I think I’m done with third-party commenting systems. They haven’t served me particularly well over the last couple of years. First it was IntenseDebate, acquired a few years by Automattic. I had high hopes for IntenseDebate, since they’d been acquired by the developers of WordPress itself — and for a while it was a really great system that integrated almost seamlessly with WordPress. Then it fell out of development and seems now to have been all but forgotten.
So I switched to Disqus and have used their system for the last year or so. It never has integrated quite as seamlessly into WordPress, and I’ve had issues in the past with comments not syncing back to WordPress properly. Where IntenseDebate synced almost instantly, there is usually something of a delay before Disqus syncs with your database. Sometimes, it doesn’t do it at all, and you run the risk of losing comments.
Both systems have a number of social features I really appreciate, like being able to rate comments and see similar topics in the community. I’ve decided none of those things are enticing enough to keep using them. WordPress’ commenting system has improved quite a bit over the last several iterations, and with the inclusion of Jetpack adds the ability to comment using your WordPress.com, Facebook, Twitter, and Google credentials. Akismet is still the single best spam filter available anywhere.
At some point I may investigate some additional plugins and roll up my own custom commenting system, but in the meantime, it’s back to native WordPress comments for me.
