We are interested in allowing our users to add reviews, comments to records in our online catalog, much like Amazon.com.
Our understanding from InMagic is that this is possible but requires customization that will cost us.
Does anyone have experience doing this on their own that lend some advice?

Elaine,

We have set this up for several clients - see the Imagine Canada site at http://library.imaginecanada.ca/pp/default.aspx. This Promising Practices site is one of their smaller databases so it is easier to find records that have comments. Our implementations store the comments in a separate database linked on RecordID so that we can keep the comment, contact info and date submitted plus the status and any internal notes about the comment rather than trying to add the comments alone as repeating fields in the main database.

As yours will also be a public site rather than intranet only, you will have to watch out for the following :
- Inappropriate comments – you may want to set up an access control field and have all new entries be marked pending. Set up the silent password so that these records do not show immediately so you can moderate new posts.
- There are unfortunately automated bots that scour the web looking for places to submit content. If the Add a comment is only on the full record display this should minimize the chance of these bots finding your page.
- However if these bots do find your submit form, the content is often a link to a website (often X-rated) which is another reason to consider moderating posts.
- These bots can also try and submit HTML or other code which can be malicious if inadvertently executed.

An easy and cheap alternative might be to create a mailto link with the Record ID and or Title embedded so at least when you receive an emailed comment, you know which record the user was referring to. Please contact us privately if you need any assistance.

Kathy