Problem

You want to display comments in your weblog.

Solution

Use the template tags prefixed with MTComment.

Discussion

The default templates that ship with Movable Type are comment-ready. These templates are set up so that comments appear on both the popup comment window and the individual archive pages.

All of the various options for moderating and managing comments combine to make the default template code and HTML for comments quite extensive and sophisticated. To get you familiar with how comments can be implemented in MT templates we'll look at some basic examples. Once you become more familiar with how the comment tags work and can be combined, you can look at the default templates and modify them to suit your preferences and purposes.

Let's look at a simple comment display that may be inserted following the contents of a post on an individual entry archive template.

 <MTIfCommentsActive>
 <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
 
 <MTComments>
 <div id="c<$MTCommentID$>">
 <$MTCommentBody$>
 </div>
 <p>Posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1"$> 
   <$MTCommentAuthorIdentity$> at  
   <$MTCommentDate$></p>
 </MTComments>
 
 </MTIfCommentsActive>
 

The first line, MTIfCommentsActive, is a conditional tag that will render the contained HTML and template tags if comments exists or are being accepted for the entry. Next we add a section heading with an anchor of "Comments" that will allow links to this section.

Used in this context, MTComments will select and loop through all comments for the associated entry, using the values set in the weblog's preferences. These preferences (sort order etc) can be selectively overridden with attributes added to the MTComments tag. (See the entry for Comments in Appendix A for more on these attributes.)

The comment ID (MTCommentID) is placed in a HTML div tag so that individual comments can be linked, while the div tag wraps the comment body (MTCommentBody).

The comment ends with a posted-by footer that uses MTCommentAuthorIdentity, MTCommentDate, and MTCommentAuthorLink.

MTCommentAuthorIdentity. A link to the commenter's TypeKey profile with the link text of the TypeKey username.

MTCommentDate is the timestamp designating when the comment was submitted. The format used is dependent upon the weblog's preferences or can be modified using the format argument and the standard Date Tag Formats. See Appendix A for more.

MTCommentAuthorLink inserts the commenter's name with a hyperlink if possible. Depending upon the information given by the commenter, this tag will return different results. See MTCommentAuthorLink for more information on using this tag.

For those who are (potentially) displaying email addresses, adding the spam_protect global filter with a value of 1 (true) is a good idea. More on this in "Protecting Email Addresses from Spammers".

The block then closes the MTComments and MTEntryIfCommentsActive tag contexts.

Conditional Tags

Getting a bit more sophisticated, there are a couple of comment-related conditional tags you'll want to be aware of.

MTEntryIfCommentsAccepted is a conditional tag that will render its contents if comments on the entry are closed as opposed to the MTEntryIfCommentsActive which will render its contents if comments exists.

MTIfRegistrationRequired is a conditional tag that will only render its results if a reader has signed into the system's designated authentication system.

Like all conditional tags each of these can be used with the MTElse tag to render only if the opposite is true. (See "Publishing Content When a Conditional is False" for more.)