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---
title: Reference links, alerts and comments
date: 2026-10-22 22:30
updated: 2026-10-22 23:05
status: published
type: post
tags: [TSBlog, Themestrap, release notes]
description: TSBlog now understands reference-style links and GitHub alerts, and has a lite comment system you can switch on.
---

Three additions this time: reference links, GitHub style alerts, and comments.

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Reference links

Write the address once and reuse it. The definition can sit anywhere in the post and never shows on the page:

Images work the same way (![alt][logo]), and names are not case sensitive.

Alerts

Start a quote with [!NOTE], [!TIP], [!IMPORTANT], [!WARNING] or [!CAUTION] and it becomes a highlighted box:

> [!NOTE]
> Useful information.

They are drawn with Themestrap's PluginAlert, with an icon, a title and colors for light and dark mode. The script only loads on posts that contain an alert, and without JavaScript you still get a plain colored box.

Comments

Comments are off until you turn them on under Settings → Comments. Pick one of:

I approve each comment first. New comments wait in the admin.
Show comments right away. A comment with more than two links still waits.
Closed. Existing comments stay, no new ones are accepted.

Readers give a name, an optional email (never shown) and their comment, and can reply one level deep. The admin has a Comments page to approve, mark as spam or delete, with a count of what is waiting.

Spam is handled without a captcha: a form token, a hidden trap field, a per visitor rate limit, a link limit and duplicate detection. Everything lives in one private file, data/comments.php, which works the same with files or SQLite and is included in the backup.

Both themes show comments out of the box. If you made your own theme, add one call to ts_comments_section($post) in post.php. The Comments page in the docs has the details.

Updating

This release adds no new folders, so one click on update is all it takes.