I really like how Jon Hicks handles comments on Hicksdesign. Instead of allowing direct comments on his blog he provides a link that pre-populates a tweet. I’m not a fan of blog comments and many agree. Alex Payne states why best:

For most sites, though, comments are worse than useless. The anonymity of the Internet inspires hit-and-run attacks, unintelligible ramblings, and truckloads of spam.

So I wanted to implement a similar feature on this site. This lead me down a path of some additional work…

Lessn (and Lessn More)

Since I didn’t really want to force people to use a full URL like, http://brandonbohling.com/2011/03/25/lessn-comments/, I decided to use a URL shortener. Of course, I could use one of the many URL shortener services out there like bit.ly or droplr, which I have many times in the past…for my website though I wanted something more personal and in my control. Thus, I turned to Shaun Inman’s URL shortener, Lessn. It took only a few minutes to setup after I purchased a new domain, brndn.me. I soon realized though Shaun did not provide an easy way to track usage or even list out the URLs I had shortened. A quick Google search later I came across Alan Hogan’s Lessn fork, Lessn More. A couple minutes later I had the perfect solution. Now I had a shorter URL that people could use to reference my web site. So now, http://brandonbohling.com/2011/03/25/lessn-comments can be referenced using http://brndn.me/5. If you own a domain and already have a hosting provider there’s few reasons why you shouldn’t setup Lessn More. Below are the 4 steps required directly from the README:

1. Open /-/config.php in a plaintext editor and create a Lessn username and password then enter your database connection details. You may also choose other settings such as authentication salts and a default home page.
2. For the shortest URLs possible, upload the contents of this directory to your domain’s root public folder.
3. Visit http://doma.in/install.php to create the necessary database tables. (Watch for errors.)
4. Visit http://doma.in/-/ to log in & start using Lessn More! Be sure to grab the bookmarklets.

Note: doma.in above should be replaced with your domain name.

Comments via Twitter

As I mentioned in Text File Revolution I am now using Jekyll to generate this web site. By default, it does not have a commenting solution. Some have chosen to integrate disqus, but I have chosen to go down another path and use Twitter. Honestly, the reason for this site is simply to provide me a writing outlet for myself so I don’t want to clutter it with comments (or deal with the inevitable SPAM). However, I encourage others to comment via Twitter using a link at the bottom of each post¹, or better yet, create their own blog post providing their own point of view and referencing my post if appropriate.