If you have your own blog run on blogger you’ll probably have noticed the amount of spam bloggers rubbish commenting system has been letting through recently. It’s something that’s been driving me nuts and so I’ve been on the lookout for a new commenting system for some time now. I’ve always liked the look of IntenseDebate but I didn’t realise you could install it on to blogger until recently so I decided to make the switch, mainly because of spam, but also because IntenseDebate is so much more user friendly and is a lot more advanced than what blogger has going on.
Some of you might be wondering what IntenseDebate is exactly? And why is it so much better? Basically it has a much stricter policy on spam and it lets the user have better control of what gets through. It also allows readers to leave a comment under the ‘Guest’ option where you post your name, email, and a link to your own website (if you have one) once and IntenseDebate will remember your information the next time you leave a comment on my blog. There is also the option of signing in with your IntenseDebate profile, Wordpress account, or Twitter. I really like how you can leave a comment through your Twitter account as that’s where most of my audience is based and comes in from. There is also the option of including CommentLuv which basically will link your comment with the most recent post from your own blog, so when you comment it’ll be much easier for me to find your blog and return the favour which is always something I like to do! There is also the option of putting a thumbs-up next to thoughtful comments therefore rewarding those people who take the time to give thoughtful feedback.
Basically Intensedebate is a lot more user friendly for both myself and you guys and I’m hoping it’ll encourage people to leave more comments. I LOVE getting comments from you guys; I really appreciate every one of them and reply to them all. I also try my hardest to stop by your blogs and return the favour. I’ve never been a particularly comment heavy blog which is a shame as I love discussing books with you guys and hearing your opinions too. The views are there but for some reason people just aren’t commenting. I’m hoping this new system might change that.
I’ve heard people who love IntenseDebate and people who haven’t gotten along with it at all so this is by no means permanent. It’s easy to uninstall at any time so I’m going to give it a fair run for a couple of months and then assess whether it has helped my comments or not in terms of how many I receive and how much spam gets let through. It’s easy enough to use so I really hope you guys like it! I’m going to leave it there but please feel free to test out the new system below. I optioned to start using IntenseDebate as of now so all of my old comments on older posts should still be there which is nice. If you’re looking to sign up and install IntenseDebate yourself it’s free and so far I’d really recommend it! I followed this tutorial here. It was fairly simple to install and the step by step guide was really helpful!
