Disqus or not to Disqus, that is the question

Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:19 pm

I am naturally quite excited to be using Disqus but thought I should write a quick overview of what Disqus is, the pro's and con's for those that are pressed for time Smile

The following only applies to the Disqus FREE account, since that is the one most people will be using.

Integration
It doesn't get much simpler and in a nutshell, only needs one file inclusion and links to end in a hash tag #discuss_thread
Once the hash tag is there it will automatically display comments, allow people to add comments and/or reply to comments as well as Tweet the page URL, Like the page URL and Like individual comments.

Here are a few settings from the Disqus account;
Moderation
Color coded comments allow you to see Approved, Unapproved, Flagged, Spam and Deleted Comments.

Tools
Import/Export Comment threads
Allows you to import comments from Wordpress, Blogger, Moveable Type and a few others I haven't heard of before (sorry no b3evolution yet!).
Export comments to an XML file

A small selection of ready made CSS styles (Default, Blue, Grey, Green, Red, Orange)

Migration
Allows you to migrate comment to a different domain, set up URL mapping and also 301 redirects from your old comments to the new ones.

Mobile
Disqus is Mobile friendly by default (though keep in mind the page your comments are on might not be) and there is a Mobile App for droid available Smile

Settings - General
Twitter @replys
Allows you to define your Twitter name for comment replies to get Tweeted automatically.
Enable/Disable FB Like buttons
Enabble/Disable Media attachments - allows images and vides mentioned in comments to be shown
Allow Trackbacks - displays links explicitly to your post via a TrackBack URL.
Akismet - enable/Disable Akismet - NOTE requires a Wordpress API key which also now requires a monthly donation to the Akismet service. I think the minimum 'donation' is $1.50 a month.
Enable/Disable REACTIONS - a very interesting feature that aggregates mentions of your News (or other) item from different social networks.
Currectly optionally include mentions at Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed, Reddit and Hacker News.

Comment authentication - currently allows log-ins from Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and Yahoo. Alows optional comment ability to Anonymous, Registered (with Disqus) or Registered with verified email address (this is the option I use).

Other options include email notification settings, language and timezone etc

Organise comments into categories - possibly this could be used to organise News comments, Reviews comments etc.

Allow specified 'trusted' domains to your comments.

Allow comment to be pre-authorised before being displayed or not.
Lock comments after XX days
Force comments containing web links be authorised or not
Email comment moderator when a comment is flagged as spam and optionally auto-remove comment from the site and put it 'pending review'.

Appearance
A small selection of ready made themes including whether or not to display comments in a mobile friendly page.
Threaded or nested comments, thread depth,pagination, pagination type, sorting options, show avatars, custom CSS and lots of other features.

Access Control
A bit of a misnomer in my opinion but in essence allows you to block comments containing specific words (including support for * wildcard) and also to create whitelists and blacklist based upon usernames, email addresses, IP addresses and word lists.

PRO'S
Easy to integrate
Easy to manage.
Tons of useful options.
Potentially less prone to comment spamming because comments are not visible to bots.
CON's
Comments not SEO friendly as they are contained within javascript.
You don't 'own' your data because you are using a third party.

Newbie Joined: May 12, 2009 Posts: 74 Location: TX

well said. did a little comparison shopping awhile back and the only real competitor seems to be intensedebate.

intensedebate seems very similar to disqus, and offers a neat seo feature with their wordpress plugin:

"IntenseDebate outputs the standard WordPress comments enabling your comments to still be indexed by search engines that ignore JavaScript, while ensuring that visitors surfing with JavaScript disabled will be able to interact with comments made in IntenseDebate."

makes me wonder if there is a way to export disqus comments in a similar fashion. Although with RN lacking a global comment system, exporting those comments to an individual module would likely be a pita.

To look at it from another angle, not having comments indexed by search engines may be a good thing. You don't have to be overly concerned with spam, or how the comments may negatively impact the SEO performance of the page.

If someone is only willing to comment if they get a back-link, how valid is their comment? It would likely be abused more often than not anyway...

As for using an external service for comments, this makes sense to me for at least a couple reasons.

Most people wont bother to register with a given site just to leave a comment. Giving users the ability to use an existing registration with a growing number of 3rd party sites promotes more discussion.. which is really what a comment system is for. Case in point, look at nuken's site. When have you seen a *nuke news story with 20+ comments?
Using an external service to bridge to these 3rd party registrations means we don't have to deal with the API's of all these sites directly (updating code, etc)

Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:27 pm

I totally agree on all the points you raised.

Yes, Disqus comments can be exported and it should not actually be too difficult since the file has an XML structure but I have not looked at the actual files namespaces used - I would hope if it uses the unique id to 'group' the comments together, it wouldn't be too hard to import that data into a database table.
The initial approach I had envisaged for a global commenting system would have used an almost identical unique identifier, though I would have added a 'group' identifier so that categories could be used.

Regarding the value of SEO for comments. I think it's swings and roundabouts for the same points you made BUT I'm inclined to think that every comment would actually dilute any SEO value by virtue of the fact that these things tend to work as a percentage. The more words you have that are not the target keywords/key phrases, the more it dilutes.

From my own websites perspective, I see Comments as exactly that, an ad-hoc few words or sentences about the main content being shown on that page.
If I wanted a long in-depth discussion or debate I would use the forum because that is the best place for that type in-depth user feedback IMHO.
Having said that, a lot of Blogs now seem to be using Disqus for 'discussion' but I guess that might be appropriate for them otherwise they would use a CMS not a Blog.

Your point regarding bridging third party apps is an excellent one and I hope Disqus expands on this, perhaps even to a point where it makes having a seperate way to deal with Social Bookmarking obselete.

Site Admin Joined: Jan 06, 2006 Posts: 311

Great thread! Thanks guys. I'm sold. Can't wait for Guardian to release CA_Comments. Wink

Newbie Joined: Mar 29, 2009 Posts: 14

I see options like disqus as just being the progression of the web. It is easy to integrate and use while offering a nice feature to most website content.

Surprisingly, I have not had an issue with spam while using it. This may be due to the lack of SEO value.

It is an easy way to modernize a CMS without making too many changes. The only issue I have found is how disqus deals with nukes long url's. ShortLinks works great though.

Site Admin Joined: Jan 06, 2006 Posts: 311

rcvaughn wrote:

It is an easy way to modernize a CMS without making too many changes. The only issue I have found is how disqus deals with nukes long url's. ShortLinks works great though.

Very glad to hear... thanks. Wink

Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:20 pm

It would actually be very difficult to auto-spam Disqus. They way it is implemented here and within Tricked Out News 2.6 would require;
1 a client that has javascript enabled
2 knowledge of the unique identifier (in News that is a concatenation of $module_name and the article id $sid but there is absolutely nothing to stop you doing

Code:

$uniqid = md5(''.$module_name.''.$id.''.$salt.');

which would mean any targeting would have to be site specific not generic.
3 your Disqus shortname
4 the content url i.e. article-1.html
5 authority to post comments based on the setting at Disqus (e.g. confirmed email address).

I used Disqus here for about a week before Tricked Out News 2.6 was released and have to say, I had no issues with using Shortlinked or conventional URL's. I actually had the url's from News articles on the home page using the 'long' url's as the unique identifier and the main article page using shortlinked url's as an experiment and found that Disqus correctly grouped these two together even when replying to a comment from the homepage from the article page.

I love it and am installing it on my blog also. If someone does find a way to spam, I'll just enable Akismet at Disqus for a couple of $ a month as it covers the whole 'Disqus Shortname'

Suspended User Joined: Jun 03, 2009 Posts: 61

Wow! very nice all your comments. Thanks a lot.