Like many of you out there, I had noticed that my comments were
working but the counter was not incrementing. For me it happened when
I upgraded from IIS5/PHP4 to IIS6/PHP5, but I did not have the time to
really figure it out. Last night I basically started my new design and
after much trial and error, I found out why the counter was stuck at
"0 comments"… it's the MIME type of the comment file.

Basically, every time a new comment is started it creates a file in
your comments directory. This file has a ".comment" extension (eg.
107162330427319286.comment) and stores the information that the user
entered in.

The problem as I can see, is that the web service (IIS6 in my case)
does not recognize the ".comment" extension and therefore won't allow
direct access to the file. To test this, you can try to enter in the
full location of one of your comment files into the address bar in
your web browser. (eg.
http://www.mysite.com/comments/107162330427319286.comment) When I
attempted this, I received a "404 – Page can not be found" error, even
though I knew the file existed.

To remedy the problem I followed the general directions found at
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/iis/6/all/proddocs/en-us/wsa_mi\
memapcfg.mspx

1. In IIS Manager, right-click the Web site for which you want to add
a MIME type, and click Properties.
2. Click the HTTP Headers tab.
3. Click Mime Types.
4. Click New.
5. In the Extension box, type "comment". (Without the quotes)
6. In the MIME type box, type "text/plain". (Without the quotes)
7. Click OK.
8. Stop and Start the website.

Now try entering the full location of your comment file into the
address bar in your web browser again, (eg.
http://www.mysite.com/comments/107162330427319286.comment) This time
instead of a 404 error, you should be able to see the data of your
comment file, and your counters should all be updated to reflect their
proper numbers.

I hope that clears up much of the confusion that has been surrounding
the issue of comments not incrementing. It seemed to do the trick for
me… I hope it works for the rest of you.

Drew