Comment on photo as opposed to gallery

denisegoldberg · September 30, 2008

I just got a notification of a comment posted in my guestbook. When I followed the notification link I was surprised to be shown the single image view rather than the normal journal-style view.

A new comment from Kerry was shown.
Yet when I go to the journal-style view, Kerry's comment is missing.

I entered a test comment myself to see if it was visible in the journal-style view. It is. And yet, Kerry's comment is still missing. I looked again, and I found a clue. Kerry's comment is assigned to the photo, and all of the other comments are assigned to the gallery. Is there any way to get the photo comments to show in the gallery comments list? Please?

Comments on gallery only - http://denise.smugmug.com/gallery/2513005.
Single image, comments gallery + photo - http://denise.smugmug.com/gallery/2513005_Npmsq/1/131968161_udEqu/Large

If I hadn't received the email notification I would never have seen Kerry's comment because I usually only look at the gallery, no reason to click the photo.

--- Denise

rainforest1155 · September 30, 2008

Hi Denise,

Sorry for the confusion. Your guestbook gallery is set to journal style. This view shows multiple medium sized photos on one page. That is the reason that at the end of a journal page we only show the comments that have been left on the whole gallery. The photo comments are only shown if you view a photo in detail by clicking on it.

So if a user looks at your guestbook gallery and uses the comment button, he would only be able to leave a comment on the whole gallery in the same fashion as the comments are displayed to you and your visitors.

Kerry however chose to click on your guestbook photo and ended up in single image view on where by default the comment is left for the individual photo. He could have chosen to leave the comment for the whole gallery, but I guess he didn't knew or didn't think it would be important.

There are two ways to resolve this:
1. In the future, always use the single image view by clicking on your photo to check your guestbook for comments or
2. prevent users from clicking on the photo by using the code from #50 of our advanced customization faq. Keep in mind that this isn't fool proof and visitors without javascript may still be able to click on the photo.

I hope this helps.

Sebastian

Allen · September 30, 2008

Another option is create your guestbook this way then the photo's not clickable.

denisegoldberg · September 30, 2008

rainforest1155 wrote:

Your guestbook gallery is set to journal style. This view shows multiple medium sized photos on one page. That is the reason that at the end of a journal page we only show the comments that have been left on the whole gallery. The photo comments are only shown if you view a photo in detail by clicking on it.

Thanks Sebastian.

That's kind of the answer that I expected. Unfortunately, the behavior doesn't make any logical sense at all.

The comment was entered for the photo. I get that. So why when I look at that photo do I see comments that were entered for the gallery as opposed to for the photo? For this to make logical sense, only comments entered for the photo should be shown on that photo, and all comments should be shown for the gallery (since the photo is in the gallery).

I don't expect another reply to this - I accept that this is the way that it works. I question the logic, but I guess I'll have to live with it.

--- Denise