20 January 2009 ~ Comments

After an Intense Debate, I’m Back on Disqus

Tech
Intense Debate and Disqus   

Intense Debate and Disqus (Image by inky via Flickr)

Let me start by saying that both of these services are great and I value the work they have done and continue to do. I would recommend either to someone looking for a hosted commenting system.

I had originally switched from Disqus to Intense Debate because ID imports comments from FriendFeed. Disqus has been talking about this feature for quite a while now, but it still doesn’t exist. I’m a FriendFeed fanatic. I need this type of integration. The FriendFeed comments plugin has been my main standby for this, but I crave an all-in-one solution.

ZOMG! Where are my comments?!

I was alerted by @nukirk on Twitter that all of my comments had disappeared from my post on the Blackbird browser. Now, as you can see, I do not have a huge blog. I do not get much traffic and I don’t really get many comments, so it was highly unacceptable for all of the comments to disappear from one of my most discussed posts. I tried frantically to restore my missing discussion. After resetting the Intense Debate plugin, disabling WP-SuperCache and everything else I could think of, I just ended up getting rid of Intense Debate entirely.

To their credit, Intense Debate did respond to me on Twitter (sorry, it was 3am EST. I had already fell asleep). I didn’t actually lose my comments due to their data synchronization feature. Once I got rid of the plug-in, my comments were safe and intact within my Wordpress database. There was just no way to get the comments to display within the Intense Debate commenting interface. 

To this day, I have no idea what happened

All I could do was install Disqus again and go on about my business. I replied back to the ID guys the next day, but received no response. I had already made the switch anyway. Plus, Disqus welcomed me back with open arms. I mean, what else could I do? I never really wanted to leave Disqus in the first place and Daniel and Giannii have always been more than willing to jump in and help me, even when I was trying to get rid of their service back in November :) .

So, Back to square one

I like Disqus, but I would like it even better if they integrated FriendFeed comments. Facebook Connect and Seesmic integration is pretty cool, though. I guess for now, I’ll be investigating this FF2Disqus thing.

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  • Disqus is the top commenting platform in my opinion. Not only is Facebook Connect integration nice but allowing users to also use their Twitter accounts to leave comments is awesome.
  • Thats really a cool stuff been posted.. DISQUS rocks.. great experience with it... hope it beats the competitors.. thanks for your info!
  • Friendfeed integration is on its way to be released very soon.(note: not implemented, not finished, but released!)
  • Disqus is so reliable, you really can't go wrong.
  • interesting comments about both plugings but it cannot be argued that disqus looks inferior to intense debate looks wise
  • wow i really found this to be an interesting read; thanks for sharing
  • interessant comme istoire
  • Friendfeed integration is on its way to be released very soon.(note: not implemented, not finished, but released!)
  • Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Others no doubt will like it like I did.
  • Some good points raised in that post. Will be back to check for more.
  • I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reade . Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
  • Welcome !
    Disqus, in my opinion is the future of commenting. It simplifies that work of the webmaster and makes everything much much simpler.
  • I love Disqus, even with the potential for spam and the one or two caveats it is still a great system.
  • Anton Kovalyov
    Welcome back. Friendfeed integration is on its way to be released very soon. (note: not implemented, not finished, but released!)
  • *opens arms* Welcome back brotha! Are all your comments in place? Thanks for the kind words and if you need anything just ping me.

    =)

    Giannii
    DISQUS
    Community Manager
    help@disqus.com
  • Everything has been working just fine so far. Thanks for checking up on me
    :)
  • Well, thanks for answering my question.

    Anywayz, I'm thinking about going back to my own hosted comments just for the advantage of using MySpace and Facebook connect on my blog to leverage traffic. However, Intense Debate is just making my life a little bit easier because I got lazy with the "reply design" of the blog. Well, since I'm trying to step up and do my own design, I may ditch ID all together and go with Disqus.

    But my question is... what do they gain outta hosting our comments?
  • Well, what does Twitter gain by hosting our status updates? What does
    FriendFeed gain by linking to all my content? I think it all comes back to
    traffic for right now. You build a user-base, this tells people with money
    that you have potential to make THEM money, so they give you more money. I'm
    sure we'll see premium services or something later on, maybe some ads here
    and there, but I'm sure they'll find a way to make some money off us :)
  • I am not sure I like Intense Debate. Disqus is way too better.
  • Awww, aren't they cute?
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