Increase Blog Comments And Traffic With Disqus Comments Plugin

Everton | Aug 23, 2009 | View Comments


Yesterday I wrote about the RPX WordPress plugin that allows users with facebook, twitter and other IDs to leave comments on WordPress blogs.  Just 24 hours later, I’ve replaced the RPX plugin.  There was nothing wrong with it; I just found a better plugin that provides more functionality and allowed me to remove 6 plugins on my site.

The Disqus WordPress plugin is similar in that it allows readers to leave comments using facebook, twitter, Disqus and OpenID IDs.  However, it provides much much more functionality:

  • Threaded comments and replies
  • Notifications and reply by email
  • Subscribe and RSS options
  • Powerful moderation and admin tools
  • Full spam filtering
  • Support for Disqus community widgets
  • Connected with a large discussion community
  • Increased exposure and readership

disqus

Now some of these features are already available in wordpress, but I think they work much better in Disqus e.g. the pagination options are much better.

The final feature I think could be very interesting.  Whenever someone leaves a comment using a twitter or facebook ID, an option is give to post the comment as a status update.  This could bring in additional traffic, particularly if the commenter has a big twitter or facebook following.

Installing Disqus has allowed me to replace 6 plugins on my site:

  • subscribe to comments (defaults to subscribed)
  • backtype connect
  • clean notifications
  • commentluv
  • RPX
  • ajax edit comments (because not supported)
  • commentluv (because not supported)

Disqus also provide widgets that allow you to show in your sidebar top commenters, recent comments and popular posts.

The plugin is easy to install and even imports and syncs your old comments.  The only missing feature I think is allowing users to sync existing Wordpress IDs.

More: Disqus


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • Combatting spam is a constant battle tbh, and with automated tools to spam blogs and forums getting smarter and more sophisticated the only tool you can stil rely on to stop spam is manual approval. Unfortunetly its a pain and can be almost impossible if your dealing with huge traffic and massive volumes of comments
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  • To be honest, both are excellent and the choices really comes down to your personal needs or preferences.
  • cool i like this post! It's amazing! thanks a lot!
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  • I have a forex blog as well and it seems like my targeted traffic just don't like to add comments. Wonder if by adding a "nice" looking comment login plugin like this would help me get more comments.
  • you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain - give it a go!
  • Ok, Disqus is the best commenting solution out there, whether you are managing your site's comments or building a portfolio of web comments. All in one, nice and tidy.

    However, if you have a problem they are non-existent with the tech support. I changed a SEF URL on an article, and it broke Disqus for my site. I finally figured out an ugly fix to something that was a problem on their end, and the comments now work, but now instead of displaying the article title on my site's Disqus page and in their widget the url for the article is used. Not the end of the world, but ugly and I would like it fixed.

    No tech support at all. No replies. No web forum. Nothing.

    As much as I'd like to keep using Disqus, I may switch to IntenseDebate or JS-Kit. I like that Disqus looks so clean and lets me set my own default avatar for guest users, but the non-existent support community is a deal breaker. The problem I have is on their end, not mine, and I can't get anyone to reply to me, much less fix the issue.
  • I've had a different experience with support. There is a support forum and a way of emailing discuss. Admittedly it seems to be run by one person, but they do respond - help@disqus.com
  • That's not the experience I had, and there were many, many pleas for assistance. After demoing JS-Kit and IntenseDebate I'm using IntenseDebate. Article to follow, next week.
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