1

Before you use CommentPress, you need to have Wordpress properly installed and configured, FTP access to your server, and permissions to install themes.


37

To install CommentPress, follow these steps:
  1. Download the .zip or .tar file and extract the folder.
  2. Connect to your web host with an FTP client and access the directory wp-content/themes in your Wordpress directory.
  3. Upload the folder into wp-content/themes.
  4. Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel.
  5. Select the "Options" tab from the administrative menu.
  6. Select the "Permalinks" from the sub-tab.
  7. Under the "Common options", select your URL format (anything but "Default").
  8. Next, select the "Presentation" tab from the administrative menu.
  9. Under "Available Themes," select "CommentPress."
  10. A new sub-tab will appear under "Presentation" called "CommentPress Options."

  OPTIONALLY: You can click on "CommentPress Options" to change presentation mode (from "document" to "blog" mode).


3

And that's it! Your installation and configuration is complete. Now, click on "View Site" in the header to see things in action.

NOTES

Please read the comments on paragraph 2 if you are having a problem with "unexpected end;". Thanks to ToddG we've discovered that all our coding shortcuts can cause problems if your PHP setup isn't equipped to handle them. I'm not sure about all the details just yet, but I'll post more when I do.

Posted by Eddie Tejeda on July 20, 2007
Tags: Uncategorized

Total comments on this page: 42

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Eddie A. Tejeda on paragraph 2:

lists are not highlighting correctly.

July 22, 2007 11:57 am

Fixed!

July 24, 2007 12:44 pm
jdwilbur on paragraph 2:

No, not fixed. This is not a list made with ol, li tags, but a straight html hack using &nbsp and numerals. Still need to fix lists and highlighting as of 1.0.

July 24, 2007 6:08 pm
sbaptista on paragraph 1:

What version of Wordpress is required? Might make sense to move this to a preceding “Prerequisites” chapter. I’d expect other things to come up like what browser versions are/aren’t supported.

July 26, 2007 8:35 pm
GavinRobinson on paragraph 2:

Just tried installing on a local server to test it but when I activate the theme I get:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-content\themes\commentpress\functions.php on line 580

Is there a missing bracket somewhere? Has anyone else had this problem?

July 27, 2007 8:43 am
Eddie A. Tejeda :

GavinRobinson,

I’ve not seen this problem. Maybe it’s because you are using a Windows server. To tell you the truth, we didn’t test on Windows servers. Can you send us a bit more information?

July 31, 2007 12:20 am
GavinRobinson on paragraph 2:

Just tried 1.1 and got a similar error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-content\themes\commentpress\functions.php on line 605

I’m using Windows XP SP2 with Apache 2.2.4, PHP 5.2.1 and MySQL 5.0.27 installed using WAMP5 1.7.0. I haven’t had any trouble running any other PHP apps on localhost eg Wordpress, Mediawiki, and various homegrown PHP/MySQL stuff.

I had some trouble with the CommentPress zip file, both 1.0 and 1.1: Windows native zip support didn’t like it and wouldn’t copy all of the files out of it, but WinRAR seemed to copy them all ok. I’ve also tried the tar file instead and still got the same parse error.

I’ve had a look at the code in functions.php, and it’s possible that there are misplaced braces on lines 264 and 307, but changing that doesn’t fix the error.

July 31, 2007 8:53 am
GavinRobinson :

I should have added that my local test setup is running Wordpress 2.1.

I’ve just tried installing CommentPress 1.1 on a Wordpress 2.2.1 installation on my webhost and it works. The host is running Apache 1.1.37 on Linux, PHP 4.4.7 and MySQL 4.1.22.

Therefore it must be down to OS, WP version or PHP/MySQL version, and my worries about brackets were misplaced. I now have an installation that I can play around with, and I know that it’ll work on my host, so I’m happy.

August 1, 2007 8:47 am
copystar on paragraph 3:

I understand that CommentPress is a WP theme and not a plug-in, but I was curious whether there was some sort of work around that would allow you to use the CommentPress theme for one particular page / document without having to change the format of the entire blog?

It appears that the authors of this example: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/scholarlypublishing/
were able to it… but I can’t figure out how.

August 1, 2007 12:59 pm
Eddie A. Tejeda :

That was a customization we did to the theme. If you know stylesheets(css), you’ll be able to change just about anything in the theme.

The following versions comply with more standard stylesheeting, and will support skins from whatever other theme you have installed. The next version will pretty good support, but it wont be perfect, so I recommend you play with it and give us feedback on your experience.

August 2, 2007 3:19 pm
jdwilbur on paragraph 3:

The page in question is actually a separate wordpress installation behind the /scholarlypublishing directory. It’s not a single category or page of a Wordpress installation - it’s a whole new installation. It may be possible to do what you suggest (we really think it is), but we haven’t had the time to figure out how yet. If/when we do, we’ll definitely post the instructions here. Thanks!

August 7, 2007 9:41 am
ToddG on paragraph 2:

The “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end ” errors are (at least in my case and most likely anyone else’s) caused by the usage of short open tags in the Commentpress code, combined with a PHP install that has short_open_tag set to false, i.e. off.

You first hit it when activating the theme, and if you fix all the short tags in function.php you’re not done, they’re everywhere. So if you can, just relent and set

php_flag short_open_tag 1

on a per-directory basis for the commentpress/wordpress install.

It’d be nice if there weren’t any short tags, but I’ll heed the beggars not being choosers wisdom ;-)

August 30, 2007 9:57 pm
ToddG :

Oh version 1.3 (sorry!)

August 30, 2007 10:01 pm
ToddG on paragraph 2:

Might I suggest if the devs aren’t up for replacing all the short tags, you mention this in the installation? Chances are a lot of people will not bother to figure out the problem, be a shame to lose people over that little bit…

August 30, 2007 10:00 pm
jdwilbur on paragraph 2:

Todd, we’ll make sure to make the appropriate changes. Thanks much for spotting this! (I didn’t even know short tags were an option - just thought that’s how everything was).

September 4, 2007 6:29 pm
James on paragraph 2:

The install docs say, “OPTIONALLY: You can click on ‘CommentPress Options’ to change presentation mode (from “document” to “blog” mode).”

But the ‘CommentPress Options’ page has no such option.

October 13, 2007 7:34 pm
Chris :

For me (WP 2.2.3) this change could be made in presentation > skins.

October 21, 2007 9:38 am
prisca on paragraph 2:

no luck….. tried installing the theme - using WP2.2.3 - though I followed the instructions - it’s not happening…. getting blank pages for front- and backend….what a shame….
I can work with WP - but don’t have enough experience with php to go in a fix those errors myself….

October 20, 2007 11:00 am
Chris on paragraph 2:

Just installed 1.4 on WP 2.3 and it seems to be working fine, though I had to change line 18 in functions.php (in the root commentpress directory) to the address of my blog in order to avoid error messages.

October 21, 2007 7:52 am
Chris :

Sorry, WP 2.2.3

October 21, 2007 7:56 am
Jesus on paragraph 2:

I followed the steps on paragraph 2 but Wordpress does not show the theme “commentpress” when I reach step 9. IN addition, I tried to install another theme and it does not work either. It does not show any error message, everything looks Ok but at the end it does not work. Any suggestions. Please…..

October 30, 2007 9:25 am
Max :

Same problem, actually.

February 18, 2008 3:42 am
Jesus on paragraph 2:

I am running on Windows XP, php 5.2.4, mysql 5.0.45, wordpress 2.3.1 and apache. Even though I could finally install commentpress, now I have a real problem. When the theme starts it shows me in the Table of Content, the “Hello world!” entry but when I click on “Hello world!” it shows me a new white empty screen, and if I go back and try to do it again the apache sends me a message telling that sorry but it needs to close it. In another opportunities when I click on Hello world, it shows me the next message:

“Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/downloads/version.php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream:
A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because
connected host has failed to respond. in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\themes\commentpress\functions.php on line 583

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\themes\commentpress\functions.php on line 583″

What could I do?
Thanks

October 30, 2007 10:53 am
Eric MacKnight on paragraph 2:

Chris, what kind of errors were you getting? I’ve installed CP, but I get 404 errors when I click on a post’s link in the table of contents, for example. Is that the problem you’re talking about?

Thanks.

October 30, 2007 7:10 pm
Jesus on paragraph 2:

The first time that I make click on the “Hello World!” comment appears a white empty screen, then I reload the page and when I try the second time the white screen appears again but now apache said “Apache HTTP Server has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.” I try to install in two different computers but in both cases I have the same problem. So, what do you recommend me?

October 31, 2007 2:54 pm
Eric MacKnight on paragraph 2:

Hello again. Still having trouble. I made the root wp directory writable, so now when I update the permalinks structure I get the message that the update worked, but when I click on the link to any post I get a blank page.

Suggestions?

November 1, 2007 9:55 pm
Randall on paragraph 2:

Hello,

I’ve done a new install of CommentPress, and get exactly the same error.

If I use a different theme the posts show up fine. With the CommentPress theme enabled the main page comes up OK, the comments-by-section page are fine and the ABOUT page are fine. But individual post pages open blank. I haven’t checked the server log yet, but my guess is its something in the PHP.

I am running WordPressMU 1.3, which I think is using the 2.3 codebase.

Any ideas?

November 2, 2007 1:36 pm
K.G. Schneider on paragraph 2:

Yup, same problem. Installed WP 2.3.1 for a specialty blog freerangelibrarian.com/ontologyismiscellaneous and the posts don’t display (though the pages do). Whoops, back to PowerPoint for Tuesday’s talk… glad I know this now. I emailed Eddie as well.

November 4, 2007 1:35 pm
KF on paragraph 2:

I’ve been poking at a colleague’s broken install, and I’m pretty sure the problem is related to WP 2.3 — all of my working installations are in older versions. If you can, try backing your WP down to 2.2…

November 5, 2007 8:09 pm
Ben Vershbow on paragraph 2:

Yeah, we recently became aware of the problem. A new round of upgrades/fixes is being planned that will address this among other things, but it could be a few weeks to a month. For now, CP projects will have to stick to WP 2.2. Sorry about that. Expect progress soon.

November 6, 2007 12:16 am
George Perkins on paragraph 2:

I’ve installed WordPress 2.2.3 and CommentPress 1.4, accessed at https://force.pa.msu.edu/blog0/ (note that it’s currently using a self-signed SSL cert, so browsers will complain) and have noted a couple of oddities. First, there doesn’t appear to be a link to log in anywhere on the main page. Are you expecting users to manually type in the “wp-login.php” part of the URL into their address bars if they want to make a comment? Wouldn’t making a “log in” link *somewhere* on the main page be a logical default setting? Yes, I can modify your style sheets to do this (as I tweaked the grey color scheme towards green on my test site), but it seems an odd choice to make everyone have to do it manually. At least, once I’ve logged in via the “type out the URL in the browser site area”, there is a link for logging out down in the COMMENTS area (not the first place I would have looked, but at least it is there). Second, the links in the BROWSE COMMENTS area point to “comments-by-user”, “comments-by-section”, and “general-comments” in the top-level WordPress directory, which don’t exist in the standard WordPress 2.2.3 installation, nor does installing CommentPress according to your instructions put anything there. There are files with similar names in the wp-content/themes/commentpress subdirectory (they just have “.php” suffixes), but typing out the full URL to access them results in the display of blank pages. Similarly, the “about” link in the footer points to a URL that doesn’t exist in a default WP install. Is there a step in your instructions I have missed, or is there an instruction step missing?

December 20, 2007 1:33 pm

OK, I’ve figured out what went wrong with the “BROWSE COMMENTS” links at the upper right and the “About” link in the footer: when I changed away from the default Permalinks setting, WordPress wanted some lines added to the .htaccess file in the blog area and I didn’t notice the first time around that the web page had suddenly grown a scroll bar, so after hitting the “Update Permalink Structure” button, there was additional material below what had previously been the bottom of the page. When going through the steps again, I did notice this and made the needed change to the .htaccess file and the links in question started to work. You might add to step #7 a caveat such as “If, after the URL format update, WordPress wants you to make changes to your ‘.htaccess’ file, now is the time to do it.” Apparently, in some cases, the changes are either not necessary or are done automatically, but in other cases (such as mine), some manual editing is called for at this point of the procedure. So that just leaves the issue of the lack of a “login” link, which I will add myself for the time being.

December 20, 2007 4:29 pm
James on paragraph 2:

Ben - don’t you think it would be helpful to put that information on the front page, rather than claiming it works in 2.3, and making a developer wade through all this to work out what’s wrong?

January 24, 2008 11:03 am

Good idea. Well, I put a link to this under the download links on the download page.

We’re going to improve all the help materials soon and add other things like community support forums, bug tracker etc. Thanks to everyone for bearing with the bare bones for now.

January 25, 2008 5:28 pm
CommentPress » Download on whole page :

[…] Installation […]

January 25, 2008 5:27 pm
Max on paragraph 2:

Installed everything to the letter, but Commentpress still not appearing in the “themes” section.

Probably not a commentpress issue, but could you direct me to where I could find a solution?

February 18, 2008 3:54 am
Max :

Problem with permissions. Changed settings in the “info” window.

February 23, 2008 10:53 pm
Whit on paragraph 2:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in …/wp-content/themes/commentpress/functions.php on line 855

- the result of trying a selection of the theme on a virgin wordpress-2.3.3

February 20, 2008 3:42 pm
Whit :

Is there a workaround to get this to run on 2.3.3 yet? I can’t even get to the options to play with being not “Default” and all.

March 8, 2008 2:17 pm
Max on paragraph 2:

Re: point 7. For some reason, Default is the only comment option which works. Furthermore, the comment browsing pages (by commenter, etc.) have a URL issue.

February 24, 2008 1:47 am
Max :

Fixed: You’re required to create a .htaccess file with the code provided by WP at the bottom of the page.

February 24, 2008 2:58 am
Scott Brenner on paragraph 2:

I just installed commentpress but I am getting these error messages on the individual post pages:

Warning: include() [function.include]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known in /home/todayspo/public_html/29r/wp-content/themes/commentpress/single.php on line 6

Warning: include(http://29r.netskins/blog/sidebar.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: Success in /home/todayspo/public_html/29r/wp-content/themes/commentpress/single.php on line 6

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘http://29r.netskins/blog/sidebar.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/todayspo/public_html/29r/wp-content/themes/commentpress/single.php on line 6

There is an example at:
http://29r.net/2006/11/1l-law-school-study-aids/

I am not a programmer but I am guessing the code is calling a function that doesn’t exist or is misplaced.

Any help would be appreciated.

May 2, 2008 11:11 pm
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