Awhile ago I wrote that I’d love it if the parasite douchebags who practice comment spamming websites and the shit they spew could be relegated to a Junk folder, never to see the light of day and whose whoredoms are deleted from my database on a regular basis without any act whatsoever from me. Movable Type 3.2 has this functionality. It is SWEET.
But all was not smooth in the migration to 3.2 for this site. My templates hadn’t been upgraded since several versions ago. So my comments script that I run to turn off comments on old posts killed my comments altogether after the upgrade. I didn’t notice this, as my most recent posts are left open for comment until I deem. I close comments for a couple of reasons. One, partially due to an untapped and unrealized God complex and two, partially due to an overdeveloped sense of needing to be able to shut someone the hell up when I want.
So I didn’t notice my missing comments for a few days. I fixed the script, but that meant re-opening all my old comments. I don’t care that much, but some of the conversations are over and I want to keep moving forward, man, because the future, man, the future…
There are a couple of ways, with Movable Type 3.2 to fix this. The first is to use the tag MTIfCommentsActive instead of the MTEntryIfAllowComments tag. Then follow these instructions. I have no idea what this does aside from create a new template, but I did it and it works with my comment closing script.
The Accept Comments checkbox appears to work with the desired effectl if unchecked, it effectively turns off comments. If there are existing comments, they stay on the page and the correct message indicating that comments are closed displays. Extra sweet, if a little confusng.