Mike, your post is timely--I was just considering using Disqus. I was concerned that my Akismet--which has been an awesome safety net--was going to be zapped, and you've confirmed that. Thanks for taking the time to cover all of these features. It really helped my decision.

Thanks Glory!

This review totally rocks, Mike!! I'm with Glory -- I am right on the cusp of installing Disqus because I love it on Mashable so much, almost exclusively because of the inline commenting ability. But I notice it's sometimes buggy ... and even as I logged in to post this comment, at first your entire blog opened in the tiny popup once I logged into Disqus. Odd!!

Keep us posted for sure. I do love all my WP plugins - retweet meme, comment luv, twitID and more. hm. ;)

Thanks Michael for this. Have you registered your comments with the Disqus team? I too was about to integrate Disqus on my blog so will be interested on the outcome.

Hi Krishna;

If I could find a place on DISQUS to comment and provide feedback I would. I figured this review might actually be a faster way to get their attention.

Also, I took a look at the DISQUS forum (the place where you ask questions) and noticed literally hundreds of unanswered questions. My guess is that they have no backend support team (like WordPress) and likely are overwhelmed.

Hi Mike, I tried Disqus months ago, and turned it off. The main reason I turned it off was when I realized that all of the comments were on Disqus and not my blog.

I also found it difficult to use. In the end, I think that it's only for geeks and people who want to spend the time AND pay someone to set it up right.

Although I kept it up for a couple of months, I did not notice any extra comments.

So it was not a good experience.

With Wordpress blogs, I really appreciated getting Askimet back when I turned Disqus off :)

Actually, the comments are indeed on your blog. Using the WordPress plugin, comments are continually backed up to your WP installation.

Glad to hear there has been some progress since the last time I tried it. I'll still wait until I hear how the Disqus plugin works with the plugins I currently enjoy using. It's the once bitten twice shy story... I need more proof this time before taking any action.

Hey Daniel;

It's great to have someone from Disqus over her commenting.

It is my hope that some of this feedback will help you guys improve as I would really like to see your product taken to the next level.

Mike

Thanks Michael for taking all the trouble. For me this means there still isn't a need to have my wordpress blog hosted outside wordpress.com.

Great review, Mike. I looked at Disqus for my main blog about a year ago and decided it wasn't "there" yet. However in preparation for launching a new video blog last week I revisited Disqus, saw big improvements and decided to use it for my new site.

Spam is a BIG concern for me as my main blog gets in excess of 2K spam comments a day and intend to build significantly more traffic for my new site. According to the official Disqus Blog they are tied into Akismet for spam filtering: http://tr.im/rYGw and they have improved their controls for moderating spam.

I've asked the Disqus folks for clarification on the Akismet thing (at their invitation) - exactly what is the comment behavior if the WordPress Akismet plugin is active alongside Disqus? - but have yet to hear back from them.

Another thing on the plus side, when you are logged into Disqus you can comment on any Disqus powered site w/out having to log in again.

Having comments backed up in my WordPress database was non-negotiable for me. If that feature hadn't been there (it wasn't a year ago) I would have passed again.

I'm willing to try Disqus and see how well it works for my new site. But I am going to keep a close eye on things. I see things go wonky with Disqus I'll pull the plug and revert back to the regular WP comment system.

Hey Chris;

Long time bud! Yea, so if Askimet is integrated I cannot tell. I have yet to see any comments flagged as spam in my spam folder in DISQUS.

It does seem that the spam influx is lower since I implemented DISQUS, so something must be going on. However, the familiar process that Askimet takes you through is not obviously there with DISQUS (at least I cannot figure it out).

Keep us posted here on your experience.

An upside to Disqus is that it connects reader's email addresses with comments they've made on any other blog with Disqus. Therefore people are less likely to post anonymous flame comments because Disqus automatically assigns a name to their comment if it exists in the Disqus database. As a user it feels a bit like big brother is watching, but if you have a blog which gets a lot of flamming comments (like a micro news service), it can be a way to help people be more thoughtful before they post because they know that their email address is tracked by the Disqus system.

great stuff - i also think that with the disqus commenting system, I would be nice to be able to text link and not have to include link as a line item - comments R therefore viewed as longer which may deter readers from examining the comment.

I don't remember how I found your blog but I
have been reading it for the last 45 minutes. Not
a big deal except that I am supposed to be
working. Anyway - thank you for the useful article. Btw - Great review

Hi Michael,
thank you for this review. I am planning on using Disqus for my own blog - still work in progress, and found this post useful as it confirms some doubts I had.
One thing that I didn't like particularly about Disqus when I gave it a try a few months ago, was that it didn't take into consideration a number of optimisations to reduce HTTP requests, DNS lookups, etc. and it didn't even use HTTP compression for its static files. While Disqus seems to be generally speaking fast enough, I'd like to see these optimisations in place.
Unfortunately this is an issue with most of this kind of plugins... and you often end up with LOTS of HTTP requests and DNS lookups because of too many stylesheets and javascript files etc from too many different sources as soon as you use a few of these plugins.
You start with an A grade score with Yslow, and with just a few plugins you can fall to F.. :)
There is the possibility to mitigate these downsides by using PHP Speedy, as it automatically performs minification+merging+compression of javascript and stylesheet files, but it needs some tweaking in the code to improve things with this sort of plugins.
WordPress has an amazing plugin system, but it's sad that many plugins can affect sometimes significantly the performance of a blog.
Anyway, many thanks for your review. I'll take it into consideration while deciding whether or not to go for Disqus.

P.S.: are you sure that the social media comments aren't working? they do seem to work on Mashable.

Hey Vito - I am positive the social media comments are not working properly (just tried turning them back on the other day and the same problem emerged). Cannot speak for Mashable. -Mike

The reason one would use Disqus over other commenting systems is that it provides an easy and simple to use system in which anyone can adopt.

If people want to use a system which is configurable and allows for a more functional use, they should think about using JS-Kit http://js-kit.com/comments/

The best commenting system I've found (and I've tried Disqus and Cocomment, but not js-kit) is IntenseDebate. To my knowledge, it works with Akismet. It also has support for gravatars. If you are running a WordPress blog, you can access your IntenseDebate account directly in the dashboard. If you are looking for an alternative, you should check it out.

Thanks for the discussion but it seems with all the DISQUS challenges there are more pros than cons so we're going to give it a try on our our test prep blog.

An informative post. I regularly comment on Mashable.com and what I immediately found frustrating was the default subscription to further comments. I had to manually unsubscribe every time i made a comment. Once I got a hang of how the system works, I have since learned to turn off the subscription BEFORE logging in with any of my accounts.

I've since installed this on my own up and coming blog. I searched in vain through all the code to change the selection order to default to "Do not Subscribe". I've been all over the web and stumbled upon your article. I still a bit frustrated with forcing my future readers subscribe to something they know nothing about. I placed a disclaimer on my blog to work around or alert people of the issue at least however it's still not sufficient.

Whats important to me as a "regurgitator of news" (aka: semi-blogger) is the integration of other Social Media login options.

I did very successfully integrate FB:connect on my own however, what I didn't like was that I could not keep track of the comment counts. Secondly, I didn't like the fact that I didn't have a backup system in place of FB:connect on it's own in case I changed my mind. I would essentially have no comments on my site if and when I changed my comment system. I had to drop the single option and coding for fb:connect for the time being.

Disqus certainly has it's shortcomings but so far it's the best compromise I have found so far and is now my running choice. I do agree with every word of your original post and found all these advantages/disadvantages on my own before finding your great write up on them.

IntenseDebate looks really attractive to me, especially since it's made by Automatic. This will probably ensure the best of both worlds but with one SEVERE caveat;Unless I missed it somewhere, there is NO Facebook Connect integration and that's a show stopper for me. Facebook Connect is VITAL for my community discussions and this is why I've regrettably "settled" for Disqus.

Ironically enough though, I am willingly subscribing to these comments via Disqus for the very first time in case someone out there posts an update relating to fb:connect with IntenseDebate.

Thanks for the informative post and best of luck in the future!

Disqus seems okay. I think i might add this to my own site

I've been using Disqus for almost a year on a couple of blogs. One thing not mentioned here is that all your comments (across blogs) are in one place if they all use Disqus. Also, if you manage multiple blogs then you can manage the comments in one place too.

Thanks for the review and all the comments so far.

Glad I found this. I tested it and after some testing I uninstalled it. I don't like the idea of my blog stuff being on a random service provider's server.

So far, after about a day DISQUS seems to be okay. One thing though. I deleted the Akismet plugin and then reinstalled it.

There was no spam showing up on the blog, except on one page for some reason, but it was still on the wordpress comments side. Only I could see it though it as clogging up my email. And I kept having to spam or delete each comment via the dashboard.

I could have left them alone, but if I ever decided to go back to wordpress comments all of those spam comments would show up.

"needed to go back in and change my name to be something other than my ID in DISQUS in order to change what was displayed. However, one trip over to Mashable.com and you can see that most people don’t know to do this. "

I'M one of those people Michael! Any possibility you could give a "how to" to use newbies on how to change that? :)

Matthew;

You need to log in to Disqus and change your settings. It will update
across all sites you have post on.

Thanks for the review. I see you're using it!
I'm using a WordPress blog and notice the comments DO seem to be resident in my WP dashboard as well as in the Disqus system.

The question I googled to find your review, however, remains unanswered. How does Disqus make any money? Do you know? - P

Peter - But, when you indicate something is spam, it does not track back into WordPress (meaning if you ever shut off DIsqus, all your spam will show back up in your comments). Have no clue re: money. I am guessing they are funded. - Mike

Funny you should ask that question about how Disqus makes money. In searching for how and why to use Diqus, I came across the site of one of their Venture Capitalists! The guy who wrote the post was sharing 3 reasons to use Disqus. If it is ok to post a link, it is http://bit.ly/VrWVt (shortened because the URL is really long).

Well that was a worthwhile read, V, thanks!
The 3 reasons are interesting, and following the year-old comments to Scobleizer who uses Disqus on his site (but some other system elsewhere) and quote the Friendfeed integration as a key benefit (ne plus change)

...but I still wonder (and NOT in a nasty suspicious way, not at all) wwhat the pay-back strategy is... a Sale to someone? Sponsorship? Ad spots? How will/does Disqus get monetized? Am I missing something? [Don't worry, it's happened. ;-) ] - P

Thanks, Peter! Your conundrum (how is this free service monetized) certainly gives us food for thought. We may have to just keep chewing on it, with our eyes peeled, because wherever I look to find an answer to your question -- I come up blank! Everything I've read says, in essence, this is an entirely altruistic endeavor. For the record, note that while Disqus says the service is free, they never make the claim, "And it will ALWAYS remain free."

Cheers, V. Yup, a mystery to me anyway. No big deal. It would be cool to know what the plan is, (e.g. roughly drafted described Google's plan for its phone OS as "the whole please-use-Android so we can sell ads on your mobiles thing." Clear.

But in the meantime, if the Disqus system adds value people like me will use it. (And certainly, the email notification of replies like yours adds value, but isn't unique).

I find the thought of having to manually tag spam if I ever switch Disqus OFF a negative, and being a bit of a control freak, I worry at the reliance on a 3rd party server ... BUT I am soothed by some of the names on Disqus's 'client list' eg: Fake Steve Jobs, Scobleizer: pretty heavy hitters, it seems to me, with a lot of traffic... so it must be fairly reliable, surely (?) - P

Thanks for clarifying that about the spam tagging not flowing through, Mike.

DISQUS works out great on my blogs and it makes comment management and tarcking so much easier. I've also wondered how the owners make money from this. May be they'll start offering a premium service?

As a commentator point of view, I would not register myself to Disqus as I can't promote my Web Blog. One of the reason we want to make comments to other Blog is to promote ourself.

compare disqus to askimet what's better

Thank you so much for the review. :) I'd wanted to try out Disqus when I'd started setting up my blog. However, it looks as though the traditional WP commenting system will have to do for now as I'd like to spend as little time as possible on battling spam. :p

Angelina - As you can see I do use DISQUS on this blog. I have found the spam abilities to be very good. The only questions was social media comments. However, I think they have been addressed.

Where can i have more info on this ?

respect
raven conway
______________________________________________

Disqus comments are already among the most portable, enabling syndication through RSS, and into life-streaming applications of all sorts.

Disqus work great with Facebook Love it. Disqus is much nicer and I can see all the comments I make in one place..

Disqus has ability to import existing comments as well as export comments. I didn't lose any comments when I moved to Disqus..Disqus is really good stuff methinks!

I'm curious if you've gotten any negative comments from users on the site about having their info off-loaded to a third-party site. I guess it isn't very clear that Disqus is a third-party app for comments on a given site.

Personally, I would hate to not know that when leaving comments on a site, my name, website and email address are being stored by some third-party whose privacy policies are unknown and can change at any given time.

I wasn't a cynic till I saw the blatant abuse by Facebook and their constant privacy policy changes that made it harder and harder for users to retain some semblance of privacy on the site. Who knows that Disqus's policy will be a month or a year from now. I think I'd rather retain control over the comments on my site and also keep my visitors info private, which is something I'm sure they would appreciate.

Hey Ryan - Any time you leave a comment on any blog, your name and email are stored on third-party site.

I see that you are using Disqus , so I can assume you are happy with it. I still have a few questions , but I will have to do some testing to answer them.

I like how the comment system behaves when you are logged into your Disqus account , I do not like it however if you are a guest. It almost seems intrusive for someone who wants to just leave a quick post.

As I have yet to install the plugin I would also like to know if the comments get stored locally as well as off site. As I manage my own server this is important. Im not a fan of having to log into a third party service to moderate my comments as well.

I found your site by searching for different commenting systems and noticed you had Disqus. I've been a behind the scene web app developer and finally getting into the "blog" scene and cant believe how much it has evolved.

So thanks for the writeup , I hope it will make my life easier!

I really enjoy using Disqus on my website; all I want is for people to be able to comment on news articles, it does the job. I will agree though that it is not without its flaws.

What I like about Disqus is the look and feel of it. It really enhances the site and make it look more professional.

I have just added Disqus to my blog - I really like it..

I have Disqus on my blog. I have had a few problems with it but it's fine now. It's nice to see people talking to each other with it. :)