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Disqus on Blog Sites

ShadowdareShadowdare MVP
edited July 2016 in General Banter

What do you all think of external commenting services on blog sites? This could be Disqus, IntenseDebate, Facebook Comments, etc. Perhaps feedback on these services (e.g. on features--voting, social interaction, profiles, guest commenting--privacy, spam management, moderation) in general from a user point of view.

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭

    Why not Vanilla as a commenting system?
    I'd think that every blog entry would be linked to a discussion and the comments are, well, the comments. Set in a specific category that either allows or disallows unregistered users comments (based on the blog policy). There is so much richness with the Vanilla plugins you might use as well. Probably need to find a way to redirect side panels into independent widgets to appear on the blog site.

    Anyone up to the challenge ;-)?

  • ShadowdareShadowdare MVP
    edited July 2016

    @rbrahmson, Vanilla's comment embed or even the Articles app for Vanilla is great if you have a forum and community that takes registrations. It can be set to create discussions in one category. Also, you can load Vanilla modules via JavaScript or include the Vanilla framework and load up the modules via PHP if you must integrate it with a CMS. It's super awesome that this all can be done with Vanilla. B)

    Nevertheless, if you're just running a blog software by itself without a forum where you don't need any user profile features on the website, you should consider using its native blog comment functionality if it has one or an external service, so I'm wondering what people's experiences with some commenting services are like.

    I've been taking a look at Disqus and it's pretty streamlined. Once you comment on a blog post, it creates a "discussion" on Disqus' side and you can later view all the threads via a centralized user profile. You can disable Disqus advertisements and ad tracking for each website and enable no-registration guest commenting with only a name and email address. Users can vote on comments and attach images and admins can moderate comments with a nice dashboard.

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭

    I've seen Disqus and used it in the past. But, I am concerned about the trickle out effect -- namely, the process of users moving from the primary site to other sites as lured by Disqus. All these services have inherently different interest than those of the individual site. So ultimately it is a balancing act -- which will get you more traffic: a reference in the Disqus stream with the possible trickle out effect, or lack of Discus mention but with less trickle out.

    As for Vanilla, I was thinking of an interface that would automatically create an discussion in Vanilla with the blog entry creating the Vanilla post title (whether the blog entry content is also copied into the post doesn't matter if you don't show it), and with comments entered on the same Vanilla post right on the blog site. So in effect, Vanilla will only be the repository of the comments. At any time in the future you could convert it to a full blown forum, expand functionality with plugins, and do other things depending on your creativity. The main point though, is that the open source nature of Vanilla keeps you in control, not Discus.

    Last but not least - there has been numerous past discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of tree-structure for comments. It seems to me that people hold opinions on this as strongly as they might favor one religion over another, so I'm not going to go into that. But clearly, if one wishes a tree-structured commenting format, Vanilla may not be a good choice. As an aside and again without opining on the merit of each school of thought, I feel that from a marketing point of view supporting both options would probably appeal to a larger market share and be good for Vanilla.

  • hgtonighthgtonight MVP

    @rbrahmson said:

    As for Vanilla, I was thinking of an interface that would automatically create an discussion in Vanilla with the blog entry creating the Vanilla post title (whether the blog entry content is also copied into the post doesn't matter if you don't show it), and with comments entered on the same Vanilla post right on the blog site. So in effect, Vanilla will only be the repository of the comments. At any time in the future you could convert it to a full blown forum, expand functionality with plugins, and do other things depending on your creativity. The main point though, is that the open source nature of Vanilla keeps you in control, not Discus.

    This already exists and is called Blog Comments. Visit https://forums.example.com/embed/comments/universal for information on integrating it into your site.

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭

    Thanks, @hgtonight, I guess great minds think alike, albeit I arrived at this waaay after the Vanilla superheroes...

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