Friday, December 18, 2009

It beat me down...

I finally had to do it. I've dumped Haloscan. For as good as it was originally, it's deteriorated substantially since they were sold. It's currently far too social (why does everyone want to be like Facebook or Twitter??). Their last unexpected change put me over the top. I've spent about an hour scouring my template to figure out how to revert to Blogger's pop-up menu. The "new" Haloscan was good about deleting all of the Blogger comment code. I think I've done it though. Unfortunately, all prior comments are now lost to you. And maybe to me. I'm not sure. Hopefully you'll be happy with the new change!

12 comments:

Chapter Two said...

Excuse me as I step out the back door and scream into the cold winter air. Are you kidding me? I finally have time, I finally make it back here - I am determined to once again make it through all of the beauty and sexiness that is HNT posts and the comments are gone? really , seriously? bring me a beer now please. then rub my feet and don't forget a movie on the way out - take out wouldn't hurt and then maybe just maybe I will START to forgive you ;)

sigh.... dang. hmmmm off to hit people's blog rolls trying to catch everybody.

Ms Scarlett said...

I wondered if something hadn't gone awry yesterday, when I couldn't leave a comment on your HNT...

It's a damn, crying shame to lose all those prior comments... hopefully at least you will be able to see them somehow!

Dana said...

I'm with Barefoot Dreamer on this one ... you couldn't have at least waited until AFTER the weekend? Hello?? Some of us have difficulty getting around on Thursday!

Pfffttt! There will be coal in your stocking ... sugar free coal at that!

Osbasso said...

Sorry all...it didn't even occur to me about that...

Guess that's what you get for not staying up until 4AM checking them out!

I'll see if I can restore them, but I'm not promising anything....

13messages said...

Haloscan was always a bit weird to me so this is pretty cool for me. Good luck restoring comments for those who miss them.

Summer said...

What is the blogger comment code? I've got haloscan (but I'm not going to be paying for it when they move to their new source) so I want to restore the old settings. Help!

Sam said...

bummer about losing all those comments.

Hey, it's a fresh start for a new year!

Vixen said...

I refuse to berate you on this ;)

I was beyond frustrated when late last night I went to read your comments one last time and it was yet again a NEW format. So.....*Thank you*

xo

Vixen said...

BD and Dana.... Bc I comment on every HNT post, most of them comment back on mine....you could use my comment list to go down for links. Just a suggestion.....

Osbasso said...

Vixen--I was suggesting your site as the next best thing. I appreciate the non-berating! Actually, the same frustration is exactly what made me decide to dump it. I'm going to miss the way it used to work though. Back for us old-timers who depended on third-party plugins to make Blogger work the way we wanted...

Anonymous said...

YAY!

YAY!

YAY!

YAY!

YAYYYYYYYYY!


Thank you.

Very much.

T - Another Geek Girl said...

Sorry O, I just read this. Catching up when I'm supposed to be commenting on HNT. If only I had more hours in the day.

You do still have the haloscan account right? I never switched mine to JS and I manually inserted haloscan so my code is still the old code. I didn't allow haloscan to insert their code so I didn't lose blogger comments.

But here's something interesting for you--I probably should re-create this as a post as well since so many people seem to be ready to jump ship on HS. Do you know? Are they going to start charging as Summer suggested?

If you still have your haloscan account you should log in. Make sure that all of the old comments are there. I lost a couple of hundred once trying to transfer them out of HS. But they wouldn't allow me to export without a paid account-- Well, now you can!

After you log-in go to manage comments. Hit the export button. It'll download all of the comments onto your computer in an xml file (format sucks), but this is a good way to have a back-up just in case.

You should have received copies of every comment in your email as well.

These are just back-up copies I know, but best to have them-- I'm going to look at a way to transfer them.

I'm thinking of three work-arounds.
1) Add the old haloscan code (if you still have the account, we can tweak my code). Upload everything into another blog (maybe even a different platform), just to get it all together in one unit. ~~Then we can figure out how to transfer it all - not even going there yet-ugh!)
2) Start looking for another comment platform that imports from the xml files - might work!
3) The option of last resort-- manually input each comment into its original post by using the Name/URL radio button in the blogger comments. The dates/times won't match the original, but at least the comments would be there. *That's actually how I plan to add back the ones I lost--a labor of love because it's going to take a hot minute.* You could ask blog friends to help- forward comments to them from your email notices and let them insert them in the proper post. You know you can count on me if you have to take that road.


* Just went and read the notice. Holy shit! Greedy fuckwits. I can't believe they're getting support from all of those tech sites. Time to start an email campaign.
When I first started blogging I used blogback comments. They did pretty much the same thing- gave us a week or so to export comments then deleted the accounts. I exported but had no idea what to do with the files. I lost all of those comments, years worth-- with no emails to at least have a back up copy.

I'm thinking O.
Has to be a way to save the comments. If you come up with something please email me. I'll do the same.