Additional input field for URL in comment form

[Michael van Laar]

I’d like to have an input field for the commenter’s web address in my comment forms. Is there a way to extend the form and the comments output without hacking the module?

[ryan]

Not at present, but I do plan to add a 'website' field in 2.3, which is coming very soon.

[Michael van Laar]

Great! Then I will wait fro v2.3, since this is not a key feature for my blog ;-)

[Michael van Laar]

By the way, being able to extend the comment form would be nice anyway. A typical use case would be an additional checkbox which a commenter can check to subscribe for a newsletter. You would then “only” have to hook into comment processing to pass this information (in combination with his e-mail address) through to an e-mail marketing service provider’s API.

But this is just an idea.

[ryan]

You can currently do this by modifying or extending the CommentForm class. Copy /wire/modules/Fieldtype/FieldtypeComments/CommentForm.php to your own location, like in /site/templates/includes/ or something like that. Then rename the class to be something else, like "CommentFormMichael" or whatever you'd like it to be named. Modify the class to suit your needs. Then when you output your comments, use your class rather than the one that comes with PW:

echo $page->comments->render();
require("./includes/CommentFormMichael.php"); 
$form = new CommentFormMichael($page, $page->comments); 
echo $form->render();

This same approach can be taken with the comments list rendering too, except that you would copy or extend the CommentList class rather than the CommentForm class.

[Michael van Laar]

Thanks Ryan! I’ll definitely try this once I have my e-mail newsletter up and running.