SU Comments

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You may have noticed for the past couple weeks that I had a new comment system on my site.

I was trying out Disqus, a system that brings control of the comments back to the commenter. You see, just like I believe that NoFollow isnt’ fair to commenters, I also believe that you own the comments you write, although I am allowed full use of them when you post to my site. In the same manner, when I guest write a post on another site, I still own the article, but I am allowing them to use it for their own purposes.

I am no longer trying Disqus for a few reasons:

1. I was getting complaints about it. People weren’t being allowed to comment on my site until they’d registered at Disqus (and yes, I had it set to allow anoymous comments).
2. I’m working on an article where people can share their e-mail and get an invitation to kwippy. A quick search on Disqus didn’t show where I could access the e-mails, so I checked their forums. And couldn’t find a search feature. Yes, I can use Google site search to find what I need, but I’m sorry, that is something that should be easy to find.

To be honest, when I couldn’t find out how to easily access e-mails, I thought okay, I’ll just pause Disqus for right now, and go back and explore it more later.

There is not a way to turn off Disqus for a post.

So, I disabled it. And the comments from my last few posts went away too!

By this time, I was starting to realize this was not going to be a fast, easy project like I was hoping for.

Well, if my comments are on the Disqus site, I just need to import them, right? Right?!? crickets chirping

Of course not. This is a Friday that thinks it’s a Monday, so nothing could be that easy.

Disqus lets me export information in 2 formats: xml and rss.

Okay, good. Now to see which one WP needs to import the comments… … … …  What the heck is WXR?!?

Time to use Google…Disqus to WP points to…a discussion on Disqus where people have been asking for 3 months for an import feature. It’s promised for the END of this month!

Okay, calm down, TG, you just need a XML to WXR converter. Quick Google search and everything will be all better.

It’s not good when you go to the top results only to see Question Unanswered.

Time for another look at import options. Hmm, RSS (import posts from an RSS feed). Yay, this will work! I haz RSS feed! Wait, wait, that’s not what I want. Stop! (notices the small word POSTS not comments). Each comment turned into an individual post. Arrrrrgh!!!

So, there you have it. Why I am no longer using Disqus, and likely won’t be using them again for a while (at least until they actually have a WP converter).

Tags: RSS, XML