For the past 9 years, Liliputing’s comment system has been powered by Disqus. Today I’m trying something different.
As I mentioned in January, Disqus recently announced that websites using the company’s commenting tools had a choice: display advertising in the comment section or pay for a subscription.
The subscription fee is reasonably low and I would have been happy to pay. But if I was going to become a paying customer, I wanted Disqus to help resolve an issue that’s affected Liliputing for over a year. The customer support I received was awful. So I’ve turned off Disqus… at least for now.
Liliputing comments
But some of the best features of Disqus are still here. Our new comment system includes:
- Threaded replies
- Upvote and downvote options
- Sort comments by newest, oldest, or most upvoted
- Email notifications of follow-up comments
- Share comments to social media
- Edit your comments
You also have multiple ways to login:
- Leave a message as a guest
- Login with Facebook, Twitter, or Google+
Create a Liliputing account.- Creating an account just for this site is kind of a pain to implement, so we’re going to go with guest and/or social media logins for now. We can also add support for WordPress.com, Yahoo, Microsoft, and some other logins if there’s enough interest.
Note: If you want to be able to edit comments, you’ll have to login with a social media account (for now, at least). Once you do that, you can edit a comment within 15 minutes of posting it.
In case you’re curious, Liliputing is now using wpDisquz and WordPress Social Login to power the comments. There are some additional features that we may add in the future, but I want to see how everything works first.
And in case you’re wondering what my support issue with Disqus was, sometime in late 2015 the service stopped synchronizing comments with my local database, which meant they were only backed up and served from the Disqus servers.
That meant if Disqus went down, any recent comments would not be displayed. It also meant that Liliputing didn’t get any search engine optimization benefits from comments left on the site. And most importantly, it meant that Liliputing didn’t have full control over what was done with those comments.
After weeks of back and forth (with very long pauses between email messages), I finally received a message letting me know that instead of continuing to help me troubleshoot the issue, Disqus was working on a new version of its WordPress plugin that didn’t have database synchronization anyway. So this important feature is being phased out.
Today was a slow news day, so instead of working on some other things I should really be spending time on (like filing taxes or producing the next episode of the Loving Project podcast), I figured out a way to recover most of the missing comments. But the method I used does not sync any future comments, so I would have to manually go through this time-consuming process on a regular basis if I stayed with Disqus.
I would have been happy to become a paying Disqus customer. But not without local database synchronization… and not with the level of non-support I’ve received over the past few weeks.
So it’s time to try something different. I’m not married to the current setup, but I do think it offers a few advantages over stock WordPress comments or Jetpack comments.
I am committed to keeping an active comments section on this site though, so let me know what you think of the new system.
Great move, as a commenter I don’t like it thats DIsqus has a database of all the comments that I made over *different* sites. I don’t necesarily like it that someone has a central database of all site that I like most. It’s *never* good to be on a list!
Hey look, it’s a threaded comment! Oh, and I get to give myself a little color bling. 🙂
So how does this work? can you back these comments up and do the comments only exist on this site?
Yup, this is basically a plugin that extends the functionality of the native WordPress comment system. Everything is hosted on our server.
Joy everywhere 🙂
Makes you wonder what the actual advantage of Disqus is, huh?
Disqus provides a free comment system that many visitors already have accounts on, so they do not have to register an account at yet another website, thus considerably lowering the bar for people if they want to leave comments. A good, healthy comment system is one of the best way to keep visitors coming back, which is why websites like it. (Also, maintaining your own system, dealing with the spam, and other stuff that goes wrong, can be a pain at times.) I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wanted to leave a comment on a site only to find I have to register first, and I am less likely to come back as a result. Sites that use Disqus don’t have that issue, which is why commenters like Disqus. I definitely comment on more sites than I would have otherwise, if they didn’t use Disqus. It also… Read more »
Only problem was disqus was a typical .com following the underpants gnome economic model of 1) collect eyeballs with free service, 2) ???, 3) profit. Eventually the venture money dried up and they started flailing around for a real step 2 and appear to have annoyed almost everyone in the process.
This system seems to work fine, two clicks to link to g+ and done. Disqus was probably easier to initially setup, a little easier for users, etc. But once they added some friction to the transaction they are discovering the free service they offered wasn’t really all that valuable. Yes they became more valuable the more sites used them but they never managed to make themselves irreplaceable before they started monetizing.
> I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wanted to leave a comment on a site only to find I have to register first, and I am less likely to come back as a result. Sites that use Disqus don’t have that issue, which is why commenters like Disqus.
but then there is a way to leave feedback without needing login OR needing to login:
just don’t require registration
granted – that might make spam a slightly bigger problem, but that’s a problem for the creator of the site, not for the user
What disqus gives you though, is a common interface over multiple platforms. i.E.: No need to find out if the local comments support Markdown, restricted HTML, BBtags or whatever… You already know how to write stuff because you know disqus.
I provide an example of a different opinion. I don’t want Disqus to own all my comments. That’s why I use it only on sites like Liliputing that allow to comment as guest. I prefer a fragmented system with every site incapacitated to know what people does on the other sites. Thumb up for Liliputing.
If you use a google login, and click Register, you don’t have to actually register for anything. It just creates an association automatically. Literally 3 click and 5 seconds and I was commenting again.
I’ve never been a fan of Discus as I didn’t want them to own my comments (much as Brad explained here). Plus, if you can leave comments as a guest, there’s no need to register anywhere.
I am liking this system and I might upgrade my site’s comment system with these plugins. I would love to find a plugin that lets me “tag” particular readers as insightful, almost like a super vote to the top as an admin. I had worked on creating a plugin for that in the past, but it never got to the place where I was comfortable with it.
Comments are about the most ephemeral type of personal information on the web. Most comment threads (like this one) are worthless within a couple of days of publishing, and unless you happen to be one of those vanishingly small number of people whose life blows up in a very bad way, then nobody cares. Even to Disqus, your comments are nothing more than data points in a vast sea of data that no human being will ever see again. (No, not even the NSA). Do you have Netflix? Unlike the broadcast networks, Netflix knows your viewing habits down to the very minute of every show or movie you have ever watched, and very likely could build a much more accurate profile of you than Disqus could with a few scattershot comments (especially given Netflix actually knows who you are). They are a big data company first and foremost, and most… Read more »
did it flag
Hi Brad, how do I create a Liliputing account?
Oh, good point… let me look into that. This plugin detects if you already have one and I think it creates one through social logins. But right now new users only get a guest option. Huh.
Same question about creating an account…
Upon further inspection/reflection, we’re not going to do that. So you can login via Social media or as a guest.
I can also add options to login with a WordPress.com account, Yahoo, LinkedIn, StackOverFlow, Reddit, Microsoft, or a few others. Maybe I’ll run a poll to see what the most popular options are soon. Now I’m going to edit this article and go make some dinner.
Still trying to figure out why ya’ll aren’t seeing the edit button though 🙁
I’m gonna have to make a throwaway social network account, I don’t link anything to my Facebook
I deleted my Disqus account a few years ago and have had to comment on Liliputing as a guest since. Glad you’ve ditched Disqus. They are a horrible company. The only thing you have to watch for now is the flood of WordPress hacks and problems from plugins. Have fun, WordPress is a mess of a CMS.
Hi, social network “oauth” login plus threads.. it’s all good. 😉 Thanks
Looks interesting… although I had those captcha codes….
Hate!!
No edit option 🙂
Weird, it gives me an edit button right next to the comment. Maybe that’s just because I’m the admin. Still learning as I go.
Nope… editing should be enabled, allowing you to edit comments for 15 minutes after you post.
No edit button.
OK, I’ll have to figure out what’s up with the missing edit button and user registration.
I see edit button.
He is a guest. Wouldn’t think guests can edit
Ahh… that would explain it.
yap, guest can’t edit… too bad but I guess implementing this would be too complicated. I can live with it…
I might upgrade the captcha to one that’s easier to use if we decide to keep this system:
http://gvectors.com/product/wpdiscuz-recaptcha/
Glad to see you not using Disqus.
But please, PLEASE don’t use reCAPTCHA. Their CAPTCHA system is hair-pulling and frustrating to navigate as a regular user. I find myself having to redo the same CAPTCHA multiple times on an alarmingly regular basis, and even switching to the audio version to get away from the “Select all images with mountains.” picture one that I’ve been plagued with for MONTHS.
(Ask a person from a part of a country that is flat to define a mountain, and anything with a height formation will be a mountain to them. What they define as a mountain and what I define as one will be different.)
Ok this is much better and easier. Thumbs up!
Testing 123.
“Leave a message as a guest”
Yay, we’re still friends:)
“Leave a message as a guest”
Yay, we can still be friends:)
I guess it’s ok, we’ll see how it turns out. Do email notifications work for guests? I don’t feel like creating another account for something, adding to the hundreds of other accounts I have.
They should. Did you check the box, and if so, are you reading this in your email inbox?
It doesn’t appear like I’m getting any email notifications as a guest even though I checked the box to have it notify me of new replies. If you could add Microsoft account support though, that’d be great since I use that on other sites like Windows Central.