How to Switch to Haloscan comments

My blog Grandpappy Harvey suggested I write up what I did to switch to Haloscan comments. I wish I could put in word for word what was told to me, I can’t. I seemed to have deleted a lot of emails lately. Or the email goblin got them. With that in mind, I am going to write what I did, just remember the credit still goes to Doug at Iowa Geek and Sissy at And What’s Next.

Also, I started writing this so any person would be able to follow it step by step. It got way.to.long. This is the shortened version!

First – BACKUP! Ok, Doug said this in a much better choice of words. Now I’m telling you my way - Backup your Blog site and backup your template. Preferably to a CD. How did I do this?

I had notepad open and an internet window. The template I backed up by going to Blogger dashboard, going into my blog, clicking on the Template tab, and finally clicking in my template area and doing a Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C. Then going to notepad and doing a Ctrl-V and then saved it.

Next I used wget to back up my blogger website. There is a gui interface that you can just plug in the name of your website (like http://onehappydogspeaks.blogspot.com) and press Add to wgetstart.bat and then press Start wgetstart.bat. This did not go out to imageshack and pick up my pictures. That didn’t bother me since I have a backup of every picture I put out there. If you need more detailed directions on how to do this, email me.

Second – I made changes to my Template. The biggest problem here is that everyone’s template is different. Here are the lines of code with the major change in italics. I put in bold the userid I log into Haloscan with because you will need to replace that with YOUR userid.

NOTE: all <> were replaced with []

[p class="post-footer"]
[em]posted by [$BlogItemAuthorNickname$] @ [a href="[$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$]" title="permanent link"][$BlogItemDateTime$][/a][/em]
[MainOrArchivePage]
[BlogItemCommentsEnabled]
[a class="comment-link" href="http://www.haloscan.com/comments/onehappydog/[$BlogItemNumber$]/" alt="Comment" onclick="HaloScan('[$BlogItemNumber$]'); return false;" target="_self"][script type="text/javascript"]postCount('[$BlogItemNumber$]'); [/script][noscript]Comment[/noscript][/a] | [a class="comment-link" href="http://www.haloscan.com/tb/onehappydog/[$BlogItemNumber$]/" alt="Trackback" onclick="HaloScanTB('[$BlogItemNumber$]'); return false;" target="_self"][script type="text/javascript"]postCountTB('[$BlogItemNumber$]'); [/script][noscript]Trackback[/noscript][/a] | [a class="comment-link" href="[$BlogItemCommentCreate$]]"[$BlogItemCommentFormOnclick$] [font="1"]Pre Haloscan [$BlogItemCommentCount$][/a]
[/BlogItemCommentsEnabled]

[!-- This was the OLD line of code I replaced >>> [a class="comment-link" href="[$BlogItemPermalinkURL$]#comments"][$BlogItemCommentCount$] Comments [/a][/BlogItemCommentsEnabled] <<< End of OLD line of code --]

[/font] [$BlogItemControl$]
[/MainOrArchivePage]
[!--[$BlogItemControl$]--]
[/p]

Give it a try. Or if you want some step by step help, let me know. I’ll do my best to help you out. Everyone was so helpful to me, I would like to pass it on to others.