Testing Haloscan comment hack for Blogger Beta

Many people using the Haloscan comment system have complained that it does not work for Blogger Beta blogs. amrlion (close new window/tab to get back to this page) mentioned that there is a hack for that and gave this link Getting Haloscan to work in Blogger beta. (close new window to get back to this blog).

I tested the hack for this blog Good Health Articles (close new window to get back to this page).

I followed the instruction in that post, which is, first, to find this block of codes in the template with the widget expanded:

<span class='post-comment-link' >
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item" '>
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>

which I found somewhere in the middle of the template (use EDIT > FIND from the menu bar).

The next instruction is to do this:

"DELETE the code that is in between the code above and the "<'/b:if'>" that comes next. If you don't do this you'll see both the blogger comments AND the haloscan comments come up."

that is, to delete the codes from <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> to the next <'/b:if'> and insert the following codes, (the XXXX being your haloscan user name):

<script src='http://www.haloscan.com/load/XXXX' type='text/javascript'> </script>
<a expr:href='"javascript:HaloScan(" + "\"" + data:post.id + "\"" + ");"' target='_self'>
<script type='text/javascript'>postCount('<data:post.id/>');</script>
</a>

I am using Ramani's 3 column template and what I found was this:

<span class='post-comment-link'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</span>

That is, instead of just one "<'/b:if'>" I found "</b:if>", and there were more than 1 "</b:if>". I deleted the portion up to the second "</b:if>" and replaced it with the above codes with the XXXX replaced with my Haloscan username.

That is, I deleted :

<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>

and replaced it with the given codes above, and thus ended up with this:

<span class='post-comment-link'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<script src='http://www.haloscan.com/load/blogsmith' type='text/javascript'> </script>
<a expr:href='"javascript:HaloScan(" + "\"" + data:post.id + "\"" + ");"' target='_self'>
<script type='text/javascript'>postCount('<data:post.id/>');</script>
</a>
</b:if>

There were a few updates, one of which I was required to look for the following:

< id="'comments'" var="'post'">
< id="'comments'">
< name="'comments'/">
< 'h4' >

I couldn't find it, and I didn't proceed with the instructions in the updates. However, what I found is that the hack worked for the main (index) page and the archive pages, but in the individual post pages (permalinks), the blog was still stuck with the Blogger comment system. Perhaps it was because I was using Ramani's 3 column template rather than the standard Blogger beta template. If you really want the Haloscan comment system to work for the individual post pages, you can try to proceed further than what I have done for this blog Good Health Articles

Update 9 December 2007: With a little hint from Logical Philosopher or amrlion (close new window/tab to get back to this page) and a little experimenting, got the HaloScan comment system into the individual post page. But the system exist together with the Blogger comment system. Got an email from Ron of Rodentia (close new window/tab to get back to this page) suggesting going to SETTINGS > COMMENTS and set "Comments" to "hide" which I did. I checked the individual post page, and sure enough, I get only Haloscan comment there, no Blogger comment. I checked the main page. None of the posts there had any COMMENT, neither Blogger comment or Haloscan comment. So that ended my little bit of experimenting. I reset the COMMENTS to show and I am back in business again with only Haloscan comment in the main page and the archive pages, and the Haloscan comment coexisting with the Blogger comment in the individual post page. I am going to see if I can get any suggestion from amrlion on how to get rid of the Blogger comment in the individual post page. If I do, and it succeeded, you will see an update here.