When I use the “Track Comment” applet (?) to flag a blog post for tracking, it’d be nice if com.ments would automatically note which comments were already visible in my browser, and would then track new comments over and above those initial comments.

Great product, BTW; I use it every day.

Your tracking page and tracking feed are for your own use. But what if you want to share your tracking list with others?

Now you can do that in three different ways. Your public page shows all the conversations you are currently tracking, and there’s also a public Web feed you can share with others. Your account settings page shows where your public page and public Web feed are.

You can also share your tracking list on your blog, Web page or any other place that allows you to use JavaScript. Your settings page includes a short snippet you can paste into any HTML page to show your tracking list.

You asked for e-mail alerts, so I added two types of e-mail alerts. Both provide the same information as the Web feed, but in a slightly different way.

Digest e-mail alerts send you an e-mail with a list of comments in all the conversations you are following. You will receive an e-mail that groups several conversations together, an easy way to be notified. If you can’t check your Web feed often, or want to receive notifications through cell phone or PDA, digest e-mail alerts are a good choice.

Individual e-mail alerts send you e-mail alerts for each individual conversation. You will receive more e-mails than digest. If you use your e-mail client to group (or thread) e-mails, then you can keep track of all comments from the same conversation. This screen shot is GMail grouping two e-mail alerts for the same conversation:

To start receiving e-mail alerts, you need to follow these four steps:

1. First, head over to your your account settings page and click the link to verify your e-mail address.
2. Check your inbox, in a few minutes you will receive an e-mail from co.mments.
3. Click the link in the e-mail to verify your e-mail address. You’re now ready to receive e-mail alerts.
4. Again, head over to your your account settings page, click the “Send Alerts” button and choose whether you want digest or individual e-mail alerts.

For security reasons, you’ll need to verify your e-mail address once, and every time you change your e-mail address.

Afterwards, you can turn e-mail alerts on and off at any time, and you can always switch from digest to individual and back.

Would it be possible to put the “Clear” button AFTER the comments? That way, when reading a lot of new comments, we wouldn’t have to scroll all the way back to the top to click on the Clear button.

This is not specific to co.mments, but a worthwhile plugin for WordPress users.

If you like to turn comments off on old posts, or even just trackbacks, this plugin by Being Mr Kenny will make your life much easier. It has simple and advance settings for managing comments on new and old posts.

Advanced Settings

This section gives you more control over discussion options. You can choose whether you want to open/close comments or pings, or both. You can also choose whether you want to change the default setting for new posts.

In the “Which posts?” section, you can choose which groups of posts you want to affect. The first two are for new posts and existing posts respectively. The third option allows you to open/close discussion on posts made before or after a specific date. The fourth option allows you to, for example, open discussion on the last five posts, or on posts made in the last month, or the last 2 years. It then closes discussion on the remaining posts.

Via Blogging Pro.

Every time I add a new feature to co.mments, I’m piling code on top of existing code. At some point it starts looking like the messy living room of a bachelor pad, dishes, books, CDs, everywhere. You can’t move around in the mess. So it was time for some spring cleaning.

I reorganized a lot of code, dusted up some old stuff. Less mess so I can easily add new features.

The best part is the new login system, which fixes the old nutty one, and makes it easy to login from different computers. You complained about the schizo login system before, and now I fixed it so it will work the way you expect it to.

That’s a good lesson in software design, and also a good one in organizing your life.

I developed co.mments for my own personal use, and when I decided to make it a free service, I wrote a login system so you can register for a free account. A few weeks later, Gabe Rivera convinced me to let people use co.mments without registering for an account. So I added that feature as well. I love it.

The co.mments data belongs to all of you, and I wanted to open it up, so last week I released the co.mments API. That uses another login system. Three of them is too much, and I couldn’t find my way through the mess. So I spent the week tidying up and fighting dust bunnies, and now there’s less mess, less code and one new feature. You can login to your account from several computers.

And if you accidentally bookmark a conversation but forget to login, login immediately and the recently bookmarked conversations will be added to your account.

I also picked two good habits out of developing the co.mments API. I used REST and XOXO to keep the code simple. I decided to use them out of technical curiosity, and ended up with much simpler, better organized code. And simpler is easier to develop. In fact, I wrote most of the API in just a couple of days.

IconBuffet has a great article on how REST helped them simplify their code. Technology aside, keep things simple, tidy the mess once in a while, and you can do more with your life. Spring clean often.

I and perhaps many of the co.mments.com users are very pleased with this service. May I ask on the behalf of other curious users: what is the catch? And when will it come?

So rather than having to click the bookmarklet for each comments page, we can just track the whole site.

Some people may not see the need for this, especially if a blog is very busy and have many many comments. But for a more quiet blog, with only several comments. It’s useful, I think.

Hurry!

The co.mments API is finally out. Feels like giving birth to a child.

Right now you can use it to manage the conversations you are tracking. All the UI features are available in the API.

I’ll be adding more features in the future, this is just the first release.

It’s also an early release, I just put it out yesterday and I’m still testing it. So you can expect some minor changes. In fact, if you have any feedback, post it here. I’d love to know what you think and what I can do to improve it.

There’s no documentation, that’s also something I’m working on.

But it’s RESTful, and it does XML, JSON and HTML, which means it’s not hard to figure out. In fact, you can try it from your browser right now. Play with it and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

1. Is this the right place to ask for help?

2. I’ve got the bookmarklet on my Opera Browser. When I click the bookmarklet, I’m taken to the co.mments.com page, where I have to click Track. Isn’t this second step redundant? Or is it just in Opera?

Now 2 things regarding being updated with new comments:

3. It seems that I have to click the “Recheck” button on each individual conversation I’m tracking in order to find out if there are any new comments. Is this the way it’s supposed to be? I’d rather have co.mments.com automatically recheck all my conversations.

4. I have added the feed into my bloglines.com account. But yet, it doesn’t seem to be able to find updates. What’s up with that? Or it only finds updates, after I click the “Recheck” button on a conversation in the co.mments.com website and if I don’t “Clear” the new updates. hmmm… If I have to go to the co.mments.com website first before my bloglines will tell me of new comments, it’s kind of useless to add this feed to bloglines.