Add Disqus to your WordPress or other blog —20 June 2013
I’ve seen a couple of blogs using Disqus to show comments, but never really cared enough to check it out. Until now, and it looks like a pretty good idea!
- Readers can “login” to comment using their Twitter or other social accounts. They don’t need to enter the usual boring stuff like name, email, website address anymore.
- It gives you much more granular control for managing your comments compared to native WordPress, and in general it’s jam-packed with features.
Mainly I’m counting on that switching to Disqus will attract more comments. I myself feel it off-putting when a website is asking my name and email instead of letting me authenticate with an OpenID provider or Twitter. Sadly this blog was doing that too… Not anymore! This is definitely a good improvement.
I’m still discovering this thing, but it looks really useful. I might post more details later to highlight the best features that really work for me.
To get started using Disqus on your blog:
- Create an account if you don’t have one already
- Register your site on https://disqus.com/admin/signup/ and follow the steps for WordPress or whichever other publishing platform you use. At least with WordPress, the steps were very accurate and easy to follow, a smooth process. Disqus gives you a pretty cool dashboard with many interesting settings.
- You can import your existing comments, Disqus reminds you of this during setup
By default Disqus shows ads, supposedly for your benefit, which is not so cool. Luckily it’s easy enough to switch it off on the Disqus admin. In case Disqus doesn’t really work out, you can export comments and import to something else later (or back to your WordPress).