I’ve already raved numerous times about the Disqus social commenting system. I’ve hailed it as a next generation application and service, it’s been integrated into SheGeeks and I have numerous friends that are using it on their sites too.

Disqus is an awesomesauce social commenting system that you can integrate over or with your current blogging system. Here are six (6) reasons as to why I’ve switched to Disqus and why you should switch too!

1. Better Tracking Of Replies

A lot of people have the "Subscribe To This Post" plugin installed on their WordPress blog. This is all fine and dandy, but my biggest problem is that it subscribes to the entire thread. Personally, I only want to see if there are any replies to me. So, I usually don’t subscribe to it and trick myself into thinking I’ll just come back to the article and see if there are any replies to me. Eventually it becomes a tedious chore that I never end up doing. With Disqus, I don’t have to worry about this at all. I only get replies emailed to me and I’m more than welcome to check up on a conversation not only on the website, but also on Disqus.

2. Take Your Comments With You

I pointed this out in my post about moving to SheGeeks.net. Here’s a quote from the article:

I’d also like to thank my personal Disqus tech support man Jason Yan, whom I’m also now in love with. I emailed him about the change of links and he emailed me back 4 minutes later with all my links pointing to the new site! That’s a customer service record for me!

This has allowed me to keep the conversations surrounding articles on my site and take them with me as long as the link structure is the same. I view it as a great way to help solve Data Portability issues.

3. Easy Installation

Installing Disqus was as simple as registering my site on Disqus.com and from there, Disqus provided me with a zip file to upload to my site. From there, I activated the plugin and entered the name of the SheGeeks community on Disqus. I slight template change needed to be made due to theme code my theme is using, but that was easily resolved and Disqus customer support solved that problem within 5 minutes.

4. Clout

When you reply to any blog that is using the Disqus comment system, others can vote on your replies. If someone votes up your response you get a point which goes towards your "clout". So far, I have a clout of 4.

5. RSS Feeds

Disqus allows you to follow the feeds for your own comments and the comments of your friends. I love having the option to see my friends comments. It’s a great way to see not only what they’re saying, but also what sites they are visiting. I’ve found it to be another way to find good articles and discussions on the web. (If you have no clue about RSS visit my article entitled "RSS, Blogs, And Twitter In Plain English")

6. Widgets

Disqus has some awesomesauce widgets that are easy to install. You can view the widget for SheGeeks to your right. This widget displays my top commenters, recent comments, and articles with the most comments on them. If you don’t want all three of these features displayed, Disqus gives you the option of grabbing just one. You can also customize how many items are shown, theme color, and which tab you’d like set to show by default (this one is for the the "combination widget").

Simplicity

Some of these reasons are so simple and don’t really seem all that spectacular. I’m here to say that the beauty of Disqus lies in its simplicity. Everything is so easy and sometimes, I wonder why some of these features aren’t standards across all commenting systems, even the one that comes with WordPress. I urge those of you who do comment on blogs using Disqus to register on their site for other great benefits. If you’re a blogger, I’d highly recommend installing Disqus for all the great reasons listed above and also because it looks pretty!

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