[MOD] Badges and styles for admin comments in sNews

This mod for sNews will style admin comments differently from normal visitors to allow easier identification of the author and to prevent fraudulent comments. You will need to be logged in while commenting for the admin effects to be applied to your comment. Click the image to the right for a preview of how it will look on a default install.

Backup first!

Be sure to backup all files and your database before proceeding. The following modification is performed at your own risk.

MySQL Database

This first step involving your database depends upon your own setup, so please check which applies to you.

sNews database with no prefix

Go to your MySQL admin page and insert the following into your sNews table:

ALTER TABLE comments ADD admin varchar(5) NOT NULL;

sNews database with table prefix

If you are using a table prefix you need to enter it in place of the highlighted text and insert the following code to your database:

ALTER TABLE PREFIX_comments ADD admin varchar(5) NOT NULL;

Thats the entry added to the database, lets move on to editing the files.

Inserting the code

Find and replace the following blocks of code in snews.php

Find:

// INFO LINE TAGS (readmore, comments, date)
$tags = array(
	'infoline' => '<p class="date">,readmore,comments,date,edit,</p>',
	'comments' => '<p class="meta">,name, '.l('on').' ,date,edit,</p>,<p class="comment">,comment,</p>'
);

Replace with:

// INFO LINE TAGS (readmore, comments, date)
$tags = array(
	'infoline' => '<p class="date">,readmore,comments,date,edit,</p>',
   'comments' => 'name, '.l('on').' ,date,edit,comment'
);

The rest of the edits in this file are within the comments function.

Find:

			$ident=1;
		} else {

Replace with:

			$ident = 1;
			$admin = 'True';
		} else {

Find:

				$approved = s('approve_comments') != 'on'|| _ADMIN ? 'True' : '';
				$query = 'INSERT INTO '._PRE.'comments'.'(articleid, name, url, comment, time, approved) VALUES'.
					"('$post_article_id', '$name', '$url', '$comment', '$time', '$approved')";
				mysql_query($query);

Replace with:

				$approved = s('approve_comments') != 'on'|| _ADMIN ? 'True' : '';
				$query = 'INSERT INTO '._PRE.'comments'.'(articleid, name, url, comment, time, approved, admin) VALUES'.
					"('$post_article_id', '$name', '$url', '$comment', '$time', '$approved', '$admin')";
				mysql_query($query);

Find:

			$query = 'SELECT
					id,articleid,name,url,comment,time,approved
				FROM '._PRE.'comments'.'

Replace with:

			$query = 'SELECT
					id,articleid,name,url,comment,time,approved,admin
				FROM '._PRE.'comments'.'

Find:

					case ($tag == 'comment'):
						echo $r['comment'];
						break;

Replace with:

					case ($tag == 'comment'):						
						echo '</p><p class="'.$commentstyle.'comment">'.$r['comment'].'</p></div>';						
						break;

Find:

				$commentNum = $offset + $ordinal;
				$tag = explode(',', tags('comments'));

This next part can be edited if needed. For example you may want to use a different image format, in which case you need to change the src='' urls. You could also remove the image altogether by commenting out the lines like this "//$admin = "img....", you will probably want to do this if you are using mdj's gravatar mod.

Replace with:

				$commentNum = $offset + $ordinal;				
				if ($r['admin'] == 'True') {
							$commentimg = "<img src='images/admin.png' alt='(Admin)' />"; //admin badge next to name
							$commentstyle = 'admin'; //admin style
						}	else {
							$commentimg = "<img src='images/visitor.png' alt='(Visitor)' />"; //visitor badge next to name
							$commentstyle = 'visitor'; //visitor style
						}
				echo '<div class="comment'.$commentstyle.'">'.$commentimg.'<p class="meta'.$commentstyle.'">';					
				$tag = explode(',', tags('comments'));

Styling

Now open up your style.css file. This can be found in the "css" folder of a defualt install.

Find:

.comment {
color:gray;
border-top:1px solid #ccc;
background:#F5F6F6;
margin:0 0 10px;
padding:10px;
}

Replace with:

/*[MOD] ADMIN COMMENTS*/

.commentadmin { /*admin comment block*/
background:#D1E1FA;
margin:0 0 10px 0;
}

.commentvisitor { /*visitor comment block*/
background:#DFF9E0;
margin:0 0 10px 0;
}

.metaadmin, .metavisitor { /*name and date*/
padding:5px 0 5px 0;
margin:0;
}

.commentadmin img, .commentvisitor img { /*badge styling*/
float:left;
padding:8px;
}

.admincomment, .visitorcomment  { /*comment text area*/
color:gray;
border-top:1px solid #ccc;
background:#F5F6F6;
margin:0;
padding:10px;
}

I have added different classes for each part to give you the extra freedom if you decide to have it all different. The CSS is commented so hopefully you can see how to style the comments the way you need, you can always leave a comment if not.

Feel free to use these images for badges if you don't have your own. Put them in your images folder.

Your comments should now look like the example above. Leave a comment if you have any problems. Let me know if you use it, would be nice to see how others have styled it. Look below to see how I have done mine. :)

Comments

Search

Categories

• Web Development (5)
• Wallpapers (2)
• General (0)

RSS Feeds

• RSS Articles
• RSS Comments