“Should I Use a 3rd Party Comment System Like Disqus on My Blog?”
by Antone Roundy | 9 Comments | Blogging, Podcast, Product Reviews, Social Media/Networking
David Frey asked his Twitter followers a question this morning:
QUESTION: I'm building a new blog. Should I use a commenting system like Disqus or Facebook comments? What say you?
I'd been thinking of blogging on the subject, so I guess today's the day.
I, for one, don't like third party comment systems, for a variety of reasons.
Logging in to comment requires my browser to accept third-party cookies.
Whenever I try to comment on a blog that uses Disqus, I see an error message telling me that a browser configuration setting prevents me from logging in. The setting is a cookie control setting that prevents things like images and scripts loaded from third party sites from setting or accessing cookies.
Web standards recommend that browsers block third-party cookies by default, but most browsers have ignored that recommendation. For privacy purposes, I've changed the setting and blocked third-party cookies in my browser. And I don't like having to change my browser preferences every time I want to comment.
Some systems allow you to post "as a guest" if you're not logged in, which gets around this problem.
Disqus (and perhaps others) don't link to commenter's sites.
While it may look to you like you got a link in return for your comment, if you view the source code of the page, you'll see that Disqus is using some fancy tricks behind the scenes to fool you.
Some people like this and others don't. It prevents PageRank from "leaking" from your site through your comments. But it violates the blogging ethos by breaking one of the connections between sites that blogging and commenting creates.
To a degree, I can see the argument for not linking to comments, because comments don't trade the outbound link for an inbound one. But Disqus also doesn't creates links for pingbacks to sites that link to the blog. It takes the inbound link, gets "social proof" by displaying it, but doesn't give a search engine visible link back.
The ads on Disqus is what's pushing me to want to get rid of it. I was just wondering if it will affect my traffic if I removed it now. I've had it on the site for about 2 years.In a word, it's selfish. That's not what blogging is about.
It creates a potential point of failure.
Third party commenting systems go down from time to time. When they do, comments may be lost, or at least prevented. And depending on how the system is implemented, sites that use the system may be slowed down significantly.
By hosting your own comments, your site is vulnerable to failure from one less place.
I'm sure there are benefits to using third-party commenting systems -- perhaps even big enough benefits that I should give in and make the switch.
But I don't like them. I prefer blogs that don't use them. And I have no plans to use them myself.
December 10th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Good analysis, Antone. I actually switched to Disqus about a year ago because I had a problem with commenters posting from proxy servers and pretending to be people they weren't. Disqus instantly solved my problem.
At times I consider switching back so I can have do-follow comments and use the Action Comment plugin again... but so far haven't taken the time to do so.
December 10th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Thanks for the comment Ryan. That's a pain I haven't had to deal with yet. My opinion may at least soften if I ever run into that.
It's good to get input from people who've needed the benefits that I don't yet have reason to care about.
December 11th, 2010 at 4:27 am
Antone, THANK YOU for taking the time to address this issue.
What I've discovered is that for simple a thing as "commenting" systems, it's not so simple.
You've brought up a couple of issues that I haven't thought of.
Scott Stratten brought up some other points in this blog post. http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2010/12/07/the-five-words-that-kill-your-blog/
My main objective is to get my content VIRAL, hence the question about using Disqus versus FB.
FB has a viral aspect to it because it gives people the option to have their comment posted as an FB status update, thus exposing your content to their FB network.
My quandary is, what if FB becomes the next MySpace (here today and gone tomorrow). Then what happens to my large database of comments?
Is it worth it to exchange the potential virility of FB comments for the safety of the Disqus system (or is it safe either?).
I'm developing the site on Drupal. Perhaps I just use the internal drupal commenting system.
But this new site is a complete redesign and rewrite of http://www.MarketingBestPractices.com from ground up and one of the main reasons I did it was to take advantage of the viral benefits SOCIAL MEDIA.
So there you have it. :-)
David
December 11th, 2010 at 9:47 am
David,
Thanks for your response (and for asking a question that gave me something good to write about). I intentionally worded my post as an expression of my opinion, because I knew there were issues of less importance to me that were important to others.
I'm a little torn on using Facebook for viral spread. If you use Facebook primarily or only for personal stuff, you might be more hesitant to post on a blog related to your business. But that might be more than overbalanced by the viral value you get from people who have no such inhibition.
Still, that's a good point to consider.
January 24th, 2011 at 11:15 am
I also prefer traditional way of commenting provided by many CMS including WordPress. Name, Email and Web site, that all. Clean and simple. As many one said, It give a link back to commenter site which is not given by Disqus. Since I'm a developer I'd like to play with the code of CMS. Dicqus wont allow me to do that.
July 15th, 2011 at 5:03 am
Really glad i came across this post. I'm currently building a blog to work alongside my eCommerce site. I was looking into all sorts of third party commenting systems, especially heading towards the idea of making all the comments "nofollow" so that i could keep all of the link juice to myself so that the blog would rank better (well, as far i i understand it - still trying to get my head around all of this!!).
Your point changed my mind though:
"In a word, it’s selfish. That’s not what blogging is about."
I guess if everyone were to make their comments "nofollow" then it could collapse the social aspect to blogging as less and less people would leave comments on a post to help the discussion grow. Although, on the other hand, it may mean that only people who actually have a valid point to make with regards to the discussion will make a post.
Would be interesting to see which way it would go.
Lee
September 7th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Interesting post. I have been seeing lots of great feedbacks for Disqus that I am thinking about switching my blog to it. But you've made some really good argument here.
March 30th, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Nice article. I've been weighing using the normal WordPress comment system (plus a subscribe plugin) vs Disqus. I found myself using Disqus fairly often now on other sites and it is nice, and I also read articles filled with reasons to use it, but it's good to hear reasons not to use it. I think I will stick with not using Disqus.
To address David's thinking, for my new site, I'm planning to make a facebook page that I will post to about once a month with a summary of updates I've made to my site. That way I get the best of both worlds. Content is centralized on my site, as it should be, and I still get social goodness and likes and notifications in people's facebook accounts when I post something new there. I think it is a good balance.
August 20th, 2021 at 2:10 am
The ads on Disqus is what's pushing me to want to get rid of it. I was just wondering if it will affect my traffic if I removed it now. I've had it on the site for about 2 years.