I wanted to use DISQUS to moderate the comments on this particular blog, and here’s how I did it (You obviously need a DISQUS account to do this).  If a file referred to doesn’t exist, copy it from vendor/plugins/app/views/blogs to your theme directory.

1. Remove the old comment form:
   themes/mysite/views/blogs/show.html.erb
   remove the render “_form” line since we don’t need a comment form anymore
2. Add the Disqus embed code
   themes/mytheme/views/blogs/_comments.html.erb
   Replace everything in this file with the disqus embed code, replace mysite below with your disqus shortname.

   <div id='comments'>
    <div id="disqus_thread"></div>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    var disqus_identifier = "<%= @blog.permalink %>";
    <%= "var disqus_developer = 1;" if local_request? %>
   
    (function() {
    var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;
    dsq.src = 'http://mysite.disqus.com/embed.js';
    (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);
    })();
    </script>
    <noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript=mysite">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>
   </div>

3. Add the disqus comment counter code
   /themes/mysite/views/blogs/index.html.erb
   
   Change line 16 to:

     <%= link_to 'Read more', blog_post_url(blog.permalink)+"#disqus_thread" -%>
   

   Put this somewhere near the bottom:

   <% content_for :footer do -%>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    //<![CDATA[
    (function() {
    var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
    var query = '?';
    for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
    if(links[i].href.indexOf('#disqus_thread') >= 0) {
    query += 'url' + i + '=' + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + '&';
    }
    }
    document.write('<script charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript" src="http://disqus.com/forums/poetrybooths/get_num_replies.js' + query + '"></' + 'script>');
    })();
    //]]>
    </script>
   <% end -%>

   /themes/mysite/views/shared/_footer.html.erb
   add <%= yield :footer %> to your footer file so our comment counter javascript gets placed there.

Pretty easy.

Here’s an example: My site needs a main nav to link offsite in a new window by adding target=”_blank” to the link, which is not handled out of the box by refinery.  So I copied vendor/refinery/app/views/shared/_menu_branch.html.erb into my theme directory to override the functionality and modified line 11 to the following:

<%= link_to menu_branch.title, menu_branch.url, \
:target => menu_branch.url.include?("http://") ? "_blank" : "" %>

Now any link containing http:// is automatically given a blank target. Presto.

Over time, I started to realize there were things about git that would be really nice, like nice branching and merging in particular, but I thought, that’s for some day when I have time to learn it, or my pain becomes too great with branches (which I don’t use that often in svn).

Just a couple days ago I needed to extend some code that was hosted on github, so I forked it, cloned it, and just started to work. In that process I’m discovering things that are just making git start to click. Whoops, didn’t mean to commit that yet: git-reset. I need to pull in some other changes, but can’t yet because I have uncommitted changes: git-stash.

Combined with the git bundle for textmate, I’m actually having fun learning git.

Moral: Try new stuff (in a real-life scenario), it’s fun and can make your life better.