Step 4 - Pages > Comments and Ratings Object

The Comments and Ratings Object lets website visitors leave their signature and comments and/or give a vote. It's made up of a short form that visitors fill in, and a list of comments that have been made by other visitors.

WebSite X5 lets you customize the form and manage the publication of comments, using a specific online Control Panel.

Still in the Pro edition, comments can also be managed through services such as those offered by Facebook and Disqus.

For Blog posts and e-commerce cart products, it is not necessary to use the Comments and Ratings Object: the options to enable and manage comments and reviews are available in the settings windows of both the Post Page and the Product Page.

To create a Comments and Ratings Object you need to define the Comment management system that visitors can leave, choosing between:

	WebSite X5: this is WebSite X5's built-in system and offers a specific online Control Panel.
	Facebook: this uses Facebook's Social Plug-in to organize discussions and comments.
	Disqus: this is the system offered by Disqus.

If you use WebSite X5's built-in Comment management system, to create the Comments and Ratings Object, you must define the Content Type that website visitors can leave, choosing between:

	Comment and Vote: visitors can write a comment and vote the website.
	Comment: visitors can write a comment, but they can't vote.
	Vote: visitors can vote, but they can't write a comment.

You can choose options for the Style, depending on the Content Type you have selected:

▪	Vote Style: select this option to define the style of the element that visitors can vote (for example, 5 stars). This is the only option available if you select Vote as Content Type.

▪

Font Type: specifies the font family, size and style of the text. The menu shows the command for applying the Default Font (defined by the style of the Page Text item in the Text Style window), the list of safe fonts (those which are present on all devices and do not need to be published, and all the Google fonts and web fonts added in the Add web fonts window, which is opened by the Other font types command.

▪	Text Color / Button Background / Button Text: define, respectively, the colors to be used for text and graphic elements.

▪	Borders: sets the color and the rounding factor for the borders of the section.

▪	View Order: you can define the chronological order to the published comments, from the most recent to the earliest, or vice versa.

▪	Comments per Page: this defines how many posts are to be displayed in the comments box.

▪	Arrange comments in multiple columns: this option reports the comments on different flanked columns instead of a single one.

At this point, you can proceed with Data Management:

▪	View Mode: you can decide whether comments made by visitors are to be published immediately online, or whether they are to be approved first, using the commands in the online Control Panel.

▪	Enable 'Captcha' anti-spam filter: you can add the Captcha anti-spam filter to the end of the comment form.

Use the command in the Privacy and Security | Security window to choose the captcha system that is to be used.

▪	Show 'Abuse' button: select this option if you want an "Abuse" button added, so that visitors can report objectionable conduct.

If you choose to use Facebook as Comment management system, you must define the following Comments Settings:

▪	Color: this sets light or dark colors for elements in the foreground, so that the contrast with the background is correct.

▪	Visible Posts: this defines how many posts are to be displayed in the comments box.

For further information on how Facebook plug-ins work, see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

If you you choose to use Disqus as Comment management system, you can define the following Comments Settings:

▪	Disqus Short Name: this is the name that identifies the website when setting up the service on Disqus. All the comments left on the website are automatically associated with the Short Name given here, so that they can be correctly loaded and displayed.

For more information on discussion and comment management with Disqus, see http://disqus.com/websites/

If you use the Control Panel in WebSite X5 to manage the comments, you can indicate how data submitted in the comments form is to be saved and handled by the website administrator in the Data Save Settings section.

If you are working with the Evo edition, the data will be saved on the server, whereas if you are working with the Pro edition, you can choose to save it in a database:

	Send data to a file: submitted data is saved in a file created in the specified folder on the server.
	Send data to a Database: the data submitted in the form is automatically sent to the specified MySQL database, using a PHP script.

The following parameters depend on the method you have chosen for saving data:

Send data to a file:

▪

Subfolder on the Server where data is saved: specify the folder on the server (with PHP write access) in which the submitted data is to be saved. If you aren't going to use the WebSite X5 Hosting, the main server folder name is specified by the Server folder with write access option in the Server Settings | Data Management window. If you do not specify a sub-folder, the data will be saved in this one.

▪	Send an e-mail to notify when comments are received: a notification e-mail will be sent automatically when new data arrive.

▪	User e-mail address: enter the recipient address of the e-mail notifying data reception.

Send data to a Database:

▪	Send an e-mail to notify when comments are received: a notification e-mail will be sent automatically when new data arrive.

▪	User e-mail address: enter the recipient address of the e-mail notifying data reception.

Providers usually give write access to all folders on the server: if this is the case, you don't need to give the pathname of the public folder. In all other cases, contact your webspace provider for the complete public folder pathname.

You can check in the WebSite Test section of the online Control Panel whether the folder with write access, and any sub-folders inside i, actually exist and, if so, if you have write access to them (so that you can save the data).

If you aren't going to use the WebSite X5 Hosting, you will need to use the dedicated options available in the Server Settings window to configure the Database connected to the Project

If you decide to use the Control Panel in WebSite X5 to manage comments, for this Object to work correctly, the page it is inserted in must be saved as a .PHP file.

Use the File Name Format option in the Page Properties | Expert window to specify page formats.

Again if you use the Comment management system in WebSite X5, you can access the online Control Panel to enable notifications to be sent to the Website Administrator every time a user leaves a new comment.

Read the guides:

-	How to manage comments through the online Control Panel