I've been asked how I acheive the alternating comment styles in my blog. When this blog was custom built on CodeIgniter, I used alternator() in the string helper. It looked like this:

<?php foreach ($post_comments->result() as $comment): ?>     <div class="comment<?= alternator(' even', ' odd');?>        <p><?php         if ($comment->comment_author_website) {             echo anchor ($comment->comment_author_website, $comment->comment_author_name);         } else {             echo $comment->comment_author_name;         }         ?> wrote on <?= date ('F jS, Y @ G:i', $comment->comment_date);?></p>         <?= $comment->comment_body;?>     </div> <?php endforeach; ?>

When I switched my blog over to ExpressionEngine a few months ago, I decided to change my strategy a bit, and use the tools EE makes available for me. Specificly, the {switch} tag for comments.

{exp:comment:entries sort="asc"}     <div class="{switch="even|odd"}">         <p>{url_as_author} wrote on {comment_date format="%F %d<sup>%S</sup>, %Y @ %G:%i"}</p>         {comment}     </div> {/exp:comment:entries}

I find it ever bit as intuitive as pure PHP, and I love the convenience shortcuts like {url_as_author} (Hyperlink pointing to the URL (if it exists) with the author name as the link title. If the URL does not exist simply the name is returned).

I still have all the legacy code (of course) from the custom written blog app, and while I don't want to release it wholesale, I'd be happy to field any specific questions about any part of it.