How to remove Haloscan from my blog without loosing my comments?

There doesn't appear to be anything on the forum abouut removing Haloscan or importing Haloscan comments. I'm considering going to Intense Debate, but I need to know I can do these things. My blog is http://tmfree.blogspot.com.

J.

Thanks for the reply.

I have found out how to remove Haloscan -- although they haven't told me how. Bad service!

Googling found me a blog that explains how. It's not hard, but requires getting your hands dirty in the HTML.

The bad news is that you are telling me that I can't import comments, even though Haloscan allows me to export them.

That's a deal breaker. Too bad, your system looks good. The only complaint I've heard is slow loading time.

Oh, well! Good luck to you guys, although our paths are not likely to cross again.

J.

Hi, John! I've found a way to remove it too, but just like your method, it requires manual modifications in the HTML and do not save the comments.
Haloscan has a feature to export the comments, but it requires a premium account.
Too bad.

Hi!

Yeah, I'm a Premium Account -- and have exported my comments. But if I understands Michael, there's still no way to import the Haloscan comments. This puzzles me. Seems like a no-brainer.

As far as I can tell, the only solution is to cut and paste old comments. With thousands of comments, this isn't going to happen.

J.

Hmmm,

Thanks for getting back to me. You clearly have great customer service -- before I'm even a customer!

I could send you the export file I have, if that would help. But I don't know know the format myself.

This is the link to a blog that gave me enough info to hack the HTM: http://smackspeaks.blogspot.com/2005/...

I hope this works out!

I could go from sad to pumped!

J.

I have the same issue, but have developed an interim solution... I am using blogger so I installed the Intense Debate widget for just my new posts (turned off comments on all new posts, since I had haloscan installed in such a way that turning on/off coments would show/hide the haloscan comment link)... but as soon as I can import my haloscan comments I'll turn on ID for all.

TravisM,

Would you be comfortable sharing a link to your blog? I'd like to see how your suggestion works.

No problem... http://foodforfish.blogspot.com

Thanks, Travis for the link.

Maybe I'm technically challenged. But I don't understand what you did. Would you explain in more detail?

I see that the old coments are Haloscan and the new ones appear to be Intense Debate. How did you do that?

First if you turn off the coments for a post does your Haloscan comment link disapear? If so, than everything is setup for this tweak to work. If not, you'll need to do some HTML editing in your layout/template to make this work.

If the comment off/on feature is working correctly than follow this:

1. Go into blogger, settings, comments, and set your "comments default for new posts" to "New comments do not have comments"

2. Now log into ID, install ID to blogger using the Widget install, not the Template/Layout install.

3. That should do it.

Basically it's a hybrid setup, all old posts continue to show your haloscan link, while all new ones will use your ID, thus allowing, from this point forward, all of the ID features (such as comments on the same page as the post, and links that go to the post).

I hope that makes sense. If your Haloscan code isn't working properly, you can try removing all references to it, and reinstalling it per Haloscan's instructions...

But the ultimate solution would be for ID to allow haloscan importing! :)

Thanks, TravisM,

This sounds very promising.

I have run into a problem, however. In attempting to uninstall or reinstall Intense Debate, I get the following error:

Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: The reference to entity "action" must end with the ';' delimiter.

Fortunately this is on a test blog I set up, not my real blog.

I'll try setting up another test blog and trying from scratch. I'll let you know if this method works for me or not.

Well my solution only went so far... :( If I goto a post's page in my archives, the haloscan links don't show, and ID does instead, thus not giving access to my old comments on the post pages, on index pages it works fine... any ideas? Also, if I sent the file Haloscan produces on export would it be of any value to send it to ID? Thanks!

Hi, Michael,

I followed the instructions on my test blog, http://2testtmfree.blogspot.com/ . It says it's installed, and I can see the widgets on my "Layout" page. But there is nowhere to post comments on my blog page.

Can you help?

J.

I"m fairly certain I have ID set to show on only new posts (I installed it as a widget after the template install wasn't working for me... I'm wondering if the haloscan code is interferring) and have set my comment settings to "New posts do not have comments". Durring the installation I chose "Display ID comments on: All new posts"

Main page (an Index page) links for haloscan and ID are working as I want: http://foodforfish.blogspot.com (the last post on there at the moment has haloscan comments, and it works).

http://foodforfish.blogspot.com/2008_... this is May's archive/index page, haloscan comments work.

http://foodforfish.blogspot.com/2008/... this is an old post (from May) that should have 3 haloscan comments but instead is showoing ID's comments (of which there are none naturally).

Hope that helps.

As for the Haloscan exporter, I have 1,323 comments... It says it exports in CAIF format?? When I click to download it the file downloaded is in XML. I can send a file if you wish...

Okay jsut sent it in. Thanks!

Well, that's ok, I'll have to just keep on chugging through and find my own solution. If I can just get the haloscan link to show on my old posts, than I'll be a happy camper. I'll start bugging haloscan on their side... although that's been far less responsive than ID... Thanks for all the trouble.

I'm a potential IntenseDebate customer. How would the former HaloScan users compare HS to ID? Why'd you decide to leave HS?

After all, I really don't care about my old comments anymore. i've installed ID on new topics and decided to let Haloscan there. But it's still on new posts - you only see ID if you view a single post. Now I'm trying to get rid of Haloscan, but it's hard too. Hope I can do it until next week.

Now, my brother had contacted the Haloscan team and has removed it from the Blog - http://riffsesolos.blogspot.com. But, we still can't see Intense Debate link to comment on the posts while browsing in the first page and seeing all the posts at the same time.

I really want to jump from haloscan to ID but I'm confused. Can I safely grab ID for all new posts and leave haloscan on the old ones? That would be okay, if it would work.

why am I a cupcake?

never mine- I uncupcaked myself

To answer your question, yes you should be able to leave the haloscan comments in place and have IDC only for newer ones

I've jumped off the blogger bandwagon and imported all my comments (haloscan and ID), moved my blog to my own domain and am now using WordPress... so that's why I'm not using either haloscan nor ID right now.

I have a similar problem, i know how to remove haloscan but i know the method that requires you to get the hands dirty in HTML, which even does not restores commemnts
My blog is http://techmania-shail.blogspot.com

I found
http://solidearthnyc.blogspot.com/200...

The above link also useful for The problem
But still it says "all your comments 'll be deleted" if you follow their method!

http://www.haloscan.com/help/Removing...