Blog comments used to be simple.
If you used WordPress, then your comments used WordPress, too.
But, then the world of blogging got more complicated. Disqus came around and offered us an alternative to WordPress’s comment system. Disqus came with some nice bells and whistles, such as social media integration.
Then Facebook came in and furthered their own quest of world domination with the Facebook comments system. This got even easier to integrate into WordPress blogs with the more recent release of the official Facebook plug-in for WordPress.
There’s also the likes of IntenseDebate. And LiveFyre.
In other words, options. Tons of options.
And with that… confusion.
My Affair With Disqus
I have been using Disqus on both of my main sites (this one and PCMech) for a little while now.
I didn’t always care for it. In fact, a trek down memory lane in the archives of this blog shows an evolution:
- Debating Disqus – Seems Stupid
- New and Improved Disqus Handles My Concerns
- Disqus: Not So Stupid Anymore
I ended up going with Disqus because of the easy social media integration. I liked the fact that people could log in with Facebook and optionally have their comment cross-posted to their Facebook wall. I liked the increased potential of commenter interaction.
And Then Disqus 2012 Happened…
Disqus 2012. It is what the company is calling it. The new iteration of Disqus.
So, they take a working setup… and change it.
In essence, they’re trying to turn Disqus itself into some kind of social network. They changed the interface somewhat and made it less… blog-like. If you’re already a registered Disqus user and you’re logged in, then its fine. But, most of the Internet is NOT logged into Disqus. For them, Disqus does not look like a typical comment system. The email field isn’t seen until you click the “name” field. And, even then, the language of the interface makes it seem as if you’re registering for Disqus just to post the comment. And, that might rub a lot of commenters the wrong way.
Also, clicking on a commenter’s name takes you to their Disqus profile – NOT the person’s website.
And there’s the discovery box… the list of related posts which appears after the Disqus comments. The feature is redundant because a lot of blog themes take care of that functionality on their own. Some blogs prefer not to even have it. Yet, Disqus is adamant about having that feature because they’ve determined that discovery is important. That’s fine… but I like options. I don’t like to be forced to give Disqus that much real estate on my site even if those links point back to me.
But, the most telling thing for me is based on observation over time. And that is…
My comment counts dropped noticeably.
Whereas I used to see 20-40 comments on a post fairly routinely, today I’m seeing less than half that amount. Some posts end up with single-digit comment counts. Based on the history of this site, it’s audience, and the traffic… that’s really odd. And, it seemed to drop off significantly when Disqus evolved my site over to 2012.
Is Disqus the sole cause for that? Likely not. However, it was a fairly observable drop-off when Disqus 2012 came out
Should I Use Facebook?
Facebook comments have improved quite a bit. For one, the plug-in means that Facebook comments are now locally saved to your blog database as well. This is very important in case you want to stop using Facebook. Also, they say that Facebook comments now work for SEO as well.
I also like the viral promotional capability of Facebook comments. Users optionally have the ability to cross-post the comment to their Facebook wall, complete with a link to the post. That is fantastic promotion – something that would make any blog owner happy.
I may introduce FB comments at some point, however I won’t force people to use it. When I’ve asked people their thoughts on it, I got a fair amount of people saying they would not want to use Facebook comments on a site. Some people just don’t like surfing the Internet while logged into Facebook for security and privacy reasons. Others are afraid their comment will be posted to Facebook even when they don’t want it to.
In the end, there are still a lot of people who don’t trust Facebook comments.
An Informal Social Media Poll
I went and did a very informal little poll on my social media accounts asking the question:
Which platform makes you more likely to post a comment on a blog: WordPress, Facebook, or Disqus?
Disqus is definitely more popular amount the Google Plus crowd for some reason (they don’t like Facebook very much over there.)
The Facebook poll showed the following results:
Then, in a discussion thread about the same, I got a lot of feedback. 17 comments on the thread (when you remove my own). 60% of them seemed to prefer the WordPress comment system and the other 40% were fine with Disqus. Interestingly, some of the people who preferred Wordpress REALLY disliked Disqus. And, there wasn’t a single kind word about LiveFyre anywhere in the bunch. A couple of people said they truly hated LiveFyre.
On Twitter, those who replied seemed to prefer WordPress.
So, all in all, this admittedly very informal survey showed that people prefer the built-in comment system of WordPress over the other options. Facebook and Disqus seemed to be in a bit of a dead-heat, although all things considered, Disqus was more popular than Facebook.
The Academy Turns Off Disqus
I’ve made some design changes to this site and one of them is to switch back to WordPress’s internal comment system. While Disqus has its fans – and its strengths – it seems like there was more support for WordPress. But, my decision obviously goes beyond merely an informal poll. WordPress has some noteworthy advantages over Disqus, including:
- The ability to control the look and feel of the comments in a fine-tuned way.
- The ability to run plug-ins which affect the comments. For example, I can easily set up a way to subscribe comments to my Aweber email list (with permission, of course) when they post a comment. Something like that is very handy and makes the comments a more effective lead generator.
- Disqus seems to have no way of moderating comments via mobile device, outside of a third-party app which isn’t scaled up for iPad – and hasn’t been updated since 2010. On the flip side, WordPress has a free and pretty capable app for both iPhone and iPad which allows me to moderate and reply to comments on the go.
- Being able to have TOTAL control over the look-and-feel rather than Disqus making the decision for me. For instance, I don’t want the “discovery box” that Disqus put there and I had no option to turn it off.
- Speed. Running comments in-house is faster and increased page load times compared to loading up remote code for Disqus.
And, if people want to be able to log in with Facebook or Twitter, there’s still options. Plug-ins like Simple Twitter Connect or Simple Facebook Connect will get the job done. On my todo list. 
Do You Use Third-Party Comment Systems?
I want to make clear… just because I made the decision to switch back doesn’t mean I’m recommending others do the same. It is a personal decision. For me, I wanted the control and flexibility that I get with in-house comments.
But, there are most definitely good reasons to go third-party. Some sites do very well using third-party comments. You can find case studies all over the place to support almost any comment system you’re considering.
What’s working for you?
Do you use a third-party comment system? If so, which?
And, as an end user, which do YOU prefer?
David has been blogging for 15 years, and generating a six-figure income at it for the last 12. He is the founder of Blog Marketing Academy. 
David Risley has been building and operating authority blogs for 15 years, and operating a six-figure business doing it for a decade.
Interesting. I use WordPress, but with the Jetpack comments configured to allow people to log in via their social network. I’ve been eyeing Discuss and LifeFyre, but after reading this, I think I’m fine staying where I am.
Sometimes we like to tweak around with our blogs so much we forget that old saying…”If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
Very true. And, you know, it didn’t occur to me to see if Jetpack had that functionality. Will check it out. Thanks for the lead.
The really good aspect of this post is that you have explained how you personal experience with these comments systems were and also highlights how you should go about taking informed decisions. I notice that the blog post is broken down to specific issues that you wanted to evaluate.
In order to figure which commenting system to go along with you used a facebook poll which is in actual what the tool is there for thereby indicating that even if you are personally inclined towards a particular aspect of stuff for your website, you let YOUR community decide that for you and you need to use such tools to pick on those signals. You community will appreciate the aspect that you value their opinions and that will attract unbiased opinions, like the ones that you expect from a friend.
Lastly by summing up that this was a personal decision and what applies to you does not necessarily apply to others is a way telling people (website owners) that they would need to use the similar strategy to connect & ask their communities what they would like and that might be surprisingly different than what David got as responses.
That is what a website is all about, engaging & bonding with your community and tweaking your site accordingly as THEY would like it. Thats the goodness a website can give to its community. Forget however cool the disqus or any other plugin for that matter is, if it does not fit your community’s bill, it ain’t worth using and that is what is pivotal in making that decision.
My recommendation is to use a social plugin that permits you to comment using social logins but not disallowing regular ol commenting like the ‘jetpack’ plugin you have installed.
Jetpack since its from guys who made wordpress, I believe is safe to believe that it is native and that is good and is the safest solution. But just like David did, you could take your community’s opinion on it.
I use WordPress’ core comments because I have total control over it. I don’t have to worry about a company being bought, or closed, or closing a service. My comments are, and always will be, my comments. Services come and go, and I can’t have half my website’s comments removed. The gains do not outweigh the possible losses on a long term project.
Nice critique on Disqus and Facebook.
I believe we’ve missed a point – in the future, Google+ will make a comeback, somehow my 6th sense clicks and swears on this, then Disqus might have a leeway into the Google fora. Facebook might struggle.
Its just like a doorway, whoever opens it, finds it difficult to maintain their name – others who follow, evolve, grow, chew, digest, enjoy and grow again. Like ERP – SAP, Oracle are at odds and would be, while there are a bunch of mushroom ERP companies which are delivering quality too, but learning from what giants are committing.
Nice blog by the way.
Perhaps, but for now, G+ doesn’t have near the appeal as Facebook or any of the others, really.
I’ve used all three commenting systems: WordPress comments, Facebook and now Discus.
My experience was that people commented most when I used WordPress for commenting. Facebook was the lowest and Discus is in between. I had problems with comment spam with WordPress comments, but you can prevent most though not all of this by using plugins like Akismet.
As for Google Plus or whatever else Google comes up with in future, I don’t think it would be a good idea to let Google control our comment systems as well. Google already has too much power over the Web. It would just mean more sudden “Google slaps”, this time for comments.
All in all I think WordPress is the best solution. Its simple and straightforward for visitors. Also it means you are not at the mercy of a third party or any of the social media.
I don’t really trust any of the “social media” when it comes to it. I think It’s an uneasy relationship at best.
Hi David,
I have always wondered why people use Disqus. I have never seen the advantage. I use the WordPress system with CommentLuvPremiu
and I’m happy with it.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Best,
Oliver
Yeah, being able to use plug-ins like CommentLuv is one of the perks of using the built-in system.
Hey David, I was thinking of using Disqus for some time but never actually decided to take the plunge and I’m still using the WordPress internal system.
It was mostly because I always saw these hardcore debates about Livefyre vs Disqus and for some reason they were always present in all the cool blogs.
So far I’m happy with what I’ve got but as far as the comment decrease on the site, I have two theories:
1. The domain name change. I don’t know what happens but whenever someone changes their domain people are not dragged to the site as they used to.
Yes, you can have the redirects in place, the seo juice from google (almost) intact yet it does impact on your audience.
I have seen this happen in other blogs that used to have 60+ comments on the same day go to as little as less than 10 comments.
The only change? The domain name switcheroo.
2. Excluding the domain name theory, I have seen a major decrease in blog comments everywhere (except a few of the cool kid’s blogs like viperchill, spi, etc)
I’m not sure if people are starting to see that they won’t get much in return from their backlinks after so many Google Updates, if they are actually starting to get drown reading the same content spun over and over all over the place or if they are not into networking anymore.
To be honest, I don’t know why this is happening but it happened to many bloggers that I know who used to have big audiences.
It’ll be interesting to find out what is happening.
Sergio
PS. I have heard lots of great things about JetPack but I haven’t tried that yet either.
Yeah, I’ve noticed comments decreases on other sites, too. But, I’m not that concerned about it. Comments don’t equal money.
Some of my best customers never post comments on this site. So, I’m more interested in the metrics which are important.
I think, in this blogging space, a lot of people are ADD’s out. So, they post don’t post as much because they’re too busy scanning and looking for shiny objects.
Hey David,
I will always remember your site as one of the first that I noticed using Disqus. When I started my blog in 2011 I switched from the WordPress default to Disqus for a few months. Than I discovered Comment Luv and went back to the WordPress comment system. In the beginning of 2012 I switched to LiveFyre for a few months. Now I am using what seems to give me the best results and that is the WordPress comment system.
In my opinion, most people don’t like having to log in to leave a comment. I don’t like the new Disqus comment look either.
take care.
Thanks, Justin.
I think this is a switch I’ll stick to. In fact, will likely be switching my other site (PCMech.com) back to regular comments too. Its using Disqus now.
Interesting that you should write about this just when I was considering the comments options for my own site. I like what wordpress comments offer for the site and will certainly look into the facebook/twitter plugins you mentioned. I didn’t ‘mind’ disqus but I do prefer the natural WP comments
You’re not alone.
I think a lot of people prefer the normal comment system.
Hi David,
I like your thoughts and analogies. I use WordPress comment box plus commentluv. This helps me reward commentators with backlinks and it really attract comments a lot
Looks like you are back with WordPress comments. I have sites with WordPress, DNN Blog, and Disqus. The DNN Blog used to get the most but their wasn’t much moderation so I had to spend 45 minutes a day moderating all the spam. WordPress gets a little and Disqus doesn’t get any comments. Disqus does show twitter interaction that links to the article which is nice. I like that you can do social login with Disqus, it should get more comments than it does.
Very interesting take on the different comment systems. It’s true, a great majority of WordPress users prefer the native comments platform. Personally, I love Livefyre! Although I’m a new blogger, I’m confident that Livefyre has the best mix of features. Simple design, various social sign-in options, social tagging, sharing comments via shortlink, Facebook, Twitter, and now Linkedin, and recent post linkbacks. Although the latest Livefyre Comments 3 is still in beta, it’s definitely headed in the right direction.
I’m simply a fan of the dynamic approach to commenting on blogs, which highly resembles how we already interact on the various social networks most of us enjoy using. Thanks for the insightful post David.
I always love to use and comment only on the blog which is having default comment system. I really don’t like any other comment system.
David:
I’m among those that won’t comment via Facebook.
I have an account with Discus, but it’s a pain to want to leave a comment and have to go through the process to log into the system.
I’m happy to see that you’re back to the WordPress comment system.
Shlomo
I personally believe that switching back to a “closed” commenting system is a step backward for the users. Open commenting systems such as Disqus are wonderful for users who don’t have to re-sign every time. Plus, Disqus gives you a sense of community. If a blogger is interested in building and nurturing a community around their commenting area, then an open platform is more desirable. I think you have to look at it from the user’s point of view, not just from the site’s point of view.
Disclaimer: I run a neutral social conversations aggregator App (Engagio) for online comments and social network conversations, and we work with all of them. We have worked with over 15 APIs and I can tell you that the WordPress API is still limited and limiting. That’s not good for users at large.
I respect your view, William. But, in actual practice, I don’t think Disqus promotes a community any more than anything else does. In the end, its just a comments system. Requiring a third-party profile to use it doesn’t promote community. And I bet only a small minority of users actually bother to check out any of the cross-promotion efforts in terms of seeing where else people are interacting. They just post a comment – and perhaps reply – all under the post. And, you can do that with the built-in system.
I don’t dislike Disqus or any of the other solutions, but in actual practice, I think the community-building strength of those things is more hype and marketing than real. But, that’s totally my opinion.
Building and growing a community certainly isn’t easy or simple, and Disqus doesn’t cover it all right now. We definitely try to help as much as we can at Disqus, by making a couple products that simplify the process of managing community. I think we still have a lot of room to grow in terms of helping educate community moderators on how to build and grow a community from the ground up, since right now it’s pretty much Register > Install > GLHF.
That said, though, with the products we offer right now — the Disqus commenting embed and its partner the Disqus admin, most notably the moderation interface — we definitely have seen more community-building strength than the average bear. Take for example a few of the Disqus admin’s features:
- Network-wide profiles: better understand who the newcomers to your community are, where they participate, and what they’re saying and upvoting both on your community and across Disqus.
- User reputation: better understand how respected or established newcomers to your site already are.
- Whitelisting and blacklisting: make sure your community’s regulars aren’t put through any pre-moderation (say, of comments including links or images) that you may require of newcomers. And keep out the trolls, so your community keeps high signal and low noise.
More info on ^^ at http://blog.disqus.com/post/14575149870/try-the-all-new-moderation-on-disqus and http://blog.disqus.com/post/18875154463/the-all-new-disqus-moderation-introducing-user
And more notably the embed’s features:
- True realtime commenting: see new comments not only as they’re posted, but as they’re being typed. This keeps visitors on the page longer, and participating more. It feels more like a real-world, in-person conversation, rather than the ping-pong of phone tag or letter writing.
- Discovery: we automatically offer up content on the community we think you’ll like.
- Voting and Best sort order: helps surface the best comments and thus keep the sub-threads of conversation going longer than chronological threads.
More info on ^^ at http://blog.disqus.com/post/25017922977/the-new-disqus-2012
Anyway, that’s just a taste of what I’d say is the most notable stuff we’re doing right now. There are numerous examples of sites that have seen boosts in their community’s engagement after switching to Disqus. Those can be found all over, at http://community.disqus.com and http://disqus.com/showcase for example. We have much more coming.
Thanks for chiming in, Tyler.
My biggest concern, should I choose to revert back to the WordPress commenting system from Disqus, would be loosing all the comments that posted via the Disqus commenting system. Did you experience any issues there?
After reading your post, I too had wondered if comments have slipped off on my blog due to Disqus’s new update. Very important thing to think about.
Frank, Disqus posts everything to WP behind the scenes, you don’t lose anything when you convert back.
Thanks, David. I actually realized that after I posted the comment
With the way WordPress comments currently looks for you, did you custom design it to look that way?
David, I’m so glad you switched back. Most days I don’t comment on your blog simply coz I am not already logged in to my Disqus account and especially when I am busily reading a handful of blogs, I really don’t want to take that extra pain to login to Disqus to post a comment.
Basically, any blog that requires a “login” to leave my comment/opinion is a no-no for me (my personal opinion).
I’m sure your comment count will shoot up!
Jane, guest comments (i.e., comments posted while not logged-in) in Disqus can be “claimed”, thus merging them into your registered Disqus account. More on that here: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/466232 > “Guest comments”.
This functionality is something we generally can make more clear, and we will. Just wanted to let you know in case you come across any other Disqus sites so you can still comment if you don’t want to/can’t log in at that moment.
Hi David,
I’ve always used the WordPress comment system and don’t think I’ll be changing anytime in the near future, especially after reading this. Comment Luv anybody? Plus like you stated, I have total control over it. I’ve had several of my comments disappear on other blogs that use Livefyre and I’ve heard of this happening to others … and there are just enough quirks with both systems to keep me away. Plus many of the bloggers I know and respect have gone back to WP
Love that you changed the commenting system here.
Well, it’s true. I’m a blogger myself and I often get confused, which method of commenting should I keep in my blog. When I use wordpress, it automatically contains a good commenting system. Just adding a few codes in the comment.php file or style.css file makes it perfect.
But when it comes to other platforms? I like disqas because facebook or twitter just makes it look like spam. I don’t like it. So, in my opinion, disqas is better than facebook when it comes to blog comments.
Dude you inspired me to remove Disqus from my site. I for one do not like the direction
that they are going towards. I now feel it’s better to use the default WordPress comment system
and jazz it up with plugins like JetPack from WordPress.
That’s kinda where I’m at, obviously. I still like Disqus and think its a good system. But, everybody has to make up their own mind on what their requirements are.
Owen do you mind if I ask what about our direction you don’t like? I’d be happy to pass your thoughts on to the team.
Hi David,
Funny how we reached the same conclusion. I tried Discus for a while, but found that it decreased page loading times and made monitoring more difficult (yet another login and password to remember). Now I use the WordPress in-house commenting system and it works well for me. Why change something if it works, right? Do more of what works for you, be it WordPress, Facebook or Disqus.
Thanks for a timely post.
Cheers,
Olle
P.S. Lately I’ve been cutting down on plugins – this practice makes my site both faster and securer (less loopholes and updates). As a site owner, those aspects are so important you must always consider them.
P.P.S. Funny how this post scored you heaps of comments. Go figure
I think the best commenting system depends on your niche. I use WordPress and uncheck the “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” option. If you force people to sign in to comment, you will primarily receive comments from bloggers and techies. Since I write primarily about food that would exclude the majority of my readers
That’s it.
I removed Disqus… and I am happy!
And there is more than one reason for that:
1) It stopped breaking navigation buttons in the featured slider of my theme
2) I will get rid of THOUSANDS of 404 errors in Google WebMaster – the problem which popped up in Disqus-enhanced sites in the end of August.
http://www.seroundtable.com/disqus-google-errors-15663.html
3) I will be able to make some customizations
4) I will hope for more users to leave comments
After flip flopping back and forth like a dying fish between the 3 (WP, D, FB), I am now also deciding to go with Word Press. Because most of my readership is mainly from Facebook (I’m still new), I really wanted something that would have the ability and the OPTION to share onto Facebook. but since I don’t like that the Facebook Commenting system doesn’t play nice with my theme, I’ll just have to wait and hope that WP will/might integrate one little button that gives to option to share the comment on either Social Networking sites.
Thanks for your post. helped my make my decision!
Awesome article. Found it because we’re considering unhooking Disqus. Like the interface and clean design, but our comments dropped significantly while our 404 erorrs is up in the tens of thousands since our install a few months ago.
The 2012 Disqus is miserable. The Discovery box alone is reason enough to go back to native comments.
That’s it, disqus is gone WP is back! Thanks lol
I’ve used all three commenting systems: WordPress comments, Facebook and now Discus.
My experience was that people commented most when I used WordPress for commenting. Facebook was the lowest and Discus is in between. I had problems with comment spam with WordPress comments, but you can prevent most though not all of this by using plugins like Akismet.
As for Google Plus or whatever else Google comes up with in future, I don’t think it would be a good idea to let Google control our comment systems as well. Google already has too much power over the Web. It would just mean more sudden “Google slaps”, this time for comments.
All in all I think WordPress is the best solution. Its simple and straightforward for visitors. Also it means you are not at the mercy of a third party or any of the social media.
I don’t really trust any of the “social media” when it comes to it. I think It’s an uneasy relationship at best.
This is very helpful, than you. I like the gravatars as well, do those pop on automatically from peoples email addresses? EG my yahoo address here has a pic will it automatically post now? Thanks
Very well explained David.
I am already using disqus comments system on my website.
Thanks for sharing nice info..
Hi David,
Great post. Personally, I run 2 blogs – my personal blog (rowntree.me) and a magazine style blog which has a reasonable amount of traffic with a strong community (magnate.co).
On my personal blog, I currently run Disqus 2012 as I’ve used Disqus comments ever since I started blogging (or at least turned on comments on my blog). On the other hand, I’ve used Disqus, WordPress / Jetpack and Facebook comments on my magazine blog. Truthfully, although I’ve had a number of teething problems with Facebook comments in turns of moderation and implementation, I’ve had a better experience with Facebook comments compared to any other commenting system.
I’m considering switching my personal blog to use Facebook comments also because I like the moderation facility, the entire system seems a lot cleaner, I get more traffic using Facebook as well as the fact that it looks the same as the comments you would see within a Facebook status update.
In my eyes, appearance and trusting that appearance is key.
Very insightful… I’m still debating if we should use disqus with our website. I really believe that you’ll get more referral traffic with Disqus, and it’s more engaging than other comment tools. But the fact that it could go out of business is scary to think about and all the 404 errors. I have a lot of deciding to do!
i am still with wordpress default comment form. But, some my friend suggest me to choose disqus. “u will give your reader option to leave comment”. But, facebook comment will better way to promote our blog.
I use Disqus. From my end I’m happy. But I’ve run into problems with my comments being deleted or spammed on other sites using Disqus. This is frustrating enough for me to consider a change.
Thanks for the info David!
I’m in the process of building a niche blog, and for days and days I’ve been reading articles comparing ad contrasting WP commenting systems.
This post puts forth BY FAR the best and most intelligent argument I’ve read.
I’m going with the WP default system–you’ve convinced me
David, I’m so glad you switched back. Most days I don’t comment on your blog simply coz I am not already logged in to my Disqus account and especially when I am busily reading a handful of blogs, I really don’t want to take that extra pain to login to Disqus to post a comment.
Although I think that Disqus is one of the best platforms for discouraging spammy comments and encouraging genuine interaction, we have also had great success with Facebook commenting as well. This works particularly well with membership based niches, especially when directing people within our email list to a specific blog post we created. It helps to get people sharing their thoughts and promotes the social aspect as well, which Google seems to love.
I am hooked on Disqus until they come up with something better!
FYI for anyone interested, last week I wrote a blog post Disgusted with Disqus Discovery. Daniel Ha, one of the founders of Disqus, replied a few times in the comments.
They have, at least, made it so we can turn off Discovery in the Admin panel. And, equally as important, they have changed what the comment box now says. It is much better. (I will try to put an image at the bottom of this comment, but I am not sure that it will work.)
I remain on the fence about the comment system. After reading this post originally, I tried going back to the WordPress system but the gravatar will absolutely not work for me. So I was forced to go back to Disqus for the time being. Now since they have changed the wording on the comment screen, I am happier with Disqus.
I appreciated everything Daniel is saying on my site and what Tyler is saying here but I need to see it happen. When Discovery was turned on on my site I got two links to celebrity gossip, one to a weight loss scheme, and one to an advertisement to an investment site. Right! That is not a “community” that I wish to build!
Daniel says that they released it before the algorithm was mature so they could work out the bugs with the help of their users. I think it would have been wiser to ask users to join a beta test group. I think this Disqus 2012 has hurt them.
One BIG PLUS about Disqus is that you can edit your comments. On WordPress you cannot. I hate that!
I am convinced, I will use in-house comment system for my blog as well, thanks for the great post by-the-way David!
DISQUS would be perfect if they had any option to let guest to leave their website URL along with the name.
I have trialled Disqus & Intense Debate recently.. A few times both systems would drop comments every now & then. While I preferred Disqus, on thing I found annoying is that for visitors to comment as a guest they can’t leave their url for me to check out their site without registering. While I see it as no big deal some peole just don’t like to have to register with yet another site just to leave a comment on my site. A few complained with both sysems that I was making commenting harder for them.
In the end I realised that what was most important was not what I personally prefferred, but what made commenting easiest & hassle free for my valued readers. I thus decided to stay with the regular WP comment sysem. I use GASP which provides excellent antispam without the need for Akismet. I also use “Comment reply notification” plugin which sends email notifications to commenters ONLY when I or someone else replies to their actual comment. Jetpack is annoying in that it emails you for every single comment that is left after yours. I now really can’t see why a 3rd party comment system is really Since switching back to in house commenting a few readers have thanked me for making commenting easier for them.
My lesson learned, if it works well then don’t try & fix itneccesary.
I knew it!! After switching blog templates, I opted to use Facebook comments, and didn’t realize until recently that I wasn’t able to have WordPress comments if using FB ones. I had wondered why I was receiving less comments in general. I’m going to run a poll too, just to be sure what my readers prefer, but I will bet they would rather use WordPress comments. Thanks!
I’m using the native WordPress comment system with Askimet for blocking spam. One of the things I did not like with Disqus is that Disqus hijacks the comment counts so that third party applications such as WPTouch and other plugins which display comment count will not work.
Hi David, I run the “social” comment system by mail chimp. I just finished testing disqus and wasn’t to convinced about it, even after the upgrades to “2012″. Livefyre was ok, I used them for awhile and their support was great, but like disqus it’s an outside system.
Social is as close to the builtin system as you get while still hosting your own comments AND being able to import most replies or comments made on facebook or twitter.
If you post a link to your post, and someone comments in FB, Social finds that comment and brings it over. The only thing I wish it did was export replies to those comments back to facebook for users to reply. But of course they are all different platforms and that level of integration is simply asking for too much.
I’m considering putting in Facebook comments as well as social in parallel with one another. Not sure if I’ll do that. Facebook is the place that generates the most dialogue for me.
Check out “social” by mailchimp, you might like it. I find not too many people know about it and that’s surprising considering all the cool stuff it does.
What weren’t you too convinced about with Disqus?
Hi David, nice read! It gets confusing, quite often but I prefer Facebook. Other options on your list… for example WordPress is a secondary option. I want to check out Disqus. Just throwing another idea here. A short poll or a survey to check out universal favorites is a good idea. SoGoSurvey has good options and a comprehensive list of sample surveys.
There is one problem with “Facebook” comments plugin. You cannot remain anonymous if you wish to. Like recently, couple women in India, wrote something about a political leader and it became an issue. The women were traced using their facebook profile and of course targeted. So you got to be careful about what you write.
Arun
Real talk: I use disqus. Also, it has taken me THREE DIFFERENT TIMES on TWO DIFFEREN BROWSERS to finally get a comment up here. Disqus is chill. This junk is not. I’ve used facebook, blogger, and disqus commenting. I’ll never use this wordpress.
I will say that this commenting system doesn’t work. This is the fourth time that I’ve tried to comment and the previous three just said “loading….loading….” I’m not sure if that’s a result of the poor web hosting of this site or the commenting system but I don’t have this problem with disqus. I’m a huge fan of disqus because it’s easy to use across websites that use it and it’s becoming more popular (ie CNN now uses it). I do wish disqus allowed clicking on a username to lead to a user’s website but that’s a minor problem compared to this blogs comment system nearly not working at all!
I’ve used blogger, wordpress, Facebook, and disqus commenting. Disqus is the cleanest and easiest. All bloggers should use disqus.
Not really sure. I do know we were having some drive issues on our server today, so that could have been an issue.
I am thinking to shift from Disqus to WordPress. Thanks..
Hello,
I badly need help. I signed up at Disqus because I don’t want to appear faceless whenever I leave a comment on my friends’ blogs using Disqus as commenting system. However, I don’t want to implement it on my blog because I’m currently using IntenseDebate and I’m fine with it. So here’s my question: what happens after I place (register) my blog’s URL on my Disqus account? Will I have Disqus commenting system on my blog? I’m interested in placing the link on my Disqus profile for obvious reasons, but if it means I’ll have more headaches fixing my blog then I won’t do it. (Switching from Blogger commenting system to ID was traumatic for me and I don’t want to go through the same process again). Thanks in advance for answering my question.
@Rhodora, I do not see that anyone answered you. Signing up at Disqus does not add it to your blog.
Great article. I just started using Disqus for commenting. I haven’t decided what to do about my blog yet. You brought up some good points. Thanks.
I bumped into this article during my research of commenting systems to add to a regular and static HTML page for an Open Source Linux script that I wrote. So not WP, or any other blogging platform. This will be mainly to answer any questions that might popup.
The site is ready, and I had more or less decided to go with Disqus. But decided to research some blogs where the candidate systems were actually in use, to find out about privacy in the commenting systems. I was shocked, but extremely glad that I had done this.
With Disqus, at some sites, not all, I was able to see the complete comment history of all people who left a comment on that site by just clicking on their name. Not just for that particular site, but for each and every site where they had commented through Disqus.
This might be nice for a site admin to find out about who are potential trouble makers, and find out about interests/preferences of visitors. But this could also be a potential source for not so holy flame wars in your comments, and for someone stalking others. And God knows what else. (I’m glad that I do not have an evil mind.)
I’ve crossed Disqus of my list, and I’m now considering to either go with my #2 choice, FB Comments, or take the database penalty and set up a WP blog for just one very long static HTML page so that I can use the native WP commenting.
Check it for yourself in the comments at this site : amazium.co.uk
I will not post the other sites where I could see people expressing their “intimate” preferences/activities.
Hmm so its not quite clear cut for DISQUSS vs WP comments. There is no way to use the FB commenting system with something like WP comments, correct?
I currently use the Jetpack comment system which I’m very happy with.
What do you have to say about Jetpack Comments? After reading this post I am going to switch all my blogs to Jetpack which is made by the same people who make WordPress. So the integration is excellent and very blog like.
Disqus 2012 is ***, not allowing an user to comment without
an account is not accepted, at least not for me. Tried it, deleted,
no disqus for me.
I know for a fact that Disqus allows guest comments for which no registration is required, just a name and email address. The downside is that with guest comments, the email address entered by the commenter is not even checked. On this Disqus Help page, search for “Specifying who can comment” and you will see that it is just a config setting. : help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/466238
It also seems that allowing anyone to comment (guests), changes the label “or register with disqus” just above the “name” input box, into “or pick a name”. Which makes sense.
You can try it for yourself at the gaming site ign.com
I decided to go for Facebook comments, but also placed a disposable Yahoo! email address at the page, just in case someone didn’t have FB. After 20+ begs to remove FB comments, I’m looking for a commenting system again. (Maybe not representative, because they are all coding nerds like me.)
I’m just checking out LiveFyre as a replacement. The bulk of my visitors will use their OpenID to login (from stackexchange.com and stackoverflow.com).
But I’ll probably go for Disqus anyway (I do not use WP). I had Disqus already crossed of my list (initially they were at the top of my list) because in the role of a commenter, you can see quite a bit of other commenter’s history of comments. But I reconsidered, and decided that a possible bad comment history is their own responsibility. BTW, LifeFyre also has this “feature”.
I used facebook system on my site but the result was different
Instead the no of comments reduced to 0
Normal wp system is way better than this
Thanks for sharing your experience. I was going to use Disqus due to the pretty interface. However after seeing your poll results, I’m just going to stick with wp’s jetpack commenting system. One small addition note: I did have Disqus turned on briefly and noticed that it increased the load time on my post pages significantly. Just FYI for those who are still considering their options.
Can you post waterfall charts of what specifically was taking a while to load before and after Disqus was installed? We’ve done a lot of work over the years to make Disqus load efficiently and it’s also non-blocking so it shouldn’t impact your site’s overall load time. More info here: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/722608
Hello David,
We have been thinking of pulling the same stunt here at Social Media Revolver. Disqus used to be cool, but now it seems to just hinder commenting.
Did you get to keep your existing comments when you changed over to WP commenting?
Thanks for a great post!
Cheers,
Kris
I just switched to WordPress JetPack 1.4 and the comment function looks very nice. But not on my website. It is not shown. Is there something like a shortcode or something to make use of this cool feature? My WordPress version is also updated to 3.4.
Several blogs have their own commenting system and I have only tried Disqus and lifyre.
I also favour the normal wordpress blog but can we have an enhanced wordpress plug-in that integrates seamlessly?
Just wondering.
Personally, I would like to see WordPress elegantly interlink your choice of social media sign-in for its comments mechanism so a user can sign in with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or whatever; or simply add in their name and email address when they add a comment. If they sign in with FB and leave a comment, they can have that comment up on _their_ wall for example.
Though a lot I’ve seen disqus used, I noticed these days that a lot of news sites / blogs are changing to livefyre. It makes you wonder what the deal is.
Interesting….
We’ve been using Disqus for a year or two and we aren’t seeing the traction on social media that we expected. Does the WordPress comment system expand your social reach the way you expected?
Disqus is giving good output in terms of search engine ranking.. now it better to use facebook plugin for further benefits.