Bye Bye, Disqus

April 12, 2010 by Screenbeard

Tonight I disabled Disqus and tried to implement some of the same features manually. Rubenerd has been pushing his anti-disqus agenda for some time, and it ramped up when Taryn proclaimed it’s virtues and Zombie_Plan bleated and caved too[1].

See ya!
BYE by Taz etc.

So as an experiment (and due to my underlying desire to stop handing stuff over to third parties), I turned it off. Here’s what I installed in its place:

  • CommentLuv — puts a link to the commenter’s most recent post under their comment.
  • Gravatar Signup — if a user doesn’t have a Gravatar associated with their email, offers to sign them up for one.
  • Simple Facebook Connect — lets a commenter register using their Facebook account.
  • Simple Twitter Connect — lets a commenter register using their Twitter account.
  • OpenID — lets a commenter register using their OpenID account.
  • Subscribe to Comments — Adds a check-box so a commenter can have follow-up comments emailed to them.
  • Live Comment Preview — Shows a mockup of the comment being left as it’s written. Kinda neat.

So that’s seven plugins, plus an hour or two mucking around with site templates and CSS to get them looking vaguely acceptable (so many themes have very ugly comments). I had to style my comments separately, fix the threading, and alter the layout of the comment form. And I still have less functional comments than I did with Disqus. The only benefit I have is… I… don’t know. I can say I don’t use Disqus?

That’s not including the plugins I decided not to turn on — Backtype to pull mentions from Twitter etc., and Ozh’ Absolute Comments to enable reply by email (for me at least). I’ll miss reply by email the most.

Maybe those of you who can’t see the point of Disqus don’t care if your commenters can’t log in with Facebook. And I’m yet to see anyone but Techcrunch with an attractive and functional comment area using a vanilla WordPress setup. Disqus isn’t gorgeous, but it’s a lot better than what WordPress out of the box can do.

So now I’ve done it I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. As an added bonus, none of the comments that were in Disqus are threaded any more, and if I go back to Disqus it might screw up the comments people have left since disabling it. And none of my comments before today are associated with me as administrator any more. All in all, I probably should have left it alone. But at least I can maybe help some one make up their mind about their comments — use Disqus and get a whole bunch of features, or install some of the plug-ins listed above.

Just so you know, although I’m a fan of the software, I’m not such a fan of Disqus the company. Trying to get assistance for a problem is like pulling teeth, and there’s at least one feature they promise when you set it up that just doesn’t work. When I tried to ask them why my comments weren’t “real-time” they told me they were and that they were disabled for maintenance — which seems odd, since it’s been at least a few months now… So take from that what you will — if you don’t think you’ll need support, Disqus might be perfect.

Footnotes
  1. he know’s I’m just kidding right? ↩
The Bye Bye, Disqus by Joshua Nunn, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Share: Bookmark on Delicious • Short link: http://e01.li/d9SkdI
Tags: , ,
Categories: Tech • Permalink • View Comments

  • http://zombieskittles.com/ Zombie_Plan

    Heh I’ll admit I’m a bit of a sheep, but if someone recommends something and I value their opinion I’m apt to try it :P So far I’m still liking Disqus and haven’t had any problems with it so far. The moment I have problems I’ll drop it in a shot though, but I do like threaded comments, and it makes me want to comment on other blogs a lot more too. I love conversing with others over twitter/blogs, but rarely have the motivation..
    .-= Zombie_Plan´s last blog ..Ripple effect =-.

  • http://zombieskittles.com Zombie_Plan

    Heh I’ll admit I’m a bit of a sheep, but if someone recommends something and I value their opinion I’m apt to try it :P So far I’m still liking Disqus and haven’t had any problems with it so far. The moment I have problems I’ll drop it in a shot though, but I do like threaded comments, and it makes me want to comment on other blogs a lot more too. I love conversing with others over twitter/blogs, but rarely have the motivation..
    .-= Zombie_Plan´s last blog ..Ripple effect =-.

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    I’m totally a sheep myself — it’s like a cool club or something.

    The whole reason I felt I had to add the Facebook/Twitter stuff was to lower the difficulty of commenting, and try and give people incentives to do it, as I love getting comments. I may go back to Disqus just if people demand it, because I can’t afford to lose your comments :P

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    I’m totally a sheep myself — it’s like a cool club or something.

    The whole reason I felt I had to add the Facebook/Twitter stuff was to lower the difficulty of commenting, and try and give people incentives to do it, as I love getting comments. I may go back to Disqus just if people demand it, because I can’t afford to lose your comments :P

  • http://zombieskittles.com/ Zombie_Plan

    As as added thing; you added OpenID twice >_>
    .-= Zombie_Plan´s last blog ..Ripple effect =-.

  • http://zombieskittles.com Zombie_Plan

    As as added thing; you added OpenID twice >_>
    .-= Zombie_Plan´s last blog ..Ripple effect =-.

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    Did not you liar >_>

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    Did not you liar >_>

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    Do you not realise how lazy I am? With Disqus I’m automatically logged in on any site that uses it, so I can start typing my comments immediately. Now you want me to expend at least two clicks on your twitter button (assuming I’m even logged into twitter, which I’m often not)?? What kind of slavedriver are you?

    Also, I like owning my comments, being notified of replies automatically and being able to reply via email. I also like being able to follow people’s comments across various sites.

    Bottom line: I’m less likely to comment on articles that don’t have Disqus. Mostly because I’m lazy, but partly because I like the way its features are designed with the commenter in mind, not just the site owner.

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    Do you not realise how lazy I am? With Disqus I’m automatically logged in on any site that uses it, so I can start typing my comments immediately. Now you want me to expend at least two clicks on your twitter button (assuming I’m even logged into twitter, which I’m often not)?? What kind of slavedriver are you?

    Also, I like owning my comments, being notified of replies automatically and being able to reply via email. I also like being able to follow people’s comments across various sites.

    Bottom line: I’m less likely to comment on articles that don’t have Disqus. Mostly because I’m lazy, but partly because I like the way its features are designed with the commenter in mind, not just the site owner.

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    Sob I can’t win! You won’t comment here without Disqus. Rubenerd won’t comment here with disqus… What do I doooooo?

  • http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ Josh Nunn

    Sob I can’t win! You won’t comment here without Disqus. Rubenerd won’t comment here with disqus… What do I doooooo?

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    Clearly the only solution is to create two identical sites; one with disqus and one without. Run them both in parallel for 6 months and evaluate which gets the most comments. And then ditch the one without disqus.

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    Clearly the only solution is to create two identical sites; one with disqus and one without. Run them both in parallel for 6 months and evaluate which gets the most comments. And then ditch the one without disqus.

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    What the hell happened to my avatar? Why am I a purple cog with sunglasses?

  • http://twitter.com/hugepedlar Paul

    What the hell happened to my avatar? Why am I a purple cog with sunglasses?

  • http://iphoneawareness.com/firmware/ iphone firmware

    Loved Reading this post, many thanks for the information.

blog comments powered by Disqus