Fandom High OOC

With Prom coming up tomorrow, we've been doing some detective work on when, where and how the Classic and (other) Custom comments break pages, and putting together our best suggestions on how to avoid it. This is a "for now" thing, of course; should LJ fix the pagebreaking issues, we'll let everybody know ASAP.

Here's what we've discovered: as long as you don't let any individual thread -- one single line of back and forth replies counting from the top-level reply to the post (aka the OCD header) -- reach 100 comments, you won't break the page.

So, to make big posts like Prom and the picnics work:

When a thread gets to around 90 comments (or fewer if you want to be extra-cautious), do 1 of 2 things

• Move the conversation to someone's character journal, and end the comm thread with a link over to the personal post



• Stay in the comm post, but
  
  
  • Go back and reply to the third comment in the thread -- in other words, not the OCD header and not the anchor comment of the first character in the conversation (because other people might have replied to that too and you don't want their subthreads to interrupt yours)
  
  
  
  • Branch off from there with a "Continued from..." link, and start counting toward 90 again
  
  
  
  • Also make sure you add one more "Continued over here..." comment to the end of the previous subthread so everything's linked up!
  
  

If we pull that off, we can have threads that look like this, and pages that look like this without anything getting busticated!

(The screened comments are saving your sanity from the creepypasta I was posting when I got bored with replying YOUR FACE to myself.)

This has been tested in both Firefox and Chrome, and on the Classic Comments (which all the FH comms are in) as well as custom comments for Smooth Sailing, Flexible Squares, and Expressive -- so you should be able to use the same strategy to avoid breaking pages in your personal posts too.

__

As a related note, we're going to put up a resource post soonish on the different types of comment styles and how to enable them, the issues with them, and so on, linking up the stuff we've already posted in bits and pieces. We'll also include a discussion section for people to describe what they're using and either ask for help or offer it. It'll take a little while to pull it together, especially with this weekend keeping everyone busy, but it's on the horizon!

Also special thanks to longislandiceme for taking his shirt off FOR SCIENCE, and yes, I totally want to do Pixelated Naughty Bits day for realz sometime so we can have Equal Opportunity Shirtlessness.