Actually Shawn and other IE users, you can help me out. Does this post load ok in IE?
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/10/24/back-in-the-...
How' href='http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/10/24/back-in-the-disqus-sion/">http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/10/24/back-in-the-...
How'>http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/10/24/back-in-the-disqus-sion/">http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/10/24/back-in-the-...
How about if you view more (and more and more) comments?
I'm not too concerned about rocketships right now. We're more focused on the destination and the steps we need to take in reaching that. That image is much clearer to me today. We have a really good idea of where we're taking Disqus and the steps involve keeping our users happy and hungry for more.
As more services embrace the ideas we've been pushing, it only gets better for this company and all the bloggers and readers that will benefit.
Sorry, who is the turtle and who is the rocketship again?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/intense-de...
They' href='http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/intense-debate-soups-up-your-blog-comments/">http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/intense-de...
They'>http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/intense-debate-soups-up-your-blog-comments/">http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/intense-de...
They launched private beta on the same day!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/intense-de...
They' href='http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/intense-debates-commenting-system-out-of-beta-and-very-open/">http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/intense-de...
They'>http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/intense-debates-commenting-system-out-of-beta-and-very-open/">http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/intense-de...
They launched publicly on the same day!
Many of the features including OpenID integration, import/export, XML download, etc Intense Debate launched with publicly out of the gate setting the standard for data retrieval by the publisher. Disqus had some nice features too, but "clearly" not as much of rocketship as you speak of.
Thanks for the comment, but I really don't think you read what I wrote very carefully, PTG.
I know they got started on the same day. (perfect for a race analogy)
From my perspective anyway, Disqus took the early lead (thus the rabbit in my analogy), with Intense Debate being the turtle with their less traction despite their strong feature set. (or that would be hare and tortoise to be true to the fable, sorry Aesop!)
If you remember the fable, the tortoise won. So I'm not sure my comparing Intense Debate to the tortoise was disrespecting them in any way.
Anyway, in this case well before the race could be played out on its own, Automattic jumped in (they, of course being the rocketship) and may just carry Intense Debate to the finish line, into orbit, or who knows what will happen.
So, you obviously junked Disqus for Intense Debate. As I type this comment you are using ID. Why the switch back? Are you using WP 2.7 yet? It appears that you lost all the threading in your conversion back to ID. It was my understanding that under 2.7, switching back and forth between Disqus and ID would retain threading.
Curious minds want to know.
...Dale
© 2012 http://www.jangro.com/
RSS
My long love affair with Disqus came to an abrupt halt several weeks ago after they introduced their new API plugin and the comment import functionality.
I was a little concerned about using it because I have a post here with over 1000 comments, and pulling all those via API on the back end with each page load would put some serious strain on both my server and their service, especially for a page that is viewed often.
I gave it a try anyway. It was pretty slow to load, but it worked (some local caching would have helped) so I left it running.
A few weeks later, I discovered that anyone who was using Internet Explorer to view those pages with the huge number of comments was getting a browser crash! Yikes.
After a few emails back and forth with Andrew at Disqus, he did indicate that he saw the problem but that it would take a little while to fix.
At that point, I was forced to pull Disqus and go back to the spammy old Wordpress comment system. I think the disappointment of the whole thing even knocked me out of blogging for a while.
Fast Forward about 6 weeks and still no fix. Andrew did indicate that the new paging in the latest version (2.03) of the Disqus plugin would solve the problem.
Great! I wanted paging anyway, for that pesky post with 1300 comments.
So now it is installed and I'm giving it a go. Here's what I've found.
New Disqus Features
First, I did a comment import to update the comments that have collected in the past 6 weeks. It came back with an "Error" import status. It looks like the comments did get imported, so I'm not sure what's wrong there.
Pagination
The pagination works, but I don't love the implementation. They use the view some comments, and "click to view more" model where it will use ajax to pull down the next block of comments. This goes on until the page fills up with comments.
But if you're viewing my 1300 comment post, that's, uh, 52 clicks to get to the last page. I can increase the comments per page, or I could display them in reverse order, but neither seem like a good tradeoff. People just don't see reverse order comment threads very often.
I think I'd prefer the previous page / next page / first page / last page model.
It does allow the posts with hundreds of comments to load more quickly. I do wonder what SEO impact that may have.
Trackbacks
Discus now supports trackbacks. Seems to be working as I see all the old trackbacks showing, though the true test will be for a new trackback, I guess.
What's in store for Disqus
Of course the big elephant in the room is the impending doom that is the Intense Debate integration with Wordpress that's coming in the next major release.
Disqus was clearly the rabbit out of the gate in the blog comment system race. The Intense Debate turtle hitched a ride on a rocketship.
What do you think will happen?