There's an Intense Debate in My Comments

If you're a regular visitor to Lisa C Writes then you probably noticed that we modified the comment system on the blog. We've long been toying with the idea of moving over from Blogger to Wordpress to take advantage of some of the really nifty features Wordpress blogs and plug-ins offer. But everytime we start seriously looking, we get sucked back in to The Blogger Hole by some neat widget that we can add to the blog to make it more functional...and fun.

So a couple of weeks ago we stumbled across the Intense Debate comment system. I spent some time checking it out and was really impressed with some of the features they had to offer. I was probably sold when I saw that Dumb Little Man, a popular blog we both read often was using the system. Here's some of what we liked most about ID:

• It was very easy integration with Blogger. It can be as simple as adding a widget to the page elements in your layout.
• We had the option of switching the entire blog, including all comments from day 1 over to the ID system. Or you could do as we did, and start all new comments going forward using the ID system.
• The ID comment layout is very slick! The system automatically recognizes the colors of your blog and matches your comment box to them. This was (and is) probably one of the top reasons to make the switch.
• You can choose how you want your comment window to display. It can open in a new window (or tab). It can open in a pop-up window like Blogger does. Or it can open in a drop down that keeps the reader on the blog page and allows them to comment without leaving or waiting for another page to load.
• Lisa loves to reply to commenter's, and the ID "threaded conversation" feature helps to make the conversation more interactive. With this feature you can reply to each comment individually, which gives the interaction a more personal feel.
• One of the other biggies was the ability to subscribe to comments. With ID, it is very easy for a user to keep up with an interesting conversation by subscribing to the comment feed.

There are a few more really cool features that ID offers, and way more bells and whistles than we really could use. The concept is very appealing and it was relatively simple to get it turned on.

Intense Debate or Intense Headache? That's what we've found ourselves asking quite a few times since making the switch. It was only a couple of days after flipping the switch that we discovered the blog would not load in IE, and was painfully slow loading in Firefox. Lisa was in panic mode, and not being as willing to mess around with someone Beta (and they do mean Beta) college experiment goof-off (her words), she was ready to dump em'.

This glitch had me running over to the support forum for a little help. I'll say this, once you figure out how to get into the forums, you can find a lot of your questions answered there. The support team is very helpful and quick to respond. But be prepared for a lot of, "We're working on that", and "That's something we're looking into for the future" in their responses scattered throughout the forums.

Meanwhile Lisa was insisting that I rescue the comments that had been captured in their system and export them back into Blogger. (Well they said we should be able to do that!) Maybe it's because neither of us is just that savvy, but what the heck to do you with your comments once you export them in an XML file. I don't recall seeing an "Import Comments" button anywhere in the Blogger back office. I'll admit, this is an issue we have yet to resolve, since in the process of our great escape everything began working properly again.

Since then things seem to have been working fine, sorta. Lisa gets an email from time to time from someone saying they couldn't leave a comment. Or she might see a comment show up in the ID back office that didn't post on the blog. The biggest headache is that because ID takes a minute to load a visitor will first see the Blogger comment link, and if they click it and make a post any comments that have already been left in ID will not show up, and all future comments will be left in the Blogger system. Our fix to that was the leave the message "Please wait...comments loading" on the Blogger comments layout, and to allow only approved guests to leave posts in Blogger. That seems to have taken care of the problem.

So overall, the experience with Intense Debate has had its major ups and downs. I'm not sure that either of us is totally sold on it yet. Eventually we'll start our journey back out to make the switch to Wordpress and take on a world of new adventures. In the meantime, if you have any trouble leaving comments, or if you don't see your comment show up drop Lisa an email at LisaC @ lisacwrites.com. And if you're thinking about jumping in to the Intense Debate yourself, just remember, Beta, Beta, Beta, Beta!!!