The Action is in the Comments

by Scott Jangro on 21 March 2008

My favorite part of blogging has always been the comments. I enjoy participating in discussions on other blogs and I love when lively discussions happen on my own blog posts. It’s what keeps me going. I love comments!

It totally blows my mind when bloggers have comments disabled on their website, or even when people require accounts to get people to comment. I understand that these decisions are mostly driven by spam issues, but try not to let the spam ruin a great thing. Make it easy for real people to comment!

More and more, I’ve been noticing the use of some pretty fancy comment plugins for Wordpress.

Here are some great new tools that you can use to pimp up your blog comments:

Video Comments
Viddler Video Comments

Comments on Steroids
Disqus Comment System
SezWho Comment System
IntenseDebate Comment System

I want so badly to try out one of these comment systems, but they make me a bit nervous from a data migration perspective. The comments are stored on their servers, which is fine, but can I get them out and put them into my blog later if I don’t want to use them any more?

They also concern me from a search engine perspective. Some of them are pure javascript includes, which mean when a search engine comes by, the comments are invisible.

I’ll be experimenting with these on my test blogs, and will post more on what I find and some recommendations.

Sites Mentioned in Video:
CostPerNews
Mashable

  • Its not just the fact that you allow comments, its also that you participate in the discussion with your readers!!!!

    Some bloggers allow comments, but don't participate in the discussion.

    Keep it up!
  • Scott
    Jitendra,

    Thanks for the info. What I found with my personal investigation of disqus differs from what both of you guys are saying. Clearly I need to take a much closer look, which I'll do soon.
  • Scott
    Hey G.

    No reason for the switch other than to check out Viddler since I saw them with this video comment thing and some big video bloggers are using it, like iJustine and Gary Vaynerchuk from WineLibrary.tv.

    I'm pretty much still feeling my way around all this stuff. I'll write up a review of the different ones I try, though I like them both a lot, so I don't know how many more I need to try out.
  • George Conlow
    I wrote you an email to ask you this, but then decided, given the blog entry, that you'd prefer a comment.

    Aaaaanyway - Saw you switched from Blip to Viddler. Curious as to why?
  • Scott,

    with both ID and Disqus the comments are stored on their server and as a result you lose out in terms of page rank (for google)...

    Take a look at
    http://scobleizer.com/2007/12/11/bloggers-disqu...

    SezWho on the other hand is context, ratings and reputation service rather then a comment replacement system...so the comments stay where they belog...Also the sync is really automatic, you just activate the plugin and sezwho indexes your existing comments to get you up and running in minutes...Also no migration means you can turn it off anytime as well in case you don't like it without worrying about any sync issues again.

    Thanks, Jitendra
  • Scott
    @Kyle, yeah, I should have mentioned co.comment. I've tried that as well, didn't like it much. It's probably been a year though, so they may have made improvements.

    How to get people to comment? That's sort of the big question. I don't really know. I'd say it first requires a sizable reader base, then the comments will come.

    @Isaac, thanks for the clarification. I guess I could have been more clear in the differentiation. Yes, for both Intense Debate and Disqus, the comments are not stored in the database, but I think with Disqus, when using the WP plugin, they're loaded on the server side and displayed in HTML.

    If I read correctly (I fully admit I haven't tried it yet) Intense Debase loads the comments via JS on the client.

    The difference is that Disqus comments will be visible to search engines, Intense Debate comments will not.

    The Intense Debate migration tools do sound much better developed.

    I look forward to giving it a try, but unfortuntely it won't work with the video comments I just installed.
  • Hey,

    Intense Debate comes as a plugin for Wordpress, just like disqus does. However the comments are still loaded with javascript and not stored in the database, I think this goes for disqus too.

    Intense Debate has the most complete toolset for Data Migration there is in the comment plugin sphere right now. If you install Intense Debate you have the option to import previous comments into ID, and if you ever decide to leave you can export the comments generated using ID back into your own database! We also have the option to export to the .xml format, which is useful if you want to create your own script that puts the comments back in the database or for backup purposes.

    Let us know if you have any questions or feedback on our service, contactus@intensedebate.com. Thanks!
  • http://www.cocomment.com/ is also used for tracking conversations you've participated in. I've never used it myself but it's been around for a while.

    How do you suggest getting more participation on your posts so visitors comment?
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