A commenting system is essential when you start a blog. This provides a mechanism for people to interact with your content. Mambo does not have comments built in, but there are various options for getting someone to comment on your content.
The two Mambo components that I have evaluated are MosComment and AkoComments.
MosComment is a really simple component to install and I tried it first. You can download it from MamboForge.net
There are two problems with MosComment which is why I decided to go for AkoComments in the end:
1. You have to hack the main template file to get it to work. This means that if you ever do a reinstallation of Mambo, or you change your template, it will stop working.
2. You cannot select which categories or sections or content items you want to have comments for. You get comments for EVERYTHING. This is not quite what I wanted, since I only really wanted comments to be applicable to the Blog items.
So I tried AkoComment. The first problem was where to get hold of it! It is not available on Mamboforge.net. You can download it from the author, Arthur Konze,'s site - www.mamboportal.com
http://www.mamboportal.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=46&func=download&filecatid=1273
You have to register on his site first to get access to the download area though.
The component installed without problems and it is nicely configurable. You can choose two different methods of commenting - switched on by default for a specific Section, or switched on per content item via a MamBot. I chose to have it switched on for my whole Blog section.
But it didn't work! No commenting buttons appeared or anything. After some scratching around and thinking I decided to install the MamBot as well - you can download it here:
http://www.mamboportal.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,46/func,fileinfo/parent,folder/filecatid,1274/
Well, what do you know - it looks like the whole commenting component ONLY works if you install the MamBot as well - whether you choosed to apply the comments to a whole section or turn it on and off per content item.
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