoy!

This post brought to you by "‽" (U+203d, a.k.a. INTERROBANG)

# saraford on 13 Apr 2006 3:49 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Apr 2006 9:41 AM:

# A.C. on 13 Apr 2006 9:48 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Apr 2006 10:19 AM:

# Dennis E. Hamilton on 13 Apr 2006 2:18 PM:

# Maurits on 13 Apr 2006 9:48 PM:

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