Based (in part) on advice from the insanely smart Jacques Distler, I made a list of 7 things to do that would improve my commenting system. I had intended on doing at least 6 of them yesterday (the last one being quite difficult, taking at least a day on its own). As should have been expected, I got a little sidetracked. Damn you, Knights Of The Old Republic!
I did, however, get 2 of those features done. First up is comment counts, making it easier to see if someone has commented on an entry on the front page (chances are they haven’t, but hey, that’s life).
Secondly is much better error handling. Rather than outright reject a comment if it doesn’t resolve as valid XHTML, I now redisplay the form with all the fields as they were, with helpful advice on what is invalid.
The other features will probably appear more slowly over the course of the next fortnight as university starts back and I’ve got a backlog of work to do.