CakeBlast

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A few days ago I added a new feature to the comment area of all my pages. I’m  referring to the little buttons above the text area of my comment form.

These little buttons say things like hve btn and when you press it, the words “I have your button on my blog/website. The url to my blog/website is” appear in the textbox. If you are entering a giveaway, all you have to do afterward is paste the url to the webpage where my button can be found, and hit submit. It is like having Texter integrated with my comment form!

It is kind of funny and kind of sad that I spent two weeks trying to do something similar on my own before discovering the simple plug-in I am now using. My original idea was to create a drop-down menu of options that would automatically add text. I spent a several hours between deciding default options, styling, and programming my menu. Then it dawned on me that a button-text utility already existed. It had already been developed as a way for users to add custom smileys to their comments!

Surely, I thought,  if a plug-in exists that creates buttons  to add smileys, then it could be recoded to add blocks of text. After doing a little research, I discovered that this had also already been done!

The plug-in I am using to create the buttons at the top of my comment area is called Comment Quick Tags! The plug-in’s webpage is in Japanese, so the link I’ve included will take you to the download page on the Wordpress website. Comment Quicktags was created to add basic customizable WYSIWYG features to the comment area. I used the simple customization features to create the options I now have available for my users. I am going to give a rundown of the steps to creating these buttons in case anyone wants to follow suit.

First go to Comment Quicktags, and download the plugin. Second,  upload it to your plugins folder and activate it. Next, go to your Settings menu and find Comment Quicktags. When you click it, you will find instructions listed as Tag Options. I deleted all the tags except for “link.”

Editing quicktags is simpler and more straightforward than it looks. Click Add/Edit to create a new tag.  Next, give the tag an ID. You can make this anything you want because it won’t matter unless you decide to style your buttons differently. Next to Display*,  type the shorthand text that you want your visitors to see. Finally, type the block of text you want next to Start Tag!

You can make the Start Tag text as long as you want, although it will all be in one paragraph. For my purposes, this was fine. Leave the text area next to End Tag blank. If you have a handicap accessible site, you will want to add an access key. After you hit the big blue Update Tags button you’re finished! Its easy to go back and edit your tags later to make any changes.

In case you don’t understand access keys, click inside my comment box. If you use Firefox, hold Alt+Shift and then type “s.” In IE, Hold down the Alt key, press the number or letter of the access key, then release both keys and press Enter. My site is not as accessible as I would like, but I added access keys because it was so easy using the plugin.

The Comment Quicktags plug-in actually works better than what I was originally trying to do. The line of buttons I now have, seem more obvious and less intrusive than using a dropdown menu. I also like the simplicity of customization. The buttons can be dragged around to change their order and user roles can be assigned if you only want registered users or admin to see them. The one thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to limit the buttons to only appearing on giveaway posts.

If you download this plug-in and repurpose it to automatically generate plain text in your comment forms, please add my button to your blog/website. If you don’t have room for the button, a text link would be great as well. I didn’t create this plug-in, but I am using it in a way that I’ve never seen anyone else do. If you have any trouble implementing autotext comment buttons, contact me or leave a comment and I will try to help.

Eventually I will figure out how to make the buttons only appear in certain categories, but that is another project for another day. If there are any other features that you would like to see in my comment area, let me know.