From this post onwards, I've replaced the commenting system on this blog with the Disqus Comments system. Disqus is one of the breed of external comment providers that have become popular in the last year or so, that include Automattic's Intense Debate, Six Apart's Typepad Connect and JSKit Echo.
Why have I chosen Disqus? Well, it's the only one that syncs comments back to my Movable Type database right now, thanks to a new version of the plugin that was released with Disqus 3. And that's important to me. Should Disqus go away, or I decide to stop using it, I don't want to lose the discussions around my blog posts. This way, I can easily revert back to the native comments without losing anything. It might seem counter-intuitive for companies to offer this, but, for me, it's actually made me try out their service, which I'd never have used otherwise.
Beyond that, it's nice for someone else to handle things like using Facebook or Twitter logins to leave comments on this blog. There are Movable Type plugins that handle this, but they need some integration work, and, frankly, I'd rather leave that effort to someone else. The service also offers commenters the chance to start tracking their comments through the Disqus Profiles service.
Unless anything horrific goes wrong, I'm planning to have Disqus on here for at least a month, to see how it goes. I'll report back.
I use tumblr and the only commenting system they they recommend using is Disqus which I like, especially because of the way it links in with Twitter.
In that sense, I suppose they're an evolution of systems like Haloscan, which a lot of people used in the days when Blogger didn't have comments.
Looks good. Be interested in your verdict in a month's time.
Thanks for proving that the Twitter integration works. :-)
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you! Thank you for your info.And this is thailand travel site/blog. It pretty much covers thailand travel related stuff.
So when do we get them on FG? :-)
Once my test run is done, and I'm convinced it all works OK... :-)
There's a bit of a delay on the Twitter log-in but it does seem to work. I had tried Intense debate a while ago, but ditched it again. Interesting to hear how you get on with this...
I've been pretty pleased so far. The syncing back to the MT comments database is going fine, and commenting is slightly up on normal...
I've just added Disqus, so far so good, but I'm interested to hear other people's impressions. I see you have now removed it, I'm off to try and find out why on a later post.
Jade