While Google’s Blogger platform has come a long way since its rebirth, it may have taken “two steps back” after launching OpenID within their system.
Without warning, Google removed the ability for non-blog*spot commentors to link their domain with their name in the comment section, which made some users very upset.
Blogger users seeking to regain control of their comment section may find outsourcing their comments elsewhere may be the simplest option for their readers, and Intense Debate may prove to be the easiest way to open up their comment system online.
One of the reasons blog*spot users may enjoy using Intense Debate is the ease and beauty of installing the code within the site. While many other commenting platforms have user friendly installation systems, very few of them compliment the blog layout once installed.
Usually users either have to manually edit the code or accept the fact that their comment section is a public eyesore. Intense Debate (or ID for short) automatically adjusts itself to match your blog’s background, giving users the ability to focus more on writing, than with messing with the code.
Another problem ID helps bloggers with is comment spam. Although their system probably has not been tested to the degree of Askimet on WordPress, it may prove to be an effective alternative to CAPTCHA’s thus allowing everyone to comment without the need for users to bypass silly word tests (which may become extinct anyways).
Last but not least ID is very open, allowing users registered with their network, or with OpenID to add their opinions, as well as those choosing not to submit information to either. This should help some blogger blogs regain their opinionated users again, which may have left due to the fact that Google “closed” down their comment section.
While ID does not yet support email updates for comments (which is probably its only drawback), they do offer users the ability to subscribe via RSS, which may appeal to geeks more than the general population.
Blogger users may find Intense Debate to be a breathe of fresh air compared to Bloggers original commenting system, which would not only benefit the blog authors, but their readers as well.
(Hat Tip: TechCrunch)
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Thanks for the great write up Darnell! Any and all feedback is more than welcome!
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I put so much faith in your excellent review that I went and installed it myself. Seamless installation and an excellent tool. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
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Thanks so much for this review! Just stumbled across this amazing tool this evening and was looking for opinions on it.
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Intense Debate is for me the best commenting system that i have come across on the web. I recently installed it on my blog and it works a charm. Great social interaction with twitter and frienfeed, so you can tweet your comments.
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Intense Debate has been acquired by Automattic, just for reference. There are some very cool things coming out to integrate it into WordPress blogs – but it will work for other services.
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I just installed Intense debate on my blog. Still don’t know how this Plug-in is going to help my blog ;)
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In social reality over your blog is what you dream perhaps, to think ambitiously about the niche of the speaker and integration with the user.
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My experience with IntenseDebate on Blogspot was ultimately a nightmare. I installed the software because I’d wanted comment threading and a way for guests to contribute to the discussion with identifiable names instead of “Anonymous.” I installed it easily and it ran quite smoothly for the almost one year that I used it.
Once, I emailed support about a minor bug, and they responded promptly. They instructed me to send them my template so they could examine the code and fix the issue. Three weeks later, I still hadn’t heard back from them. I assumed they couldn’t fix the problem, so I decided to just live with the bug.
One day, a test post was published to my account. I saw that the post didn’t actually appear on my blog. I clicked the title, and it lead me to a what appeared to be a sandbox site dedicated to testing IntenseDebate. I figured that the IntenseDebate support team was testing my template code to make sure it worked before sending the template back to me.
Imagine my confusion when, the next day, I started getting tons of comments from multiple users for a post that didn’t exist and never had existed on my blog! I clicked the post title listed on the comments, and it took me to another person’s blog. Obviously, the comments that were supposed to be associated with her account for her blog were coming to mine instead, as if our blog wires had gotten crossed. I notified the woman by email. She explained that, after having serious, repeated functionality issues with IntenseDebate comments, she’d sent her template to support so they could reinstall the comment system on it. At the time, Blogspot had recently come out with their new, fancier templates. I’m guessing that the IntenseDebate support team was not yet that familiar with it, and thus was using my code (in which IntenseDebate was correctly installed) as a reference. Somehow during the process, they must have managed to get my code into her template.
Each of us contacted support multiple times by email, and were shocked when neither of us EVER received a reply. We tried to fix it ourselves, but we never could figure out what the issue is. The User ID on her blog wasn’t the same as mine. It was an inconvenience to her to have to rely on someone else to control her comments, and it was probably a bigger inconvenience to me and confusion for my readers to have the comments for someone else’s blog filling up my “Recent Comments” widget, and for my readers who were subscribed to my comments feed to keep getting email notifications for comments for someone else’s completely unrelated blog. After nearly two weeks of this aggravation (during which time we still had not received a reply from support), the woman decided to permanently uninstall IntenseDebate. After the horrible incident and lack of support, I wanted to do the same – but realized I was stuck. I couldn’t import my IntenseDebate comments into Blogspot because the Comment Importer tool was disabled, a fact IntenseDebate neglected to mention. They still list the Importer as a feature in their FAQ section and other areas of the site, which is false advertising; I wouldn’t have installed IntenseDebate in the first place had I known I’d lose all comments if I decided I didn’t like it and wanted to uninstall. My only option for getting my comments back was to buy a domain and install the self-hosted version of WordPress, and then use the plugin importer.
Some users told me they were happy at the switch, because they couldn’t even SEE the IntenseDebate comments the whole time I had them, especially the users. Three people had complained to me while I had it that they had trouble commenting. That made me think the trouble may have been more widespread.
The moral of the story is that it’s better not to rely on third parties to deliver essential content to your blog. If things go screwy (which they probably will eventually) then you’re just screwed. Google won’t help you undo the damage you did to your blog with this buggy third party software.
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I’ve been using IntenseDebate in my two blogs. Some great features are the voting system and it attracts user to comment because it is a “do-follow”.
A tip, be sure to moderate the comments because some people really like to spam and post generic/senseless comments.