What is the easiest way to allow people to make comments on my site?

[brainshrub]

I want a simple link under each headline that would bring people to another page where they can make comments.

There is so much material on this topic that I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all. I don't know PHP or ASP, so it must be extremely simple without altering the look of my site.

Ideas or suggestions?

[Xithras]

1. Do you know what languages your server supports?

ASP? .Net? JSP? PHP? PERL? There are dozens of turnkey freeware site comment scripts on the web that you could easily incorporate into your site, but without knowing which languages your server supports it's tough to recommend one.

[brainshrub]

2. My brother owns the server, so I can use whatever I ask & he'll install.

The only criteria is 1) Simplicity. 2) It must not change the look of the site.

The idea is that after each headline, people can be brought to a separate page to make comments on that particular story.

Again, there is copious information on this topic. All of them claim to be easy to install... so I want advise.

Thanks-in-advance.

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Install a CMS portal or blog package

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

[brainshrub]

4. Thanks!

I have a very clear vision of what I want my site to be, it's just that there is so much to learn before I can make the vision happen. I don't even know where to start.

The link you provided was excellent!

Right now everything I do with my site is done by-hand with Dreamweaver. What I need to do is find someone local who knows a lot about portals and blogs and pay them to sit with me at my house over a beer and talk this out for a few hours.

At least I will know where to start.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Starting with one of these gets you a bunch of sophisticated functionality

immediately. Just add your own content now and evolve the look & feel later.

You will need MySql and PHP for most of the CMS's.