Flash and Joomla News by Eyezberg

Joomla Core does not natively include a way for visitors to comment on content items. A few solutions have been developped to fill this gap. The first two components must've been

• Arthur Konzes well known and free AkoComment, and
  
• Phil Taylors commercial ComboMax.

Since AkoComment doesn't seem to be developped anymore, people have started to release versions with a few different enhancements and bugfixes, now featuring for example CAPTCHA, visitor name entering and others:

• AkoComment BK, 
• AkoComment Plus,
  
• AkoComment Tweaked etc ... the beauty of open source!
  

Just recently, some newcomers have shown up:

• Jos Comments and 
• JoomlaComments.

It is nice to see this much requested feature is actively developped by a few different dev's, both as free and commercial extensions, so people now actually have a choice.

Let's take a look at the existing solutions. 

AkoComments

AkoComment is probably the best known and most widely used (and hacked) commenting component for Joomla. It has been around since good old Mambo days, so it's little surprising, considering the lack of support for long months now, that the code is starting to get old. And thus that the community has released so many bugfixed and tweaked versions lately that it's becoming hard to keep track.

I've always used this system, it always worked well, is easy to configure, and the only real drawbacks are the lack of development and the spam-vulnerability (taken care of by some of the hacked versions). What can I say, it's FREE..

Enhanced versions available and added features:

AkoComment BK:

• pagination and numeration of comments.
• possibility to set name for non-registered users
• Fixed time zone issue

AkoComment Tweaked: 

• spam protection by generating code images
• wrong security code won't loose your comments
• view the IP address of users in the backend
• name enabled instead of default "guest" for unregistered users
• enter e-mail & Homepage
• pagination (10 comments per page default, can be set) integrated in akocomment.bot
• if Zero comments are posted we dont show "0 comments"
• removed the annoying Alert Message after every post
• additional languages

AkoCommentPlus:

• main new feature is spam prevention with CAPTCHA, crypto hashkey etc

ComboMax

Phil Taylors ComboMax has some interesting features not found in the others:

• reporting of comments that are 'bad' or offensive
• subscribe to comments: get an email when new comments are posted on an article your commented on
• show/hide commeting
• templated output, so easy to control on what shows where and even what fields are available or displayed
• the "Info Bar" under the article displays the current rating and links to Read More, Read Comments and Write Comment

JoomlaComments

JoomlaComment

Mod Latest Comments 

Mod Most Commented

New suite of Component and Modules, untested so far.

JoomlaComment is a comments plugin with BBCode, smilie and multilanguage support.
It allows visitors to comment on content items within Joomla.
JoomlaComment is free and released under the GNU General Public License.

I have only seen this in use on the developpers site so far and haven't tested myself, so I'd be happy to update this part if anyone can provide more details or a demo link? 

Jom Comment

• Ajax-based. Comments are added on the fly without reloading the whole page. This saves server bandwidth.
• Real-time comment updates. As you type your comment, you will be able to see if some else just post something to the server. You get to read their comment and perhaps edit your comment before submitting.
  
• Template-based. Changing from one look to another is a matter of selecting a new template! You don’t have to hack the code.
• Spam protection. A few spam protection methods will be built in, such as flood control, domain blocking and captcha (security images).
• Compatible with AkoComment. If you already have AkoComment installed, you can just install the 2 mambots to use this comment system.
  
• Misc. feature listing: RSS feeds for comments, BB code support, Admin notifications, fall-back to normal, non-ajax submission if javascript fails or unspported browser detected ...
• Commercial component, but For the time being, the standard version is available for just US$ 8.50

Conclusion:

as you can see, there's a few choices around, both free and commercial. You should test the free ones, demo the commercial ones, compare features and opinions, and then decide which one is the right one for your site.

Don't forget: if a bot comes with the component, publish the bot and check the parameters!

Comments (5) >>

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Guest said:

What did you decide to go with?

May 01, 2006

Guest said:

Don't forget "Annotation" which is also a wonderfull (and free) Comment System: http://www.mgfi.info/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_details/gid,45/

May 02, 2006

eyez said:

I'm currently running the simple "akocomment" BK version, but will surely try the AJAXed Jom Comments, as it should be compatible - I hope Thanks for the link to Annotation, will add that after some testing.

May 02, 2006

John Nordquist said:

I chose annotation over the others. I like the interface, the component install, etc., the only drawback is that I can't seem to get a module going to list latest comments from annotation.. yet..

June 08, 2006 | url

Lindsey said:

Here's a couple of things for your users to keep in mind. As of right now, openComment creates a conflict with the tabs/slides in content items. It creates an open tag and adding a closing one to your footer or anywhere else does not fix the problem. Other than that, it was working rather well, though I couldn't understand why it didn't need security images anymore. akoComment is working great unless you integrate the new version of security images with it. Once you do, the captcha and everything displays but any text entered is considered wrong so it refuses the comment. Nothing so far corrects it and very little support is offered on Walter Cedric's forums (max number of users at one time is currently 12). Very few people also respond on Joomla's forums, so it's difficult to get the support that you need. Same thing happens if you integrate security images with akoBook , though it works fine for the registration, so it wouldn't be a GD Library issue.

November 16, 2006 | url

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