Recent blog comments

I've noticed something that bugs me. That is the fact that many great reader comments this blog receives on a regular basis, probably go largely unread and un-replied to, simply because they're made in archived posts that are off the main page. My guess is that most of you here would enjoy the added information, memories, and dialogue from these new comments, but that you probably don't even usually see most of them (unless you regularly dig through each and every archived page here, which would be a lot of work).

Of course, as owner of this blog, I get to see any new comment automatically (each new one is e-mailed to me as soon as it's posted), but there's no way for you guys to know when old posts get new comments. And I think that's a shame. In a way, this amounts to a lot of fresh new content each week that everyone else pretty much misses out on. Sometimes people clearly work very hard on thoughtful, lengthy comments, and share wonderful details or memories in them (which I really appreciate!), and these shouldn't fall on deaf ears, I don't think.

Problem is, Blogger doesn't implement a "recent comments" sidebar feature by default, and though you can "hack" the code of your blog template and actually add that feature, it's too simplified and limited to be very useful, unfortunately. Any of these hacks I've seen to do this, will only show you the most recent comments on the main page, and that's just not very helpful. I think people should be able to see when older, archived posts get new comments, too, not just the newest stuff on the front page (which is easy to monitor yourself anyway with a cursory glance and a touch of blog familiarity and memory). But especially for a blog like this one, I think new comments in archived posts still need to be seen!

So, in an effort to make sure no one misses anything, and that all comments do get seen, I've decided to try doing it myself by hand (I'll try to do this at the beginning of each new week from now on, if it proves useful and worth doing. So, if you haven't checked some of these past entries in a while, you might want to take a peek at the new comments. I'll start with last week first. Here are all the posts that saw new comments last week (I think I got it all right)..

Last Week's New Comment Index - June 24-30, 2006
(newest entry to oldest)

Palm Beach Mall (6/29/2006)
Hillsdale Shopping Center (6/29/2006)
Dixie Square Documentary Promo #2 (6/27/2006)
SouthPark Mall (6/27/2006)
Northland Center (6/27/2006)
Lenox Square Mall (6/27/2006)
Cherry Hill Mall (6/23/2006)
Edison Mall (6/23/2006)
Greece Town Mall (6/18/2006)
Vintage Mays Discount Store TV commercial (6/18/2006)
Golf Mill Shopping Center (6/15/2006)
Gulf View Square Mall (5/31/2006)
South Flint Plaza (5/19/2006)
Unknown Shopping Center (5/16/2006)
South Coast Plaza (5/13/2006)
Cumberland Mall (9/28/2005)
Greenbriar Mall (9/28/2005)
Randhurst Shopping Center (6/09/2005)

And for good measure while kicking this off, here's the week before that:

New Comment Index - June 17-23, 2006
(newest entry to oldest)

Edison Mall (6/23/2006)
Cherry Hill Mall (6/23/2006)
Cortez Plaza (6/18/2006)
Vintage Mays Discount Store TV commercial (6/18/2006)
Greece Town Mall (6/18/2006)
Golf Mill Shopping Center (6/15/2006)
Wonderland Mall (6/15/2006)
Nicollet Mall (6/15/2006)
Vintage store interior (6/11/2006)
Westgate Shopping Center (6/11/2006)
Briarwood Mall (6/04/2006)
Westland Center (4/05/2006)
The Galleria Mall (11/07/2005)
Genesee Valley Center (10/02/2005)