Intense Debate may have been acquired by Automattic (the people behind WordPress), but Disqus remains the blogosphere’s favorite comment networking service. Not content to rest on their laurels, they’re rolling out a slew of new features with Disqus 3 next week.
Now all I need is a white label version of Disqus, and I just might use it on my blogs.
Im not really too sure why Im writing about this on Crenk, apart from the fact that it was on a technology news site. This morning I posted a comment on a Techcrunch article about YouTube Founder Chad Hurley funding the USA Formula 1 team, and I was the first person to comment and thought it was funny to see the comments to follow. Here is a quick look. It just made me laugh.
IntenseDebate is a new wordpress plugin which offers an enhanced user commenting experience. Currently IntenseDebate has a easy to add wordpress plugin in which you can add straight into your platform and within a few clicks it can be live and working. Features include: commenting threading, reply by email, profiles, widgets, twitter integration and more.
IntenseDebate is one of many comment plugins that really help you try to increase traffic and build community around your site. I really think this idea has legs, but it needs to be part of a much bigger platform. It would be great if Wordpress took a few ideas from IntenseDebate and added them into their platform.
It has been reported today that Co.mments will be hitting the dead pool on the 11th of January. Well according to a post by Steve Rubel this morning the service will be shutting down and the founder Asaf Arkin announced it in a blog post the previous night.
I have never really understood these commenting services, because they dont seem to add too much to the user experience.
For nearly the last two years I have been blogging, writing nearly a thousand articles. Lots of time, energy and creativity go into these words I write, and I publish them in the hopes that others will not only read them, but enjoy them, apply them and leave comments or ask questions. The one evil of the Internet is Spam though, and over the last few years Spam bots have been attacking blogs like no other. This is partly due to the number of new blogs being created.
The problem is comment spam. These are comments that are left on articles that usually point to some website that tells you how she’d like you to be thicker and longer lasting, or how to find a great deal on your next new car. Nothing of value, in face, these types of comments detract from the credibility of your content and worse, possibly lead to your readers leaving from clicking on a bogus link. There is help.
Shortly after one particular article got bombarded with tons of traffic from several social bookmarking and networking sites at once, the comment spam started to roll in. Using WordPress, my preferred platform for blogging, I set out to find some sort of Captcha system to add to blog posts to help cut down on the spam. Generally speaking, I don’t like anything that interferes with a users experience, but this plug-in is a must have.
Did you pass math? adds a small math question to the bottom of your comment box, above the submit button. It prompts the commentator to do a very simple math equation, like 7+3= [fill in the answer]. The plug-in can be found here: http://www.herod.net/dypm/ – and while it hasn’t been updated in two years, I don’t see that as a problem, it simply works. To install it, simply download to your computer from their site, unzip the files and upload [via FTP] two PHP files (English is default, but support is there for dozens more). Login to the admin section of WordPress, activate the plugin and you are done.
Since installing the Did you pass math plug-in, my comment spam has been near completely eliminated. As an added bonus, there was zero negative feedback and no backlash from the my readers after installing. Some even thanked me for not using a true Captcha system, since they can often be very hard to read. My suggestion would be to install this when first setting up a blog, so you aren’t in a situation like me, trying to fix a broken problem while it is being broken even harder.
I have noticed while surfing Techcrunch that they have added a new feature today, that they plan to announce tomorrow. The feature in question is Seesmic, and at the bottom of every post now on Techcrunch users have the option to add a video comment. This inclusion was really only a matter of time, due to the fact that Mike Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, so any publicity is obviously good publicity.
This comes a month after Mashable had added a similar option to their site, but partnered with Viddler to do so. On Mashable however they dont have too many comments on posts to start with and also as far as I can see the Viddler partnership has added absolutely nothing to the site or user experience. Thus, im curious to see if the Seesmic option on Techcrunch actually gets used.
Update: Mike reported about adding video comments, but didnt even link back to my article that was published first. How rude! haha.
