I’d never really considered using 3rd-party services to host and manage my blogs’ comments. But, ever since I heard about the Automattic acquisition of Intense Debate — a hosted solution for comments / discussions — I thought it was time to do so. Besides, since my blogs are on WordPress, Intense Debate wouldn’t really be a 3rd party any longer.

The real benefit of employing this system, as I’ve come to find out, is the reduction of server load from my hosting accounts. One of the sites I’m involved in is PRC Board Exam Results. It has always given me headaches especially when results for the Nursing Board and LET come out because the server gets overloaded by the huge amount of traffic the site experiences. So, one way of helping improve the situation was to distribute the server load. And Intense Debate is exactly the solution.

I’ve already installed the WordPress plugin for the ID comment platform on my blogs. Now the monitoring begins. I do hope it helps in improving server performance.

But aside from that, the beauty of ID is in the value-added services it offers. Through its threading of comments, blog posts can be turned into fertile grounds for discussions (meaningful or otherwise). And there are several widgets available for use by blog owners: recent comments, most popular posts, etc.

This means that I’m going to have to say goodbye to a couple of well-worn plugins that I’ve come to love: Get Recent Comments and Subscribe to Comments. Both of these WP plugins have really done their part in making my blogs more interactive… but unfortunately, ID has made them obsolete now.

The ID system is still in beta, however, and has been in invite-only mode ever since it was acquired by Automattic. (I got my invite code just today!) I hope that the following items on my wishlist will be realized in the very near future:

• separation of trackbacks from actual comments (this is nicely implemented in Disqus, a rival of Intense Debate)
• more granular control over the CSS for comments and widgets
• in the recent comments widget, the ability to exclude blog owner’s comments from the displayed list
• more options for admin notification (e.g., notify only specific admins; currently the available options are all or nobody)
• respect for posts/pages that have comments turned off — I noticed that the WP pages that have comments turned off still display the ID comment box
• emoticons!

Hopefully, ID will be opened up very soon for everyone to use. By the way, just because it’s now owned by the people behind WordPress doesn’t mean it’s now an exclusive system for the most powerful blogging platform in the world. ID is very much deployable in Blogger (blogspot.com), Typepad, and possibly others.

Possibly Related Posts:

• 8 November 2008 -- IntenseDebate still buggy