The one thing holding this blogger back from going Disqus

I’ve been interested in using Disqus comment system on my blogs for a while now. I’ve tried it out on a few different occasions (twice on FlashForwardblog, where it’s currently installed), but I’ve never been completely satisfied – especially since the native WordPress comments does a good enough job. But is good enough, good enough?

I’m always striving for something better, tools and resources to make my various blogs more interactive, but in a way that doesn’t compromise ease of use and effectiveness.

One of the things I like about the Disqus comment system is that is offers a more ‘social’ element to comments – it makes it easier for people to comment via their social logins, such as Facebook, Twitter and the like. There’s also a great comments widget and a there’s the nifty “like” feature (where other people can show that they like a particular comment with the click of a button), not to mention the ability to offer commenter’s a profile, should they choose.

However, one of the main drawbacks I’ve found when trialing Disqus is the speed. There is always a noticeable delay before the comment count shows up correctly, and for the comments/page to load. This lag is really, really off-putting and doesn’t reflect a very professional set up (it also makes posts with comments look like they are comment-less, until Disqus loads, which can be at least a few seconds after the page content). However, according to a recent announcement from the people at Disqus, it looks like they are making moves to address the speed issue. I really hope an improvement can be made in this area, because I’d like to move all of my current and future blog comment systems over to Disqus.

I’ll see if the changes are positive and report back on my progress. Maybe I’ll post a review at some point.

Tagged as: Comments, Disqus, wordpress