Hello all. I'd like to describe a use-case I'm interested in and see if
others are interested as well - not sure if this is orthogonal to the
concerns of DiSo as a project.
Sorry to have my first post to the group be all questions and no code - hope
to reverse that ratio at some point.
What I'm interested in is essentially remote commenting on blog posts.
Short version:
1. I author a blog post and publish it using Wordpress. (could extent to
others later, but let's just assume Wordpress for now).
2. In addition to being published on my blog and feed, the post is also
published (simultaneously or later as part of a scheduled job) to a number
of other sites. For the sake of discussion, lets say A) Facebook, B) a Ning
network using open social, C) a portable "widget"
3. Another user reads that blog post in my facebook profile (which she can
see because she is a friend). She comments on the blog post *in facebook*
4.. When she submits her comment, the comment is posted to the blog entry
*in wordpress* and marked as being from "Jane Doe on Facebook" or the like,
with her name linked to her facebook profile.
5. The comment, associated with the blog post, is appended to the post
everywhere the post is published.
Repeat steps 3 through 5 for contexts B and C.
In other words, keep the comments associated to the post: all comments
regardless of source get associated to the post and displayed in all places
where the post is published.
Comments should take the identity of the person composing them in the best
format available - so inside a network it should be that persons ID in that
network, outside any network leverage OpenID (existing plugin does this
nicely on wordpress blogs themeselves).
In theory one could even allow comments from "friends" to go through without
moderation - since they are known identities with whom you share some
affiliation.
Right now all the Facebook Applications and Open Social widgets I've seen
just pull feeds into sites by reading an RSS feed, and push the user back to
the blog to comment.
So the problem is twofold:
A. How to inform third party apps when new blog posts are published AND
updated with new comments so that they can refresh their view of the blog
post.
(I'd think it would be preferable to leave moderation up to WordPress - not
the external app - in order to have just one place to do it. But that means
the external app should not just immediately post the comment but wait for
it to be approved inside Wordpress).
B. How to post comments into a WordPress blog from an external context with
some asserted identity derived from that context.
Does the Oauth server here provide the essentials for B?:
http://singpolyma.net/oauth/example/index.php
I assume what will be needed is a Wordpress Plugin which knows how to accept
comments from "outside" via Oauth or similar (XML-RPC using trackback like
syntax?) and a set of applications (a Facebook app, an open social app,
maybe others) which knows how to grab posts from WordPress with their
comments and refresh them when the appropriate WP hooks are called. (Maybe
another WP plugin needed to "notify" the subscribed external apps whenever a
new comment is approved?)
Are there existing implementations which get close to this?
Thanks
John Eckman
http://www.johneckman.com/
eckman.j...@gmail.com
