IntenseDebate Reopens

IntenseDebate is back open to the public, and has a new WordPress plugin that does a two-way comment sync so all of your comments are always stored in your database so you can easily turn ID on and off without losing anything.

11 thoughts on “IntenseDebate Reopens

  1. Remote storage of the comments was the only reason I never used my Intense Debate invite code. I dislike the idea of trusting my data (and that of my users’) to a third party, so storing the comments locally as well is a big deal for me.

    I’m definitely going to have to look into Intense Debate again!

  2. I’ve enabled it on my site!

    There are a few minor things I don’t like about it such as the lack of styling options. But it rocks for threaded commenting and comment rating.

  3. I disabled it for now. The interface is a bit too busy and non elegant, and it sort of promoted itself a bit too much on my blog (asking commentors to sign up, etc). I’ll probably keep an eye on what is changed in future releases because I do dig the functionality.

  4. Good stuff. I will install it and see what happens. What Tristan mentions above worries me… I certainly don’t want it to promote itself too much.

  5. One thing that’s really annoying about it is that instead of hotlinking the commenter to their blog, (which is expected WordPress behavior world-wide), it links to the commenter’s IntenseDebate profile. This is probably the main reason I’m not using it.

  6. i did activate the plug-in
    really frustrated with the load time.
    so tense…
    makes my blog slower.
    solution : deactivated and uninstalled. hehe 🙂

  7. Hey all, gonna try and respond to some of the feedback left here.

    @john: We don’t hate any of our competitors, but we have to prioritize among which platforms we support importing. Right now, platforms like WordPress or Blogger are so much bigger than any of our competitors, that we’ve chosen to focus on these only for a while.

    @Rick Beckman: Comments are stored on the IntenseDebate servers, that’s true, but they’re also synced back to your WP database as soon as there’s a new comment posted! This means you don’t have to worry about losing your comments.

    @photoTristan: We’ve talked before, and I hear you. The feedback you’re giving us is invaluable. Donncha as well as you complained about the signed up username not linking to your blog anymore, so we’re actually removing it in the next release! I hope we can tempt you back soon.. 🙂

    @Jose HC: IntenseDebate has spread thanks to word-of-mouth and by us being able to promote signing up from within the comment system. However, as we’re getting bigger, it becomes harder to justify this promotion. Therefore, in an upcoming release, we’re removing the “Get better comments link” as well as the option ti sign up while posting a comment. All to declutter the interface and be in the service of the blog publisher.

    @KNizam: IntenseDebate is a Javascript plugin, and thus it can never be quite as fast as the rest of your blog. At the end of the day, we’re basically a widget .. a HUGE widget. Therefore we’ve made it so that we always load as the last thing on your permalink page, just so that we don’t slow down the rest of the page. So IntenseDebate might seem overly slow, but it’s partially because we kindly wait in the back of the line and wait our turn, simply because most people will want to read the content before responding to it.

    Thanks for the feedback all of you. This, if anything, helps us improve and prioritize. Feel free to contact us at support@intensedebate.com if you have further questions or concerns, we’re always happy to help.

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