With the addition of threaded comments in the WordPress core, and the excellent CSS styling options that are now available, as well as the ever-present Gravatar (gravatar.com) support, one would wonder how it is possible to pimp the comments?
Simple: either by filling them with additional functionality using plugins, or by moving them from WordPress altogether. The former solution can mean anything from user grading of the comments to fetching the buzz from Twitter, while the latter means that you’ll rely on a third-party service for managing your comments.
Hosted comment solutions mean that you leave the complete comment solution to a third-party service, not rely on the WordPress comment functionality. There are two players in this arena, Disqus (disqus.com) and IntenseDebate (www.intensedebate.com). The former has seniority, but the latter is owned by Automattic, which makes it a tempting choice to anyone loving WordPress. Both of them have their pros and cons function-wise, and both are being actively developed. To start using either Disqus or IntenseDebate you download a plugin for WordPress and take it from there. It is easy to get started, although localization has proven to be something of an issue for some, as well as customizing of the styling. That being said, getting started with either Disqus or IntenseDebate is a breeze. Incidentally, you can add these services to static sites as well, giving any site a commenting functionality. That’s pretty cool, actually.
My main gripe with the concept of hosted comments, however, is the fact that you’re basically giving content to someone else to maintain. That means that if your comment service of choice breaks down or goes out of business, you’re stuck with no comments at all. Granted, these days there are backup solutions, but it just doesn’t feel safe. Comments may be mostly the words of your readers and as such it is not your content, but at the same time it is, since the discussion is a part of your site. With that in mind, would you risk losing that content, even if it is just for the time your hosted comment provider is experiencing downtime or other issues?
Other possible issues include downtime and added clutter because chances are that the comment solution won’t fit seamlessly with your smashing design. Also, problems experienced by the commenting system’s host will hit your site as well. That’s not good. However, there are some great advantages here too. First of all, spamming is taken care of on a wider scale, and that has its advantages. Both comment systems also offer various login methods, reply by e-mail, RSS feeds, as well as Twitter integration and e-mail notifications. The scope of features you’ll get out of the box from Disqus or IntenseDebate is something you’d have to supercharge your WordPress comments with plugins to achieve.
It is often said that sites using these systems get more comments, and that doesn’t seem to be just the PR talk of the companies themselves. So with that in mind, if you are to use a service like this, which one should you pick? I have no idea; they are pretty similar. Give them both a go and see which one fits your site better.
The idea of a unified login system is a great one. Think about it: wouldn’t one login for everything be great? Not a ton of passwords to mess around with, and no risk of the “one password for too many sites” security hazard. (Except, of course, for the fact that you can access all those sites with one password anyway.) The idea, however, is that the few providers of these Master Accounts would be so secure that the only risk of users being compromised would be human error, and on your side
of things at that. Compared to the risk of some minor site being hacked and your “one password fits all” master password being out there, it sounds pretty good. That’s why OpenID (www.openid.net) is interesting, and that’s why the giants like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoftare interested in this. For the same reason Facebook Connect (developers.facebook.com/connect.php) exists, a unified login using your Facebook account. The Sign in with Twitter (apiwiki.twitter.com/Sign-in-with-Twitter) solution is something similar, but using Twitter of course, and the list goes on.
You may wonder why you should even consider using your own sign-in procedure if you can lean on those giants. Most WordPress sites don’t have their own sign-in procedures for anyone other than the actual writers and administrators, at least not for commenting. It is usually enough to leave a name and an e-mail address. However, if you want sign-ins, one of the unified solutions is worth considering. I would like to point to OpenID, but the truth is that Facebook Connect is way more user-friendly (right now) and besides Facebook is an OpenID member so it isn’t such a big deal after all.
Soon you’ll be using your Google and Live.com accounts to sign in across the Web, alongside Facebook and Twitter, all perhaps being connected through the OpenID Foundation. Or not. Either way, the thing is you should consider a unified login for your site if you need login functionality for your users. There are plugins that solve this for you, but don’t let that stop you. Read up on the services themselves and make up your mind regarding any potential user registrations in the future.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Orlando F. at 05132010
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