I recently changed the comment systems on Open Mode And Toronto Dev to both use the DISQUS comment system, where they were previously using Intense Debate. DISQUS did a great job of jumping on any Discussions either I was having, or that I could see other were having on Twitter about their system.
Besides DISQUS’s great response rate to joining the discussions we were having about the service, DISQUS also has built into its system the ability to easily record Seesmic video comments. That was my biggest motivator for switching, DISQUS has had that feature for a long while, and Intense Debate doesn’t. I wanted Seesmic comments so I could simply give my readers the option to participate that way if they wanted.
Now each system has some different strengths going for it, but right off the bat I am feeling frustration with some of the things I’m seeing with DISQUS. Consider this my list of things I think DIQUS is doing well, and my “Please change this” requests for the service.
Good:
- Minimalist and Fast: DISQUS is really less intrusive when implemented on a blog than Intense Debate is, and it feels snapper & faster to load.
- Seesmic, Facebook Connect, and Friendfeed commenting: These are options that are all essential now and it great that DIQUS will even pull in comments from different sources like FriendFeed.
- Nicer community pages: The community pages for DISQUS powered blog, like the community page for Open Mode, do a better job of giving not only the blog admin information, but also useful information for anybody in general. But even though I think it’s a bit better than Intense Debates blog pages, I’d still like to see more useful information about my blogs commenters, and trends.
Bad:
- Options pages are confusing and too big: The Settings page for an DISQUS comment site is 4 screens long. And some of the options are not needed (like font size) or unclear (please use a radio form with image rather than only select forms all the time).
- I can’t do front end comment moderation: DISQUS only lets me Reply or Reblog other people’s comments while Intense Debate lets me Delete or Block IP of comments as well. (I actually changes all the settings for one blog and copied over different widgets, and then realized that the DISQUS admin area had been set to the wrong blog in it’s select box… Enough with the select boxes already!)
- Structure: Even though DISQUS might be minimalist and a bit faster, the placement of buttons, comments, trackbacks, could be better. Everything seems to fit together much more nicely on an ID system. This could be because of ID’s heavier use of graphic buttons while DISQUS is effected more by your site’s HTML + CSS.
It’s important to reiterate that I’m not, and we all shouldn’t declared that one is the winner above the other. There is still a lot of really cool stuff each platform can do in the future, and new ideas that we haven’t really thought about to be implemented. This is an example of competitiveness really delivering more value to us, the users, in the long run.
What are your opinions?
Why do you even use a 3rd party commenting platform?
29 replies on “Some DISQUS and Intense Debate Thoughts – They Both Need Work”
Help with Blogger comments, please…
I’m working on our Blogger layout because Intense Debate didn’t work and now that I have uploaded a new layout, there is no way for people to leave comments! It doesn’t say “Leave a comment”……
about your bad list have you tried sending them email about it? discus might improve about it
SEO Fundamentals: Think of Google as a Person…
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!What a whirlwind of change to keep up with! And I’m not talking about the economy. Rumors of Google and Twitter…. speculation of Facebook becoming Twitter….
I'd love to see this conversation explode because I'm trying to figure out what to use right now. I've even looked at JS-Kit which has the nice formatting, integration with other platforms, and other features available from Disqus or ID so my first question is, why use any of them?Then I'd ask, what do you think of the recent news about Disqus and Intesnse Debate plugins?
I'm actually really excited about the new developments for both platforms, Intense Debate plugins also has the potential for some really exciting advancements.At this point I'm not too ashamed to event switch back and forth as each tool improves.Why should you use any of them I can't really answer. You could have your own reasons to use a specific platform, or to not use a platform at all. But thankfully its easy enough to try, test, and change platforms while keeping your comment data safe on your server.
Ya, hah. That's actually a good idea. I should do that shouldn't I. As far as competing features go I'm sure each platform is up to date with the competition and has development plans in place.
“Blogs that delete and do not accept blogs”? I'm not quite sure what you mean here.
we have found that we can't delete any comments. We use the moderator tool to do it, but it actually doesn't delete the comment from the live site. If you refresh the moderator page, the “deleted” comment returns. Very frustrating.
Ya, one thing I wish was that these two groups were more communicative as to what they were currently working on, and how they were taking into account the complaints and ideas of users of their systems.What did you think of ID?
* Options pages are confusing and too big: The Settings page for an DISQUS comment site is 4 screens long. And some of the options are not needed (like font size) or mocospace.com unclear (please use a radio form with image rather than only select forms all the time). * I can’t do front end comment moderation: DISQUS only lets me Reply or Reblog other people’s comments while Intense Debate lets me Delete or Block IP of comments as well. (I actually changes all the settings for one blog and copied over different widgets, and then realized that the DISQUS admin area had been set to the wrong blog in it’s select box… Enough with the select boxes already!) * Structure: Even though DISQUS might be minimalist and a bit faster, the placement of buttons, comments, trackbacks, could be better. Everything seems to fit together much more nicely on an ID system. This could be because of ID’s heavier use of graphic buttons while DISQUS is effected more by your site’s HTML + CSS.
Wow !Thanks for sharing the interesting info., keep up posting the good work ……… : )
I love disqus, I can control and manage my comment……………….
Yeah !Disqus just keeps getting better and better !
Probably one of the hardest things anyone can do is try and learn something new. Congrats to anyone who tries.
Yeah !May be, i think that they must experience the power of social media,system ………
Disqus rocks ! Yeah its a great disqus the whole new social interactive media system .
You will see, this system is only getting better and better. I'm sure the Disqus team will keep improving their product.
Yeah !They both are getting better and better to improve their system .
disqus had been one of the famous blog sites for many users, and now twitter is reigning above social media networks, twitter had been talk of the town no a days, many people people are asking if it matters if you have any followers, well the answer is absolutely yes! followers means marketing the more followers you have the more people where in you can market your product or any ways of living. Now there is a very easy way to get hundreds even thousands of followers for a short period of time, Hummingbird had been solution for my problems regarding with the follower issue by using hummingbird i've been able to get many followers as i never imagined before, http://hummingbirdtool.com/ visit this site to experienced it for yourself
disqus had been one of the famous blog sites for many users, and now twitter is reigning above social media networks, twitter had been talk of the town no a days, many people people are asking if it matters if you have any followers, well the answer is absolutely yes! followers means marketing the more followers you have the more people where in you can market your product or any ways of living. Now there is a very easy way to get hundreds even thousands of followers for a short period of time, Hummingbird had been solution for my problems regarding with the follower issue by using hummingbird i've been able to get many followers as i never imagined before, http://hummingbirdtool.com/ visit this site to experienced it for yourself
I really like the new features that come along with DISQUS. Specially, the idea of Video commenting is simply amazing.Darek from Free Classifieds posting service
Agreed it is getting better and better. What's cool about Disqus is that it makes it painlessly easy to comment, and does a good job at blocking spam.
Making commenting easy and painless? Absolutely. It's very difficult for me to sometimes make the decision to comment on some blogs because of the trouble most default systems cause for me.Though after having used both systems for a while, I can now say since the last times I've used Intense Debate, it was generally better at blocking spam than what I'm seeing with Disqus now.Taking a bit more time to reflect, the fact that Disqus adapts better to the custom colours of my WordPress theme is a huge plus. With this orange Evidens theme I'm using currently, the blueness of Intense Debate would simply look too out of place
Using disqus makes my commenting system much better but there are still blogs that delete and do not accept blogs even if they're powered by disqus
So I went ahead and installed Intense Debate.Twenty four hours later I′m using Disqus, and I′m happy with it.Here′s the thing…Intense Debate would not allow me to edit comments, nor could I edit my replies after they were submitted. That, folks, was a show stopper for me.
Ya, this list is old and I found that for Intense Debate there are currently just a few show stoppers like the one you mentioned that keep me coming back to Disqus.Another show stopper which recently affected me was the default layout of ID put all the Trackbacks to your post above the comments or comment box, and there was not way of changing that. You'll notice that for Disqus, the trackbacks and social media reactions all come AFTER the comments.I think this is a logical design decision to make because I'm most concerned with comments, giving them the best visibility and putting them right there at the top to make it easier for readers to comment.Thanks for your comments Damian.
Good Disqus just keeps getting dizi izle better and better !
what do you think of the recent news about Disqus and Intesnse Debate plugins?
As you can see I'm still sporting Disqus here and on some of my other blogs.I think Disqus has done a better job of adding the features users want, while keeping the design of the tool very clean. I look at what ID adds to their system and as they add more and more things I really don't need or that are kind of stupid you'll see that you can't even install the plugin on a blog and be happy because it's all so messy!On top of that, now that Disqus has a really nice separation on their site between Disqus comments and your Disqus Profile it's a bunch more fun to use as far as managing your commenting identity on other sites.Make sure to check out all the sharing options disqus has now as well.Take care.