Nice summary! I went with ID after I saw they were acquired by automatic, since I use WordPress. I have to say I've been very impressed with their responsiveness with respect to the couple of hiccups I've had. (Overall, integration was pretty easy - I just had an odd set up initally!)
The two drawbacks is it's not as easy to customize the CSS to match my blog's former comment styles and a lack of video comment support - neither are major showstoppers though.
I absolutely LOVE the email feature.
Like the ability to tweet comments, but really want to be able to add a field for twitter ID and haven't figured it out yet.
Great write-up - sure I'll be retweeting!
It's interesting, I don't see many people customizing. I've done very little here as well other than change the font size.
Video comments are overrated (or maybe not even). Maybe you've got an audience that's prone to use them. I just don't think the world is ready for that.
thanks for the re-tweet!
Agree about the video comments - I don't really have a need (at least not currently) but would like the option down the line. As I said - definitely not a deal breaker though! :-)
Scott,
Take a look at this cached page - http://tinyurl.com/7274hr" target="_blank">
http://tinyurl.com/7274hr- it looks like the only content indexed are the comments from ID, just to add to my above comments.
"Disqus and ID should allow the blogger to configure who gets follow links (registered users) and who doesn’t (drive-bys)."
Fo shizzle! And pay you $500 for telling them to do so!
So easy for them to make this a configurable rich feature as well. Let the blogger pick... members by NAME... X number of posts before nofollow is removed... Y number of days since first post before nofollow is removed... Z number of replies to their posts before nofollow is removed... Allow the blogger to choose NAME, X, Y or Z... or multiples of them... in either an AND or OR fashion.
So the blogger can configure settings to make sure that anyone getting juice is active, sticks around, and actually contributes to the discussions.
I would expect a future WP upgrade to handle threaded comments properly ... in the event you leave ID. But isn't this a template issue? Didn't WP 2.7 add threaded commenting? You have to update the blog's template to support it. Or at least that's how I understand it. Exactly what changes need to be made to the template I'm a little less certain.
...Dale
i believe (its all i did before i found ID) is overwrite the comments.php file within the themes folder
Hopefully. I haven't dug into the WP 2.7 comment schema, but if it supports threaded replies, then Disqus and ID would certainly need to import the comments with each comments' parent ID intact. They may not have had to do that until 2.7, so it probably requires an update on their part.
Jon of IntenseDebate here. The IntenseDebate WordPress plugin does sync the threading back to the WordPress blog, so the data is there, but as you mention if the theme doesn't support WP's threading than all the comments will still appear to be flat.
Thanks all for the great feedback though. We're definitely listening!
Thanks for that reassurance Jon.
And, in turn, if, heaven-forbid, I wanted to move to Disqus, presumably a future Disqus plugin update would support such threaded comments as they are imported into Disqus. Ideally, thsi would/could lead to the abiltiy of bloggers to freely switch back and forth between the two, keep threaded comments intact and never have to update their template so long as they are using ID or Disqus or some future competitor that supported threaded comments.
I don't know where Disqus is on this front but all this makes me MUCH more likely to try/use either if I knew I could move freely back and forth without major issues.
But, the writing seems to be on the wall that for WP users, ID will be the way to go as I expect ID to be integrated right into the WP core over time. It will be interesting to see what Disqus does to compete, or perhaps they'll just give up and abandon WP altogether.
Either way, I'm going to try out ID today (in the next hour or so) on one of my abandoned blogs. If all goes well I'll slowly add it into my primary blogs. I tried to do this a few weeks ago (when WP 2.7 was still in beta) and NOTHING worked. I'm hoping the new plugins solved whatever problem I was having.
...Dale
Scott, you make some excellent points, and rest assured that we're constantly working on improving our service. As a developer, trust me on this one :)
To be honest, the nofollow issue is something we hadn't though of, but I've added it to my todo list!
Glad you made the switch to IntenseDebate, Austin
For anyone that is interested, I wrote a rather detailed 'how-to' type post on how to add Intense Debate into a Wordpress 2.7 blog:
http://www.daleisphere.com/how-to-install-intensedebate-in-wordpress-27/" target="_blank">
http://www.daleisphere.com/how-to-install-intense...
While I obviously like it (wouldn't have installed it if I didn't). I have a few issues so far:
My template's css isn't working and the comments are flush left on my blog
I don't like the default Intense Debate avatar. It's kind of dull and grey. In WP. 2.6/2.7 you can choose a set of changing and colorful detailed default avatars. I'd really like to see this changed.
I don't like that I can't force users to enter an email address. This has resulted in MUCH more anonymous spam than before.
I would REALLY love for there to be some cross-community features between ID, Disqus and others so that commenter reputations, histories, profiles etc. work across all comment systems. I love the competition but don't much like the 'comment islands unto themselves' created by this competition.
I had significant problems getting the installation to work on two of my three blogs, even with the latest 2.0.18 plugin. But the support team was marvelous and really helped out (over weekends and even on New Years Eve). So BIG thumbs up to the support/development team (Jon and Austin in particular) for going the extra mile to get the wrinkles worked out.
the 'IntenseDebate Enhanced Moderation' option screws up the comment moderation page in my Wordpress 2.7 dashboard. It makes the page only a few inches long instead of the entire length of my open browser. So, I have that option unchecked for now.
most of my commenters are NOT ID users, so it's a bit of a waste land for now. I'm hoping some will choose to sign up.
would be nice if there were some formatting options for the users (so they can underline, make bullet lists etc.).
I'm looking forward to seeing how this all works out.
...Dale
Scott, I figured that there needed to be a third employee in the comment section here... ;-)
In regards to the nofollow link attribute, IntenseDebate comments are generated by JavaScript so comments (including the links they contain) are not indexed. However with our WordPress plugin, comments are output back into the WordPress comment section, so whatever nofollow or dofollow configurations you had in WordPress are applied to comments that are synced back into WordPress.
Hope that helps!
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Conclusion
I have to say, feature-wise it's pretty much a toss up between Disqus and ID. For me, ID wins on scalability. I should say Disqus loses on scalabilty, as it was theirs to lose. If it wasn't for the issues I had, I'd still be using them, mostly because I they got me early and I was very loyal. Technical issues forced me away. Otherwise, for now, IntenseDebate made up a lot of ground since last spring when I had my first look. It is working out pretty well, and even seems to have a certain "je ne sais quoi". People are liking it.