ShoeMoney Note: This is a guest post by business owner and MMA figther, Jenise Uehara. In a recent Elite Retreat mastermind correspondence Jenise revealed that since they started using intense debate on some of their blogs the comments had exploded. I have never been a big fan of these comment systems but asked her if she would not mind doing a guest post talking about it and how it works for them.
Visitors to our Pastry Shoes fansite seemed to love using our little java chat box in the sidebar to shout out to other visitors or to make comments on products. However they did not use the WordPress article commenting feature much, and when they did the conversations never seemed to take off. Although we have loyal repeat visitors (mostly 10-20 yo females) they didn’t acknowledge or talk much to each other. We wanted more article commenting in order to promote a broader sense of community.
While in search of a solution we came across IntenseDebate on Chris Winfield’s site. IntenseDebate is a free WordPress plug-in that gives you enhanced comment management and cool user profile features. We decided to give it a shot.
Installation is very simple. Just grab the plugin and register. IntenseDebate will sync your existing comments with their hosted service. It takes a few minutes to a few hours depending on the number you already have. Once completed you’ll automatically get the new comment box and layout on each post.
We installed IntenseDebate on the site in December 2008. To kick it off, we launched a “comment lottery“, where every comment counted as a contest entry for prizes. We also removed the chat box from the sidebar replacing it instead with a top 10 commenters list.
We immediately saw a 5x increase in both commenters and comments. No doubt this was boosted by the lure of winning free merchandise but we feel it was key in motivating users to create profiles, upload profile images and learn to use and reply to comments.
Growth was sustained long after the contest was over. Comments on the site today are nearly double what they were before IntenseDebate. A few monthly comment count stats are below.
| Sep 2008 | 1438 |
| Oct 2008 | 1629 |
| Nov 2008 | 1689 |
| Dec 2008 | 8390 |
| Jan 2009 | 3618 |
| Feb 2009 | 3397 |
| Mar 2009 | 3222 |
| Apr 2009 | 2904 |
| May 2009 | 3068 |
Note that IntenseDebate is a hosted service. Any time you add an externally hosted service to your site you are then dependent on the host to provide a robust and fast service. Over the past 6mo IntenseDebate has occasionally been slow or even down, and in turn has caused our site to be slow or even hang a few times, although never for more than just a few minutes.
In recent months it’s been problem-free and for us (so far) the benefits have been outweighing the risks. We’ll continue to monitor their uptime.
A nice feature is the OpenID and Twitter integration. Visitors with existing OpenID and Gravatar profiles can login on your site without having to re-register. Their profiles can also be used on any other site with IntenseDebate. Visitors can configure their profile to auto-update their Twitter stream with their comments. Additionally, reply-by-email is a favorite visitor feature on our Urban Clothing site. Our authors are able to monitor and respond directly via email to commenters on their articles.
IntenseDebate seems to be able to handle large volumes of comments per article pretty well; here is an example. Note the reputation scoring and the ability to for others to vote positively or negatively on individual comments which affects the commenter’s profile.
One downside we’ve noticed is that the spam/filter functionality is not as intelligent as Akismet. G-rated comments with slang in them are put in the moderation queue, while other comments with 4-letter words get published
automatically.
Lastly, the comments are synced two-way and this is a good thing. This means all the comments will be stored locally in your wordpress instance so you won’t lose them if you uninstall IntenseDebate for whatever reason. Your old comment templates will work again just fine. IntenseDebate is not without its flaws but it has worked out well for us overall (plus you can’t beat the price). 
-J
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
I have try using it, but the author comment does not differ from others, even though their function is great, but I still prefer to have the author differ from others which make it unique in a way.
IntenseDebate’s integration with Wordpress is downright pathetic at this point, especially considering the same parent company owns both products. I installed ID on my site back in March and found that the two-way sync feature dropped at least five or six comments a day. Discovering the weak spam filter was yet another head meets desk moment and trying to style ID comments was about as fun as a root canal. Even small things, like changing the default gravatar image (which in WP can be done with a click on the button), took monumental effort with ID.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of threaded comments and can’t wait until it’s a feature seamlessly woven into Wordpress. But right now, ID has a long way to go until they get to a point where they provide more features than headaches.
WRT two-way sync I haven’t observed comments dropping, and I had around 18K comments at the time I installed it. Course with that many I wouldn’t be likely to notice if it dropped a handful. But I do monitor them regularly and so far haven’t noticed any discrepancies in conversations.
In any case I found IntenseDebate’s support to be pretty responsive. I’ve reported bugs and asked for features and they’ve always gotten back to me. Support is also free. If you have problems or questions I would not hesitate to ping them.
I am going to try this and give my feedback once again. At this point it seems it should work smooth …let’s see what happens ??
Shoe Just now finished playing around with this & i would like to share that it is quite confusing and i was really pissed off while installing and after that testing ….ohh my GOD not sure where i am going wrong ?
Can you share few TIPS to work it perfectly ??
I dont use it
Sounds like worth giving it a try. I like that you gave us the negatives of the service as well so we know what to expect.
PS. noticed something new about this blog… hmm maybe its the design. Not too used to it yet but it appears to be working fine. Cheers!
Gonna check it out, Thanks for all your posts
We set up Intense on our blog for a trial. I am not sure if I like it but my other guys seem too. We will see at the months end.
Jenise rocks. She really knows how to build strong communities and loyal audiences. Nice post…
I’m really not sure I understand how Intense Debate increased your commenting. Certainly the contest helped, but would it have had the sustained results you’ve seen even without Intense Debate?
I blog in several different environments. When topics are intense, comments are intense, even though I’m not using third-party commenting software.
It’s like any UI feature. If it facilitates and/or enhances the visitor experience, improves site usability or readability, you’re going to get more users utilizing whatever it is.
(If your content is not interesting to the visitor that’s a different problem, and Intensedebate is going to do zero for you.)
The contest ended in December. Our stats show that January onwards, the comments volume is twice what it was prior to Intensedebate.
Looks pretty cool. Sucks that it’s a hosted service. Seems like just one more thing that can break and one more person you need to rely on.
Would rock if it was a plugin or something.
That’s what I thought too. Can’t really see how Intense Debate can increase the number of comments. I thought people comment because of something else, not because it’s a sexy looking comment form
Jenise is awesome!
Nice write up
You look all tough and showing those “Guns” in that picture. hehe
Ruben
That’s one neat plugin. I will try it out…
Im gonna try this on my newer site first, since I dont have many comments yet. Question though, if people register as they have already, will they be able to use that log in for anything now?
I guess I’ll have to come up with more controversial topics in my blog. Most of the comments are fairly observational.
Give me a few months and I’ll check back with results.
I have being using DISQUS as my blog commenting system and so far it has proved successful , I think the real reason your comments took off is because of the competition and not because of Intense Debate , but I agree that third party comment systems do provide some value.
Interesting. Haven’t tried it. Might now.
I say anything is worth trying out – especially if you want things to change (like an increase in comments!)
I tried it long ago when I was using blogger platform. I needed threaded commenting system. It was really nice but once I moved to self hosted WP, I left it.
i have tried intense debate.its really good
Sounds interesting, I might give it a try
Thank you Jenise for sharing this amazing comment case study. It explains why it is so important to encourage the users to contribute with strategies like running a contest.
But, it is indeed the quality of the website itself that makes the visitors to leave their comments and ideas. Like you said, the growth was sustained long after the contest was over.
Thank you Jeremy for publishing this guest post which is quite informative.
Keep it up, man!
Hooshmand
I know a couple of people who use IntenseDebate and they are far from happy about how most of the comments get canned.
I had never heard of the plugin before, I’ll definitely be checking it out.
I’m really not sure I understand how Intense Debate increased your commenting. Certainly the contest helped, but would it have had the sustained results you’ve seen even without Intense Debate?
I blog in several different environments. When topics are intense, comments are intense, even though I’m not using third-party commenting software.
I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t the contest that was the really cool, effective technique, and not the software platform.
No doubt it is wonderful to increase comments.
I was on a blog that used Intense Debate and I didn’t like it at all. Especially if you want to get your name out there for SEO it sucks because it would use Intense Debate as the backlink and not you which is why I stopped going to that blog. Like it or hate it but that is what I did.
ahem(throat clearing) …http://www.intensedebate.com/wordpress
SEO with Wordpress is there.
Even so, I am sure the blog you speak about can do without your spammy comments and the waste of bandwith.
I have heard people praise intense debate but recently someone said that they were facing some issues. Disqus is also good I heard.
That was interesting, never really tried Intense Debate, but will check it out. Good guest post.
Dinono.com
In my eyes, comments are making your blog life and visited by really interested in it visitors. Very hard is to make people come back to your website and keep their attention in your articles.
very interesting read.
well this is very interesting I will love to see more articles like this one
Or other way is adopt shoe money method and add spice to your all posts and you will get good amount of blog comments as well.
I will give it a try.But since I am just starting out I don’t have much comments.
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There are positives and negatives of this kind of commenting. More and more comments and the search engine simply loves it. But these comments also carry a lot of spam in it and it will spoil your blog. I think there is a fine line going between. We must be careful when allowing people to comment on our blogs.
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The article is usefull for me. I’ll be coming back to your blog.
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Nice! Thanks to author this post
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This is so interesting! Thanks for all of the great resources, too!
Would be nice to see more social integration plugins like this. Nice find!
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this is pretty cool I’m gonna have to check this out.
I’ve tried myself but you get them annoying idiots trying post junk on your site some people have nothing better to do in their lifes.
Keep it up, love it thought.