At some point during your personal or business blog‘s life, you may find that your blog’s native commenting platform is lacking in functionality. If you are not satisfied with that native system, there are several options available. Disqus is one such option.
Disqus is a third party commenting program for blogs and websites that is compatible with Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, TypePad, and several other blogging platforms.
Pros for Using Disqus
– It is free.
– You can completely moderate comments via email – approve, reply, remove, etc.
– It is fairly easy to import old comments, to export comments for backup, and to migrate threads if you change your domain.
– It is very simple to blacklist or whitelist emails, domains, IP addresses, and specific words or phrases.
– You are able to view and manage your comments on other blogs using Disqus through your Disqus dashboard.
– Once logged in, your Disqus profile is recognized on all sites using Disqus until you log out (as long as your own internet/cookies settings allow it).
Cons of Using Disqus
– Disqus can add significantly to your blog’s page load time. If you already have a long page load time, you may want to avoid this option.
– Disqus occasionally goes down and your comments are unavailable. Feedback is average and not always consistent.
– Disqus is currently not compatible with mobile Blogger themes.
Ultimately, the ability to manage comments fully through email is what keeps me a fan of the Disqus commenting platform. Additionally, Disqus recently launched Disqus Labs and updated the user dashboard, so new things are on the way. Updates to this commenting system are frequent but not overwhelming.
i also find that Disqus and CommentLuv do not play well together….. 😀
I love CommentLuv and I would like them to be compatible, too. I just love Disqus more. 😉
I signed up for an account early on to comment on blogs that used Disqus. I’d always wanted my blog to be more interactive & email notifications drive me bananas ~ I get so overwhelmed, I seldom reply. I finally realized how easily I could add Disqus and I’m loving it.
It definitely speeds up my response time to comments on my blog. I turned off my blogger notifications, so I would have to check my blog regularly to see if anyone replied.
With Disqus, I can respond to comments while I’m on the go, as long as I have my iPhone with me. It’s faster & easier, IMO.
I installed Disqus on my blog a year ago…had no idea it had all those other features/capabilities!
The only issue I have with it is that I can click on some Disqus commenters and easily get the link to their blog. Other times I click on a commenter and there is zero info about the person, so I can’t return the comment love. Guess it depends who sets up a Disqus profile and who doesn’t.
You can encourage them to sign up for a Disqus account/fill out their profile – we’re always trying to encourage people to do this more!
There are so many features within Disqus that go above & beyond what I need as a blogger right now and they are continuing to expand & improve their services.
I allow almost every login option for commenting because I want it to be easy for people to use it but I get frustrated when I have an awesome comment from someone and I can’t track them back to their blog!
Thanks for the writeup and feedback! We did want to note a couple of things:
Our Blogger widget isn’t compatible with their mobile templates out of the box (we’re working on it), but it’s actually very easy to make it work. I detailed these steps in a blog post here: http://www.seafoodie.me/loading-disqus-on-blogger-mobile-templates/
Disqus isn’t a very large burden on site loading times, and Pingdom did some tests with this to help illustrate: http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/02/23/testing-the-speed-of-comment-systems-for-blogs/
Some sites have what’s known as a “blocking” script that hold up Disqus from loading if they’re being a little slower. Often Disqus looks like the culprit because we’re usually one of the last scripts to load on the page.
Ryan
Community Support @ Disqus
Thanks, Ryan. I really like Disqus & I had seen the workaround but haven’t felt comfortable going that deep into the code of my blog. Knowing y’all endorse this particular link is gold!
When I tested the load time of my blog before & after I added Disqus, there was a significant increase. My blog does not have a very long load time with or without Disqus, so it wasn’t a big deal. I’ve also had Disqus for a while. Have some of the updates shortened the load time? (thank you for sharing that link, also!)
We are usually making efficiency improvements on our end which you might have seen. That said there’s a lot of other factors on your own page that can make Disqus load slower (other widgets/javascript).
One that we commonly find that slows things down with Disqus enabled in Google Friend Connect, and in some other circumstances other Facebook widgets.
So can it be used with Comment Luv running too?
That, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve even seen Comment Luv on a blog to even go check if those bloggers also had Disqus.
Awesome write-up!
To help clarify, Disqus does work on Blogger mobile themes though it requires a bit of a workaround. Instructions on how this is done can be found here: http://www.seafoodie.me/loading-disqus-on-blogger-mobile-templates/
If you have any other questions in the future, feel free to send us a note via our support page. http://disqus.com/support
Thank you!
I’m finding that when I use my Disqus account and leave a blog comment that clicking on my name does not take others to my blog, it only shows the other comments I’ve made on that blog. I do have my website linked to my profile. How can I fix this?
Have you signed into your Disqus account and checked your profile information? I’d suggest starting there to double-check what’s entered.