Ez Comment Moderation

If you employ comment moderation in the default install of b2evolution v1.8 then you'll find this tool a very useful addition to your blog. Instead of having to wade through a load of posts and emails to find all the comments which are awaiting moderation, you can now see a full list right on the front page of your blog.

Information: The AM_allow plug-in is "AM Update" enabled!^§. This means that you'll always have the latest version!
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^§ "AM Update" is an AstonishMe feature that functions like "auto-update" in many popular software packages. When you're in the back-office, looking at the plugin list, you'll see when an update is available for any of your AstonishMe "AM Update"-enabled plug-ins. Just click to get the newest version. Simple!

As well as the normal "publish", "edit", "delete" buttons, and the link to ban the authors url, it also displays a ban icon beside every url in the spam comment so you can ban all those as well.

"Summer Beta" (v1.8+) Installation

The installation for this plugin is an easy, two-step and click process. Just follow the directions below:

1. Download: Click on the ZIP file to download it:
   

   AM_easy_moderation (plug-in for b2evo v1.8)

2. Unzip & Upload: Unzip the file into the "/plugins" folder of your v1.8+ b2evolution installation. It will make a folder "am_easy_moderation_plugin", which contains one file "am_easy_moderation.plugin.php". Upload the folder and file, to your b2evolution server, putting them into the same "/plugins" location.
   
   
3. Install: In your back-office, under the "App Setting" tab, click the "Plugins" tab. You'll see "AM Easy moderation", in the "Available Plugin" list. Click [Install] in the "Actions" list, on the right.
   
   
4. The skin tags: You then need to wander over to your skin _main.php and add one or both of the following skintags

   1. To list all comments awaiting moderation

      <?php
      	// ------------------------- TITLE FOR THE CURRENT REQUEST -------------------------
      	request_title( '<h2 class="details">', '</h2>' );
      	// ------------------------------ END OF REQUEST TITLE -----------------------------
      ?>
      
      [color=red]<?php[/color]
      [color=red]	// AM Ez Moderation plugin[/color]
      [color=red]	$Plugins->call_by_code( 'am_ezmod', array( 'list_type' => 'full' ) );[/color]
      [color=red]?>[/color]

   2. To list all comments awaiting moderation on each post

      		</div><!-- bSmallPrint -->
      
      [color=red]<?php[/color]
      [color=red]	// AM Ez Moderation plugin[/color]
      [color=red]	$Plugins->call_by_code( 'am_ezmod', array( 'list_type' => 'post' ) );[/color]
      [color=red]?>[/color]
      		<?php
      				// ------------- START OF INCLUDE FOR COMMENTS, TRACKBACK, PINGBACK, ETC. -------------

logged in users who have the right permissions will now be shown a list of spam comments awaiting moderation with a bunch of groovy little icons which will allow you to publish/delete/edit each comment. If there's an author url then there'll be an icon which will allow you to blacklist it, there'll also be an icon allowing you to blacklist each url in the comment because we like to make it easy to fight spammers ;)

Future enhancements

At the moment, if you click on any of the icons (publish/delete/edit/ban), you're whisked into admin in the normal way to finalise the action or to see the results. As this means that you now need to go back to your blog to continue moderating the list this is not an ideal solution. Personally, we right-click each icon and choose "open in new tab/window" so that we stay on the list.

In a future version of this plugin we'll use javascript, if enabled, to keep you on the list whilst performing all of the actions in the background. As you can imagine, that's going to take a smidge of thinking and coding, and probably a beer or two, so don't delay grabbing the plugin in it's current incarnation ;)

We're also looking at adding a whitelist, and possibly a blacklist, so you can allow chosen commentors to bypass modertion automatically. This list(s) would be fully controlled via admin.