So I spent the entire last week on this, as it was Christmas break. I'm thinking literally around 35-40 hours of searching google, reading forums like this and wordpress support as well ofcourse with tinkering around with code, admin tools and even emailing a few people who had seemed to succeed with their blogs.
I started with Bluehost, good. I had wordpress 2.9 installed. Fine. I had a horrible time trying to figure out how to get the comments "in a box with the scrolling on the right'. When I came here, I thoguht "Eureka!!" as it seemed this was how to do it.
Something that struck me though was that in the support forums, there was alot of older posts, not much recent. Not that much in the way of admin support- some yes and nice enough- but often very delayed. I haven't walked in anyones shoes and this IS a free service so who knows. Fine, I'll give it a try- and so I installed 1.28 version available now.
It put in the admin tool. Wow. Hmm. Yet something learn again. However, although some of it is self-explanatory, alot of it isn't. There are about 20 modules and I have NO clue which to activate and which not to. Some of them have descriptions, but if you aren't in tune with what some of it is talking about- you are at a loss. Same with many of the tabs and options.
Enable Navigation? Hmm, not sure what that means. I know what navigation is, but which navigation is it speaking about?
So I installed it. Hmm. It didn't work. Nothing, no change. Hmmm, how could that be? I went in and looked at the support forums. Hmm, couldn't find any instructions really. There are a few older posts telling me to go into the code and add or change something, sigh, but that's it. Ugh, I hate manually messing up the code - it's rarely going to turn out well when you don't know PHP ya know?
So I tried it. It didn't work. I kept playing with settings, changing again and again, sooo frustrating right? Well, then I start to see some things happen, like 10% of it working but still no box, still no scroll, still not displaying anything real- just a small amount of text formatting and such.
I went on wordpress, posted for some help, some people were nice enough to help me some. It didn't work. Man, HOW are all these people installing it and it works and mine doesn't. I'm not a coder but I knew XML back in the day, I knew some HTML...surely I can do this.
Then, I thought, well, all these posts are older. Maybe this doesn't work with 2.9, the latest wordpress version. So I looked up several of the blogs that posted here and on wordpress that got it working. Versions 2.7, 2.8.4, 2.8.6... Nobody had 2.9. Well, ugh, fine. So I had the host essentially reinstall version 2.8.6 I think I chose. Then you have to go back in and activate the plugins, etc.
Well, that did something huge. That seemed to make it start to work. I got the scroll box. However, the words saying "Post a comment" weren't working right and the "default open comment form" didn't work. I mean it defaulted to open- yes, but even when you go in and uncheck that or check it , etc it didn't work. I probably spent 2 hours JUST on that.
And so, in the end, I admitted defeat. I mean given another week or two of being off, could I do this? Likely. However, with 3 kids, my job starting back up today back from the holidays there is honestly NO way I can get it done.
I offered to pay someone to help me.
I emailed the admin asking to pay him to help me.
I emailed other photographers to see if they wanted to get paid to help.
I don't think it's hard for someone who has done it, that knows a think or two about how it works. I think it's just hard for someone like me that may just be missing 1 or 2 options, they have overlooked SOMETHING. Maybe everyone else is using an older version- I dont know.
I'm at a loss. That's my experience. It's not that this doesn't work. It's likely just me, but I wish I could post something to help you if you are having issues. I wish i could point you to an actual readme that would walk you through which options you need or troubleshooting comment issues.
fact is, like I saw someone else post that got it working- I really dont know what I did as I got to where I was doing SO much to try and get it to work.
Thanks
Tk
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