Thanks Daniel. It seems like you guys are really onto something here. A lot of what I was trying to do with Bumpzee a year ago with the comment tracking. good stuff.
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Disqus FTW!
Sorry, had to do that.
But seriously, I love this service and recommend it for all bloggers. Tumblr integration is killer.
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Ok I am back with the picture... Ubuntu gives me some strange errors over on the disqus.com...' href='http://disqus.com">disqus.com...'>http://disqus.com">disqus.com...
No I am not giving in..... The Yahoo is publicly traded company. They have made a huge mistake leaving their digital fingerprints there. I think I will make a video over the weekend.... a good opportunity to give dontbeanidiot.org' href='http://dontbeanidiot.org">dontbeanidiot.org'>http://dontbeanidiot.org">dontbeanidiot.org
Gary from winelibrery uses Viddler, does he not? I will give the a shot over the weekend. I like disqus by the way. Looks like I will be using it quiet a bit.
I meant to say it is a good opportunity to give dontbeanidiot.org' href='http://dontbeanidiot.org">dontbeanidiot.org'>http://dontbeanidiot.org">dontbeanidiot.org a plug
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[...] New Comments System: Disqus Written by Vlad on March 29, 2008 – 2:52 pm I has been a while since I first time saw Disqus. I believe it was on one of the Sam Harrelson’s blogs. But it did not took long for this new way of managing blog comments to begin spread. [...]
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Scott,
Thanks for trying out SezWho and for a good analysis. We are working on a template for threaded comments where the comments...This skin would provide a standard look for comments with threading but would keep the comments within your system and thereby avoid all SEO issues.
Thanks, Jitendra (SezWho)
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It mus be my theme. It works perfectly on Go Beyond MLS:
http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/
I' href='http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/">http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/
I'>http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/">http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/
I guess I need to look for a new theme for Sage Blogger.
Scott,
Can you do me a favor a leave a test comment here:
http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/' href='http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/">http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/'>http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/">http://www.go-beyond-mls.com/more-threats/
There are getting to be so many comment systems it is hard to decide which one would be the most useful. It needs to be easy to use, encourage comments, yet keep the ads for things like little blue pills at bay. I like the looks of this Disqus, and I will be interested to see how you like it after using it awhile.
A bonus for Disqus is that they’ve been integrated into FriendFeed recently (last week), so your comments can appear in your “lifestreamâ€.
Not so much a bonus as the absolute, mind numbing killer app moment. Well for me at least.
Now if they could nail import of existing blog comments, my life would be complete.
I am not sure if guys from Disqus are following this thread. It looks like once you have published a post, in order for the system to track the comments properly, you should not change the "post slug"(WP) or posts permalik. I misspelled a word in a URL today got three comments on the posts, but then noticed the misspelling. After correcting the misspelling, Disqus showed that there were 0 comments. I wish there was a way to adjust the permalink from inside of your account on Disqus... Unless there is, but I do not know about it.
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I found this analysis to be extremely helpful. Thanks for taking the time out to do the research. I really dislike the idea of a community group/forum on Disqus. I think I'll try Intense Debate instead. If I'm not mistaken, I think the Obama folks were using intense debate when change.gov first came on line.
We have had intense debate installed now for over 4 weeks and its been nothing but a nightmare. Incredible amount of bugs - mangles inserted links, restricts characters submitted, just plain won't accept some readers comments, the sign up process is incredibly difficult. But worst of all is the support or should I say the lack of it. 12 days ago emailed support after posting on their help forum for a week and the only response back was other bloggers with the same problems and no support. Finally got an email 5 days later from tech support Michael Koenig apologizing for the delay and promising to take action - now 7 days later still heard nothing. I'm not persisting anymore - all I can say is if that is the best they can do they will go broke and deserve too. Satisfaction rating out of 10 is a very unhappy 0.
Wow, yeah, that's pretty bad. I have to say that my response from Michael has been better than yours. Luck of the draw, perhaps.
The mangled links does make me angry. I don't know why they don't address that. Or maybe they have. Let's try a few...
with http
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blog-comment-systems/" target="_blank">
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blo...
without http
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blog-comment-systems/" target="_blank">
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blog-comme...
hmm, if I remember correctly one of those two methods would mangle a link. maybe inline? http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blog-comment-systems/" target="_blank">
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/03/28/evaluating-blo...
G'day Scott,
The links work sometimes either way on Agmates too. But here is a laugh i just left a comment for Michael on his ID blog. posted a link with http: - clicked on it 4 times and it worked - the 5th time it mangled the link and got a 404 error on the site linked to.
I've had it, am going to dump it.
Just a question - what do you know about the JS-Kit system?
Hey Scott,
You'll be interestedvto know that I just tried to post that comment and it just sat there spinning the little arrows and thinking, after a couple of minutes I closed the page went back to the email and clicked through and posted again
This time no problem. This really is a terrible piece of software. Our community fortunatly thinks its just a huge joke how bad it is.
But we've had enough. Worse of all is being ignore by the ID tech guys.
I don't know much about JS-Kit other than as a user.
The way I understand it, it's a simple variation on what ID and Disqus do. Pure javascript, plug and play. at least last time I looked at it, that was the case.
I like to have the comments sync with Wordpress, exportable, and displayed server-side to be indexed in search engines. I don't think JS-Kit provides that level of integration.
Good luck!
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I find I respect designboom more for the lack of comment obsession :)
http://www.dealshunt.com" rel="dofollow" rel="nofollow">hot electronics deals--
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Continuing on my everquest to reach blog comment nirvana, I've been evaluating some of the blog comment systems out there.
I really think that there's a sea-change coming in the way bloggers and readers interact. The lines will blur between the authors and the readers, and even between blogs. That's what needs to happen anyway, IMO.
In the meantime, I've got less lofty requirements. Here's my definition of Blog Comment Nirvana (BCN):
Is that really too much to ask?
Here's a quick overview of what I've tested and learned about some of the blog comment services out there. I've looked at SezWho.com, IntenseDebate.com, and Disqus.com.
IntenseDebate and Disqus are very similar products. They both intercept the comment system in your blog and instead of the comments going into your own database, they store them on their servers. They store the comments as "discussions", providing functionality for nested replies, ratings and commenter profiles.
SezWho has a lesser set of features, basically minus the threaded comment management.
All services come with the stated promise of better engaging your readers and turning them into commenters. And all have the potential to reduce comment spam. This benefit will remain to be seen. I don't see how they can stop the comment monkeys.
Intense Debate
Intense Debate is very well designed and nice to use and look at. The comments are nicely formatted on the blog page, including avatars, RSS feeds to follow blog comments and user comments. You can edit CSS to format the comments however you like them. There's even integration with Twitter so when you hover over a user's avatar, you see their latest update.
On the Intense Debate site, you can see stats on your commenting behavior, how many comments you've left, the average size of your comments, and information on your "friends". I haven't come across any of my friends using it though, so I haven't been able to exercise this much, but you can do the typical stalker behavior, view profiles, and see all the comments that your friends are leaving all over the Intense Debate enabled Interwebs.
As a blog owner, you can manage the comments that are left on your blog, but you cannot interact on the intense debate site, leave additional comments, etc. They leave that to the blog itself, which is fine.
Intense Debate has a number of widgets to show stuff like the number of comments and readers, as well as the most recent comments, some of the typical sidebar stuff you might want for your blog.
While it was a little slow tonight while I was poking around on their servers, all in all, it is a very nice system.
Installing the plugin on Wordpress was very, very simple. It has some nice options, allowing you to import all your old school comments into the Intense Debate system, as well as export the comments back into Wordpress if you want to disable it. I did test the latter, and the comments that were entered into Intense Debate have been integrated into Wordpress without a hitch. That's a good feeling.
You can also opt to have intense debate only activate on posts that don't (yet) have comments. So your old posts can still exist as it, with the old comment system. New posts will get the Intense Debate comments.
The major problem I have with Intense Debate is that it is integrated with Javascript. More on this later.
Disqus
Disqus is also very well done and the on-blog comments, hosted by the Disqus service, are well-integrated and look very nice. Customization is possible with CSS. Threaded discussions, avatars, ratings etc. are handled nicely by Disqus.
A bonus for Disqus is that they've been integrated into FriendFeed recently (last week), so your comments can appear in your "lifestream".
There is a bit more going on at the disqus service. Each blog's has a public "forum" where the comments appear and you can participate in the comments on their server as well as on the blog. So for each blog post you have with comments, there's a page on disqus listing all the comments. It appears that they've actually moved away from this "forum" idea and are now calling it "community pages". I don't recall the difference prior to this recent change, but the functionality is similar.
Installing the plugin is also very easy for Disqus. Likewise, you can opt to enable it only on blog posts that don't have any comments. The import and export features are less developed. All comments can be exported to XML and RSS. I don't know if scripts exist to import those. The Export from Wordpress to Discus is "coming soon".
Integrated Blog Comments
Discus Community Page
SezWho
I also briefly tested SezWho and honestly, it doesn't really compare feature-wise. SezWho matches the features on the commenter ratings, avatars, etc., but doesn't tackle the threaded discussion aspect that the other two do.
Even though I can create a profile on the SezWho server including an avatar, the avatars on the blog are taken from MyBlogLog and were a bit squished on my blog.
The good news here is that they don't disrupt the comment database and display on the blog page, avoiding the Search Engine issues that Intense Debate has. That also means the comments stay right in your own database.
Honestly, to me, SezWho seemed a bit out of place on my blog. Their components are bright red, though perhaps that can be customized, but in my quick test it didn't fit well with my blog design.
My primary goal is to improve my the overall community on my blog, and for that, I really like the threaded comments. So I'm discounting SezWho for now.
The Heavy - SEO and Search Engine Impact
Here's the big area where they differ. At least with the Wordpress plugins, which is all I've tested though they do integrate with other blog systems, the Disqus comments are integrated with the blog content on the back-end. The Intense Debate comments are served up to the client via javascript.
I received feedback from someone from Intense Debate in a previous blog post that Disqus uses the same Javascript method, but this is not my experience. Granted, I'm testing with their Beta version. Maybe their "stable" version uses the Javascript. Or maybe other blog platform integrations must use the Javascript. For me on Wordpress, the comments from Disqus are integrated at the server-side prior to display in the browser so the Search Engines can see it.
A concern that I do have is that a lot of my blog content is duplicated on the Disqus community pages. Hopefully not enough to create duplicate content issues with Google and other search engines, but it's a concern. Perhaps they should provide an optional NoIndex meta tag for the community owner to enable if they wish.
SezWho doesn't intercept comments, so this isn't much of a concern with that service.
Summary
For me, it's between Intense Debate and Disqus.
Feature-wise, it's a pretty even choice between the two. They've both got the user profile and discussion features pretty well nailed. Feature-wise, I don't really feel like I'm missing anything from either one, though they each have their unique nice-to-haves.
It comes down to a few things. Disqus has the risk of duplicate content on their "community pages", though besides that concern, the community pages are a nice extension to my blog. Intense Debate is a full Javascript integration which means that my comments are nowhere to be seen by search engines. And that's the kicker for me.
I'm going to give Disqus a try on this blog, starting with this post. Give it a go. Even if you've got nothing to say, leave a comment!