UPDATE: August 13 2014! I have pulled the pin on using Disqus commenting system and gone back to using Comment luv! Why? Two main reason. 1) people can’t be fruited to log in to Disqus to be able to post a comment. 2) Spam comments were hitting me almsot daily. 3) I suspect that Disqus was slowing down my site load speed inside the WP admin and on the outside. I don’t recommend Disqus. Stick with regular WP comments and Comment Luv. If you want to get really fancy, use Facebook comments as well.

If you scroll down, you might notice that I’m now using the Disqus commenting system on this blog. Cool huh?

For about 12 months, I was using the standard WordPress commenting system here and it was working ok.

I had Comment Luv installed and Spam was under control from the use of Akismet, and had Gravatars enabled so it was a little tweaked.

But because I’m always on the lookout for ways to make my sites better, i.e. easier to use, more interesting etc., I had no choice but to switch to Disqus!

Why is Disqus so much better?

Disqus offers so much more than the standard WP comment system.

The fact that readers can post a comment without having to fill out the 3 fields of boredom (name, email, website) is the biggest point why I made the switch.

Commentors can leave a comment by simply clicking one button to be signed in with Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, OpenID or Disqus itself and typing their thoughts away!

It just makes it easier for readers to comment, and the easier it is, the more likely more people will comment. It also almost entirely eliminates spam!

How easy was it to integrate Disqus into my blog?

A piece of cake.

All I needed was the Disqus Commenting System plugin and a free account with Disqus. A few minutes later I was up and running with my old comments still in place.

The downside?

The only thing I’m worried about (a little) is that the comments will no longer benefit my blog by way of SEO.

All comments are actually stored on the Disqus website and just ‘appear’ on my blog through some internet magic so I have a feeling Google will never know when I have new comments 🙁

But that doesn’t bother me really as I don’t rely on Google for my traffic. 95% of all my traffic comes from OTHER places besides Google, luckily 🙂

So try it out! Leave a comment about your thoughts on Disqus or just to say ‘hi’.

Stu “Sensei” Stirling

p.s. Just some random info: It’s about -3C outside and the wind is so strong it feels like my roof is going to fly off! That’s what you get when you live n the side of a tall mountain in Japan in the winter.