Disqus Saved My Site!
I’ve been using the Disqus social commenting system for a well over a 2 month now. Since I’ve started using Disqus, I’ve written numerous articles with nothing but praises not only for the Disqus product, but also for the great support team behind Disqus. While Fred of A VC mentions 3 Great Reasons to Use Disqus, David Risely thinks it’s pointless and possibly stupid. That’s OK. I’ll give one story as to why installing Disqus was the smartest thing I could’ve done!
In his post, Risely noted some unmoving concerns for the Disqus commenting system:
So, could I bring the comments back into Wordpress if I chose? From this discussion, it seems the answer is no but they are working on it. And what happens if Disqus goes the way of the dodo? Did I just lose everything? Also, it seems as if you can’t moderate your own comments inside WP anymore. Apparently, they are working on a plug-in for that. So, not only are all my comments now on a remote server, but I have to separately log into a remote server to moderate them?
His first question seems to be the only true reasonable concern one should have. For his second concern, if Disqus went bye-bye, yes your comments would too. However, last month Disqus didn’t go bye-bye for me. Instead, my domain did.
Disqus To The Rescue
Unfortunately, this couldn’t have happened at a more horrible time. Not only was SheGeeks beginning to break ground in the blogosphere, but I had absolutely no backups of ANY of the files of SheGeeks. None, zip, nada! After my previous domain went down, I did a mad scramble to get what I could with the help of a lot of the friends and developers that I’d made a connection with.
Since I use Windows Live Writer to publish my posts, a copies of each post are saved on my hard disk. Yes, I went through the majority of them to salvage what I could. However, my comments were gone. Oh, wait! Disqus has them! AWESOMESAUCE!
I immediately emailed the Disqus support team and within an hour I had a reply letting me know that as long as my link structure was the same, there wouldn’t be any problems changing the domain url and getting the comments back on the new SheGeeks. It worked like a charm! The End.
Bonehead Preferences
As for Risely’s last concern, I actually like moderating comments via my Disqus dashboard. It’s a lot more efficient and organized than WordPress’ management options. However, this concern is more of a personal preference rather than a substantial reason to not use Disqus. Over 10,000 blogs couldn’t possibly be boneheads, including this one.
So if you haven’t made the switch to Disqus with no substantial reason as to why, why not give it a spin?
RELATED ARTICLES ON SHEGEEKS
Great Quality Customer Support With Disqus6 Great Reasons Why You Should Be Using Disqus’ Commenting System
Your Stats Don’t Matter, But Your Conversations Do
SheGeeks Moves To SheGeeks.Net
More Incredibly Unique Twitter Projects III
It’s that time again ladies and gentlemen! I’ve brought you Incredibly Unique Twitter Projects and Incredibly Unique Twitter Projects II. I’m doing it again for your weekend pleasure. Here are more incredibly unique Twitter projects (part 3)!
Twistori
Twistori is the Twitter equivalent of wefeelfine. Twistori displays the latest tweets that mention "I think", "I love", "I hate", "I believe", "I feel", and "I wish" in an well organized stream.
Twitter Planetarium
This project is more like a Twitter planetarium though it doesn’t have an official name. You have a page where a bunch of random tweets are floating back and forth. Occasionally a tweet will pop out for better viewing, but there’s no way interact with the application otherwise. No clicking, no customizations. However, this would be a great application for viewing your followers on one page, if you could add your account.
Twaction
Missing the SuperPoke app from Facebook? Well I’ve got the Twitter equivalent for you! Twaction is:
[...] a simple site that turns your tweets on Twitter into actions. You can now poke, slap, drink beer or smile at your friends on Twitter.
To use Twaction simply send out a tweet like this: @twaction @recipient [action] [message]
Check out their entire library of actions (very extensive) and the most popular actions to date. Unfortunately, throwing things at others isn’t available at the moment.
The Twitter Auto Complete Script
The majority of Twitter users are still using the web to update their Twitter account. If you’re tired of remembering names why not try the Twitter Auto Complete Script?
The Twitter Auto Complete Script automagically completes any @twittername you type in on the Twitter website. If you only remember the first letter of a user’s handle, simply type "@[insert letter]" and look directly to your left for a list of your twitter followings beginning with said letter. Keep typing and the script will auto complete the name of the user for you. The possible downside is that you need to be using the Firefox web browser with the Greasemonkey extension installed because this is a Greasemonkey script.
Notable Mentions
Other notable mentions are TweetGift for sending gifts to friends, and SnapTweet for sending out your Flickr photos to Twitter.
What new Twitter projects have you discovered? Send in your suggestions for the next post of incredibly unique Twitter projects!
RELATED ARTICLES ON SHEGEEKS
Incredibly Unique Twitter Projects IIIncredibly Unique Twitter Projects
TwitSay: Leave A Message On Twitter
Gridjit: A Visual Twitter Portal Service
Catch That Tweet With TweetShots
If you’ve ever wished to simplify the process of grabbing a screenshot of a Tweet, TweetShots is your solution!
Sometimes, A-listers accidentally post dirty little tweets. How many times has someone deleted an "accidental tweet"? Well, if you’ve ever been too lazy to grab a screencap of it, TweetShots will solve that problem (and create a headache for others).
How To Use TweetShots
Immediately go to the entire url of the tweet. - Open TweetShots in a separate window/tab.
- Enter a name for your TweetShots bookmarklet
- Drag said bookmarklet to your toolbar
- Go back to said tweet and click bookmarklet
- Click where it says "Click Here" (hint: it’s on the robot)
- Grab embed code or integrate into your Tumblelog
Tumblr Integration Rocks
Integration with a Tumblelog is quick and easy. For an example of Tumblr integration (which is awesome) check out the TweetShots Tumblelog. With Tumblr integration, you not only get the tweet, but any links within the tweet are also listed! Sweet!
This would be an even better service if it could TweetShots my replies page!
What do you think?
RELATED ARTICLES ON SHEGEEKS
What Do You Do When Twitter Goes Down?TwitSay: Leave A Message On Twitter
The One Feature Twitter is Missing
Twitter 101: Clarifying The Rules For Newbies
Self Inflicted Un-Friendly(feed)
As of lately, members of the social aggregator Friendfeed are really starting to piss people off (including me). Here’s a look at why.
Attitude Problem
The elitist attitude problem is definitely starting to take over on Friendfeed. Users are being down right rude to bloggers who have various issues with Friendfeed. For example, David Risely recently posted "The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark". It’s a pretty controversial post, but only in the mind of Friendfeed users. Risely points out some echoed problems of Friendfeed, including it’s contributions to the "Conversation Fragmentation" arena.
Friendfeed users are complaining that Risely shouldn’t worry about where the comments about his content are going. Well, those same users should’ve left the numerous bloggers who complained about Shyftr doing the same (among other things), the same comments!
No Respect
On top of that, users are hiding behind the walls of Friendfeed riddled with snarky and borderline derisive words for Risely’s opinions.
The FriendFeed community (not as a whole) shows very little respect for those that disagree with the service. They’re doing the same thing that Mac fanboys are prone to doing: being ignorant. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen on Friendfeed.
Not Everyone Is A Friendfeed Junkie
David Risely’s post pointed out valid problems of Friendfeed: really high noise levels and sucks for bloggers. Not everyone could care less about where the comments about their content is headed. While no one owns a conversation, you could still respect an authors opinions on what they’d like.
And who hasn’t said it; Friendfeed’s noise level is really high! Sure you can hide everything for an entire service or for various people, but that’s a tedious process in itself and doesn’t solve everything.
It’s a bit hard to wrap my head around some of the comments because some of these people are bloggers that I respect and who have always been polite and helpful when disagreeing with the opinions of not only myself but others.
This continued shallowness and "eye rolling" attitude will piss people off like crazy. As I stated on Friendfeed to Alex von Halem and Robert Scoble, not everyone is a Friendfeed junkie.
What’s so hard about respecting that?
RELATED ARTICLES ON SHEGEEKS
No related postsTheSocialGeeks Podcast Is Out!
“Social site reviews with a side of dipping sauce!” - TheSocialGeeks Podcast Series
If you’re a reader of SheGeeks.net and The Social Networker, we’ve got great news for you! Chris (@IdoNotes) and I (@Corvida) have teamed up to release our very own podcast titled "TheSocialGeeks". (More on TheSocialNetworker)
TheSocialGeeks Podcast
TheSocialGeeks podcast series will feature reviews of some of the hottest sites and services on the web to date! We’re scheduled to release an update for the podcast every two weeks and each podcast will have a timelimit of 15-20 minutes. We examine areas such as usability, functionality, and stickiness (will you come back to it) for each site review. After all is said and argued about, a rating is given by both myself and Chris. Our rating scale is as follows:
- Awesomesauce - great
- Bastagesauce - so, so
- Bastage - don’t even bother
Sites and services that get the awesomesauce rating will also receive a highly coveted "Awesomesauce Badge" that you may have seen floating around quite a few sites.
Our First Review: Toluu
Our first review is of the highly talked about social RSS discovery tool Toluu. So head on over to TheSocialGeeks to hear all about it. To stay up-to-date don’t forget to subscribe to the series via iTunes or FeedBurner. Subscriber Here!
Get Your Toluu Invite
We’ve got 30 invites (a piece) to the Toluu service! So, if you’d like an invite leave a comment or send us a message on Twitter and we’ll get you set up!
What Would You Like To Hear About?
Got a site, service, or app you’d like us to review? Give us a shout on Twitter (@IdoNotes @corvida) and we’ll add it to our already growing list. If you’d like to guest speak on the show doesn’t hesitate to ask. ;)
If you’d like to be a sponsor for TheSocialGeeks podcast series, you can by twittering us or shooting us an email at podcast [at] thesocialgeeks [dot] com.
Thanks to JeffisaGeek for the awesomesauce review of TheSocialGeeks podcast, Podcasting The Social Web: The Social Geeks Podcast.
RELATED ARTICLES ON SHEGEEKS
Grand Effect Welcomes ParisLemon And The Last Podcast!Aggregation And Lifestreaming: What’s The Difference?
Be A Great Human Information Filter
FriendFeed API Apps Are Here
Corvida is the blogger of SheGeeks. A gregarious 20 year old, in her spare time she reads, Twitters, and listens to a lot of music.
