I fell really stupid asking this, as it seems it should be a rather simple thing to do and I prefer to help myself and not bother others, but after hours of searching, I can't seem to find anything but the vaguest hints about it.
I'm trying to build a hierarchical website with a site overview page and the ability to leave anonymous comments. I've read that Drupal 6 now supports (built-in!) the ability to leave anonymous comments with some basic contact information. Yet when I give anonymous users the ability to leave comments, all it asks for is a title and some text -- and calls them all "Anonymous". Yet the included documentation on the comment module clearly implies otherwise:
"If anonymous users are allowed to comment, their individual contact information may be retained in cookies stored on their local computer for use in later comment submissions."
This seems untrue, at least with the very vanilla Drupal 6.2 installation I have unpacked and set up.
Following the link to the "handbook entry for the Comment module" (http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/comment/) assures me I can visit administer >> comments >> configure. Again, there's a nice list of recent comments, but there's no "configure" tab available there. The subsequent help page about "detailed comment documentation" appears to be completely unrelated to what I'm seeing, as it mentions the ability to control whether comments are threaded, flat, expanded, etc, and I see nothing remotely similar available -- perhaps that's describing 4.x, 5.x or something.
I've tried looking around the permissions page to see if there's something else which might affect comment behavior -- no dice. I've tried looking at Administer >> Site Configuration to see if there's way of configuring the comment module -- nothing even mentions comments there. I've tried looking for a guide to how to use Drupal 6 -- all I can find is very basic installation information. Searched the drupal.org site and the comment forums too -- found nothing but the hints that the behavior I want should be already built into Drupal 6. I've ever started reading the comments module code itself, but I'm brand new to PHP and Drupal, so I'm not making much headway there either. I can see some constants being defined -- which sound like what I'm looking for -- but I have no idea how to go about changing them. (Though it sounds like the default behavior should be what I want anyway.)
Please have mercy on me and give me a hint?
Thank you much in advance.
Comments
Edit Content Type
This is something you can set for each content type. Go to admin/content/types and choose edit whichever type of content you want comments on. There you'll see a setting called "Content Settings" and, if you click on it, a list like:
The first is the default choice, so I think that is why you are having the problem.
Did you visit the edit form
Did you visit the edit form for the content types (at admin/content/types)? In D6, some comment settings are per content type-- I believe the ability for anonymous commenters to leave their contact info is there.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." -- Lao Tzu
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You are right, those admin
You are right, those admin menu paths were wrong.
Take a look at admin/content/node-type/story (or any particular content type)
It should have a "Comment settings" section, and you can use different settings for different content types.
Ah! You are right! Thank
Ah! You are right! Thank you three VERY, VERY much.
And, as a side note, shouldn't this be documented somewhere?
I've been reading some of the comments recently, and a theme I keep hearing is that Drupal is great, but either gets wrongly bashed for some feature it truly does have (but the reviewer couldn't figure out), or because the reviewer feels the docs are sort of weak.
As a newbie with several decades of experience, I think there's something to the second criticism. Drupal looks like it can be a tremendously powerful tool, but can be a bit hard to find one's way around.
Perhaps if a module could self-document all the areas it impacts? Or could centralize all its controls? Just a few helpful thoughts.
Thank you very much again!
Err... not so fast...
Turns out it doesn't work after all. It sets a correct-looking cookie with my chosen anonymous user name in it each time I post, but that cookie is not used to help fill out the next form: it always goes back to suggesting that my name is "Anonymous" and ignores the cookie which (I presume) is being sent back to the server.
Sigh. Any hints?