Archive for April, 2008

Haloscan is a site that offers free commenting and trackback services for blogs. One of the feature which Blogger does not offer is Trackbacks. This tempted me in switching to some other commenting sites. So when I encountered Haloscan I did not even think for a moment and switched to Haloscan commenting. The problem is that to switch to Haloscan commenting, you need to download the existing template of your blogger. This has to be uploaded to Haloscan account and the template will be altered and given a new template. This new template I uploaded without even storing a backup six months back. Now if I switch to any new template all my valuable scripts embedded in the code which I have used in it for analytics and other purpose will be gone for ever.

But since them too many problems I have with the commenting system of Haloscan, though no trackbacks I have ever received for which I switched. Nowadays most of the people don’t bother to give trackback pings; instead they just post a comment with the link of their post. The main problems you will face are,

1. It reduces the load time of the pages as the comment details are taken from a different site
2. The Comment page also takes a considerable time
3. No option of automatic restriction of anonymous comments
4. No profile image shown in bloggers with each comments are far better than Haloscan’s
5. Ad’s of Haloscan that cribs in the comment page.

Since then I have been struggling to change the code to remove the Haloscan commenting and switch that to blogger comments which has improved a lot after the beta. But since the template was in XML I used to make mistakes every time and end up with an XML which was incomplete tags.

So Today I forced myself to complete this task and finally I have converted the commenting system back to Blogger’s. For those who are having similar problem you need to follow these steps.

1. Take a backup of your template
2. Then you need to look for the following parts in the template

<!– start haloscan (part 1) –>

<script src=’http://www.haloscan.com/load/ username type=’text/javascript’> </script>

<span class=’post-comment-link’>

<a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’&quot;http://www.haloscan.com/comments/ username /&quot; + data:post.id + &quot;/&quot;’ expr:onclick=’&quot;HaloScan(&quot; + &quot;\&quot;&quot;+ data:post.id + &quot;\&quot;&quot; + &quot;);return false;&quot;’>

<script type=’text/javascript’>postCount(&#39;<data:post.id/>&#39;);</script>

</a>

<a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’&quot;http://www.haloscan.com/tb/ username /&quot; + data:post.id + &quot;/&quot;’ expr:onclick=’&quot;HaloScanTB(&quot; + &quot;\&quot;&quot;+ data:post.id + &quot;\&quot;&quot; + &quot;);return false;&quot;’>

<script type=’text/javascript’>postCountTB(&#39;<data:post.id/>&#39;);</script>

</a>

</span>

<!– end haloscan –>

– Same as above Part1, Part 2 also will be embedded in the XML.

<!– start haloscan (part 3) –>

<a class=’feed-link’ href=’http://www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=username target=’_blank’>Comment Feed (RSS)</a>

<!– end haloscan –>

3. Now the above tags has to be removed
4. Now the hilarious task is to insert blogger commenting. In the place of Part 1 & Part 2 of Haloscan code the following code is replaced

<a class=’comment-link’ expr:href=’data:post.addCommentUrl’ expr:onclick=’data:post.addCommentOnclick’><b:if cond=’data:post.numComments == 1′>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>

5. For Part 3 the following code must be replaced.

<a class=’feed-link’ expr:href=’data:f.url’ expr:type=’data:f.mimeType’ target=’_blank’><data:f.name/> (<data:f.feedType/>)</a>

6. Now still you will face a problem that comments will not come for individual posts page. To fix that you need to add the following code just above the line where you have replace Part 2. Since that code is long you can get the patch here.
7. Alas! You landed back to your home land of blogger commenting. You would have lost all the old comments of Haloscan , that you can compensate with the Haloscan widget which you can see in the side bar of this blog.

Hope the above steps would help you in removing the irritating Haloscan commenting.

"Under Cover Economist by Tim Harford”. This is the latest addition to my book shelf. Probably after my reading taste shifted from Fiction to Non-Fictions, this is the only book which I have taken about a month and half to complete. This long duration is because I enjoyed each and every line of his revelation about the World Economy.

This book is a real eye opener for me. Every profligate youth must read this book and understand the value of money. I found this book more relevant for every person working in the IT industry. May be this book will create the same kind of thought for people from any industry, because the content discussed is universal truth.

This introduced me to a lot of new Economic concepts with Lucid Examples.

1.       Comparative Advantage – This has become my Favorite Topic

2.       The Power of Free Markets

3.       Effect of Globalization and lot more

The cases he has discussed about Starbucks Coffee Chains, Amazon.com etc all were jelled so intricately that it re-instantiated the concepts so clearly to me. This is a must read for every youth who spend lavishly. This book could be a turning moment in your life also it may lead you to shun Pizza Huts, Mc-Donalds and CCDs (Café Coffee Day) like me.