Why I now use Disqus

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I’ve recently gotten a little flak for using disqus and although some intelligent conversation has come out of it, I felt compelled to say exactly WHY I began using it instead of the “works perfectly well built-in WordPress comments” form.

Let me preface this by saying one thing first – I am very selective and conservative with my online information. In fact, I’m probably more cautious than most people out there and those who know me would say I’m cautious to a fault. As my childhood best friend says, “I had no need to be cautious – you’re cautious enough for the both of us! And then some!”

Now, I know not everyone will agree with me and I don’t expect to “convert” anyone with my opinions here. However, do me one little favor, please? Set aside your biases for a moment and just take my thoughts into consideration.

While the built-in comment form is pretty simple and does a good job, the biggest point for me is that the web is moving more and more into a social network and frankly, the WP comment form is sorely lacking in that department. This is not just my opinion – look around the web and you will see countless articles and posts about this very thing – that the web IS a social network. And it’s becoming more so all the time.

If you’re a business owner, this is even more true. Customers and clients want transparency. They want accessibility. They want that social aspect, to be connected. Especially if you’re a business owner with a web presence.

Why? It makes them feel safe.

That’s the bottom line right there. People feel safe when they can connect with you, even if only on a shallow level. They want to know you’re a real person. Aside from that, it helps cure that “curious” nature of us humans. That bit of us that wants to snoop and gossip. It helps make people comfortable.

Additionally, there are several more good things about using disqus:

• Any user who comments is notified via a simple email message when someone replies to their comment. This allows continued discussion and you don’t have to subscribe to the thread or to the comments RSS (**IF** there even is one. Many blogs don’t have that feature). You get a message right in your inbox (unless, of course, you turn that feature off in your settings on the disqus.com control panel).
• You can reply to that comment right from your disqus control panel without the need to go back to that website. Also, if I remember correctly, a new feature allows you to email in a reply. You just hit “reply” to the new comment message you got, type what you want and hit send. So simple and FAST.
• Users can edit their comments any time. Just go to your disqus control panel, select the comment you want to edit and do so! It’ll be updated on whatever blog it’s attached to, pretty much in real time. This is a feature that isn’t generally available on most blogs. And those that do allow it, it’s only in effect for usually less than 5 minutes after you originally post your comment. After that, you’re out of luck.
• Users can also delete their own comments from ANY disqus-enabled blog they’ve commented on. Again, just go to your control panel, select the comment you want to delete and hit the shiny little button! Again, this is a feature that’s not even available on most blog platforms including WP.
• It allows comment nesting (replies to other comments) on a variety of levels that just are not available in the normal WP options. And it’s all customizable as to how deep you want the thread to go.
• Blog owners can also customize a variety of other options including paged comments. Meaning, instead of a huge long page of comments at the end of the post, you can break all those comments up into pages for easier reading. (Yes, I realize WP offers this in newer versions as well.)
• Admin can import all comments from every post on the blog so that each one is still available through disqus. No comments are lost when adding disqus and they are also saved so that should disqus ever be uninstalled, every comment is right there and available just like normal.
• Also on the admin side, using disqus gives a little added security as comments on the blog are stored not only in the blogs WP database, but also on the disqus database. That way, should something ever happen, you have a back up. And if you have a backup plugin installed on WP already, you have a back up of your back up. LOL Plus, if disqus goes down (which does happen every once in a great while), it automatically reverts back to the standard WP commenting which will then sync with disqus once it’s back online.
• Users also don’t have to sign up for disqus or your blog to post comments. You can use your login credentials from another service like Yahoo, Twitter, OpenID, and others.
• Likewise, if you’re logged into disqus, you’re automatically logged in on ANY website that is using the disqus commenting management. That means, if you want to leave a comment, all you need do is type it in and tell it to post. Your info is already filled in for you. Very cool!
• Disqus has a user “like” system wherein if someone posts a really great comment, you can “like” it – very similar to how Facebook’s “like” feature works. This is a very fun idea! It promotes that social aspect.
• Blog owners can manage comments both in their WP admin panel as always as well as through their disqus admin panel. This way, you can manage comments across more than ONE blog at a time. Very, very usual for those of us who have multiple blogs. One of the best features, in my opinion and one of the deciding factors in my decision to install it.
• Your disqus admin panel is separated into 2 sections – comments on blogs you own or moderate, and comments on other blogs. Each section has it’s own features and options. Very easy to use.
• Another feature users seem to appreciate is the “reblog” feature. It’s very similar to Twitter’s “retweet” feature. You can reblog your comments to your tumblr, your WP blog, your twitter stream, your TypePad blog and several others. This allows further discussion on other platforms of your choosing as well as the original blog. It’s another piece of that “social” aspect I was talking about earlier.
• Blog owners can also add “moderators” to their blog without actually giving anyone else access to their blogs back end and thus jeopardizing security. It works very similar to the moderation feature on services like yahoo groups and many forums. If you have a blog with lots of commenters, this is a very useful feature. Especially if you’re really trying to build a community. It makes it more “forum” like.
• When someone talks about your blog post on Twitter, Facebook or another social platform, a trackback is added to the post, just like a comment. Another great social feature! It allows you to keep track of who says what about your blog and open ups whole new avenues of communication.

And the last thing I’m going to say about the benefits of using disqus as a comment system is that it eliminates the need to have several other plugins installed since it effectively does a multitude of other things besides just “comment” things. (Like the back up I mentioned above.)

This is a great thing because the more plugins your blog has, the more loaded and bogged down it becomes. It takes longer to load as plugins take up valuable space in the database. The larger the core WP files and databases become, the more likely something is to break or malfunction. The less plugins you have, the faster your blog loads and the less likely things are to break.

That alone is worth it for me. I eliminated a good 5-6 plugins when I installed disqus and there are even a couple more I could disable and remove as well. That’s a very good thing!

I also like that I have almost no spam now. I use a plugin called Bad Behavior and while it catches 99% of spam, there are a few that do come through regularly. Since installing disqus alongside it, I have only had 2 spam comments TOTAL. I like that a lot. (And I should also mention I have not gotten spam related to using the disqus system. Since I use a different email for disqus than for other things, I know the spam I do get comes from other sources.)

In any case, I do understand the reservations some people have with giving their info to a third-party. I have researched this until I’m blue in the face, it seems, and I have not found anything significant enough to raise flags in my mind. As far as I can tell from that research, my info is safe with disqus and so is the info of those who comment here.

Frankly, I think my info is probably safer with them than on Facebook or Twitter and if you’re using either or both of those, what’s the big deal? Your info is already out there in less secure fashion than it will be with disqus, espcially with Facebook’s recent policy changes.

And further, if you’re THAT paranoid, perhaps you shouldn’t be on the world wide web to begin with. (I mean that with the utmost respect and love. It’s absolutely meant to just engage your thinking a bit and is in no way meant to be mean or harsh.) I think it’s probably more likely that you’ll get a virus or have your computer (or blog, even, maybe) hacked than to have serious issues with a commenting system like this.

In any case, I hope this gives you some food for thought. I hope you seriously consider the good points here and realize that sometimes a little risk is worth it.

Listen – having a blog isn’t really about you anyway, right? Isn’t the whole premise of blogging all about your visitors? To connect with others, gain new insights, have fun? Learn, share, grow? That’s what it is for me, anyway and I’m willing to bet it is for most of you too. That means, sometimes we have to put aside our reservations and do what is best for the community.

Like I said before, if you don’t want to comment but have something to say, by all means, contact me. That’s what the contact form is for. You’ll find a link up there in the navigation bar under the header of any page on this website. I want to hear from you and though I would really love it if you would leave a comment, I won’t be upset if you don’t.

Now, in all fairness, I do have to point out ONE minor gripe and flaw with disqus – it does not yet support CommentLuv. I have emailed disqus about it and their response was that the folks at CommentLuv are working on it. I do hope it’s soon because I seriously miss that and it is, in fact, THE reason I uninstalled disqus last time I tried using it in mid-2009 (and yes, I do know that IntenseDebate works with CommentLuv. I could include why I didn’t choose ID, but I will spare you those details right now This darn post already long enough!).

So, thanks for sticking with me. I hope I’ve given you some things to think about it. And if you want to read more about what others have to say on disqus, I found these immensely helpful in my research for this post:

Fred Wilson, a Venture Capitalist who has actually invested in disqus as a company – “Three Reasons to Use Disqus”

Michael Soriano of Web Designers Edge – “Using the Disqus Comment System”

David Risley, a professional blogger – “Disqus Not So Stupid Anymore”

Matt Langford, blogger at Matt Flies – “Why and How to Use Disqus with WordPress“

Check ‘em out!

One more thing – I promise! Disqus also works with many different platforms – not just WP – including tumblr, posterous, and TypePad among others.

Be blessed,