First of all, I owe a huge apology to my readers. I’m sorry that some of you have left comments and never seen them published. I’ve received several emails from readers whose comments have disappeared or never showed up in the first place. I’ve deactivated the Intense Debate plugin that I was using, and I hope that the problem has been solved.
My review of the Intense Debate plugin:
At first glance, Intense Debate’s “premier” commenting system looks like a great way to organize comments and encourage conversation on your website. One of the features that first drew me to this commenting system was its use of comment threading. It is supposed to allow you to easily navigate comments, sub-par comments, and responses. The only thing it’s done for me is create a huge mess in my comment system.
This plugin allows you to import your comments and has added a nifty feature that is supposed to allow you to reply to comments via email. I’ve never been able to take advantage of this feature, though, mainly because I was having problems with replying to comments in my dashboard. Other users have reported problems when replying to comments via email. I opted not to try after reading about their problems.
Reader comments have kept disappearing and reappearing. In some cases, the comments have been lost completely. In other cases, the comments have been posted twice. I have approved comments only to have them disappear from the system and reappear a day or two later. After contacting ID support, I was told to re-install the plugin. However, the problem has never been resolved.
I figured this was due to a bug in the system and reported it, along with all the appropriate information that tech support might need to help me solve the problem. Instead, I’ve received three emails from them over the past three weeks asking for the same information again and again. I also joined several discussions on the forum and discovered that other web site owners are also having the same problem. It has been 25 days and we are still waiting for an answer. My patience with Intense Debate is at an end.
In the meantime, I’ve also had a problem with replying to my own comments. The comment system started adding these weird slash marks whenever I use a contraction. Again, I reported the bug to tech support and provided numerous links to illustrate my point. I’ve heard nothing from tech support. I also registered this problem in the online forum.
In total, these are the problems (cataloged by another ID user) that users are having with this plugin.
- Disappearing comments are mostly replies to comments that DO appear
- These disappearing replies DO show up on the post PRIOR to a page refresh, after which it disappears
- Some users report that these comments reappear and disappear intermittently (sometimes afflicted by weird slash marks)
- Replying to a reply that has disappeared compels both replies to show up
- When this problem occurs, text is persistently leftover in the comment input box
- Everything looks OK in the ID backend. All comments are present in the system, as well as in the HTML source of afflicted pages
- Resetting WordPress sync does NOT solve this problem.
- These problems are not just occurring with WordPress users. Blogspot users are also affected.
Intense Debate has not made any progress on these errors. The problem is systematic, and the number of affected users continue to grow.
In conclusion:
Intense Debate promises a new dimension of interaction. However, in my opinion, it’s a huge waste of time. I would not recommend using this plugin. It’s not worth the trouble.
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WordPress 2.7+ has threaded comments in themes that support it. There are also a few AJAX support plugins for comments, and those two combined would give you all that Intense Debate has to offer.
My problems with Intense Debate :
Horrible SPAM management and comment moderation.
Sync problems between WP and Intense.
Admin comments URL link go to Intense Debate instead of to the blog.
Disappearing comments.
Comment section not appearing in search engines – probably SEO crawlability issues
…
and probably a few others I forgot already.
Luckily, uninstall was a breeze. I was worried about that.
Hey Fili,
I need to update my theme and then hopefully, I can make use of WP’s threaded comments. I didn’t realize that the admin comments point to ID, not MSW. From what I can tell, those comments will continue to point to their URL unless I change them. Any ideas on how I can go about doing that? I admit, I was also a bit worried about the uninstall, and was glad that it went smoothly.
Thanks Carrie,
As you know I was considering ID for my comments as we are in the midst of a re-design the blog and websites. The key word… WAS.
What is sad I think, is that you really were trying to like the product, you were an advocate for ID, but in the end they let you (and others) down.
That’s true, Michael. I had problems with ID for several months and gave them plenty of time to correct the problem. I think it’s a nice-looking plugin. It’s too bad they couldn’t get in the ball game.
Glad to know that it’s not only me who isn’t a fan of ID…
R(etc… )
Ah, I didn’t realize you’d already had a run-in with them, Ron. I should have checked with you guys first!
Hi Carrie – I completely understand your frustration and disappointment with IntenseDebate. While the has been persistent, we’ve finally pinned down the cause. We’re exploring possible solutions and should have a fix for this soon. We hope to see you back in the future.
Kind regards,
Michael
Micheal,
I find it interesting that the ID forum hasn’t heard much from support until AFTER this review went up. Sorry. It’s too little too late. Best of luck fixing your commenting system. Like one of my readers commented, it’s a plugin I really wanted to like, but the constant problems and lack of support are not acceptable.
BTW – don’t forget you’re using it on the sidebar as well
I removed the sidebar ads for ID. Are they still showing up on your end?
Hey Carrie:
I was wondering what was up with all those slashes. FIli An is right, WP 2.7 has threaded comments – if your theme has been upgraded and supports the new feature.
Thanks Stevo. Onwards and upwards I say! I’ll be glad to see those slash marks go, although I think I’m going to have to change each one manually if I want them gone forever. Weird thing is, Intense Debate belongs to WordPress. You’d think they’d be on top of things, wouldn’t you?
[...] are endless other posts out there with more reasons (example). Uninstalling Intense Debate is a breeze, I’ll grant them that, but there things you might [...]
Hey Fili,
Did I mention that I think you’re awesome! Thanks for the pingback and the helpful advice!
[...] are endless other posts out there with more reasons (example). Uninstalling Intense Debate is a breeze, I’ll grant them that, but there things you might [...]
I hate it when plugins cause more annoyance than help, but that’s part of the learning process in a roll-your-own blog. Keep up the great work!
Hi Eric,
Yeah, I’ve noticed on several occasions that plugins end up being the culprit!
Hi Frank,
I’m glad I could be of help. Since I uninstalled, I haven’t had any problems.
Wow! These all sound so professional to me… You know a lot, dear Carrie, and you’ve done a lot! I admire that you always keep yourself so creative and productive. I seem to have been wasting time and energy on some really annoying hassles at work. Hope to explore more of the world like you do!
Goodness Yu-fen, that’s nice of you to say. With all honesty, I really don’t know much at all, especially if it comes to coding and plugins. I just try to learn a little from every experience.
I’m so happy that you dropped by. You’re a sweetheart!
Hi Carrie,
I was thinking to integrate Intense Debate commenting system for my site. But after reading your review, I dropped that idea. What’s your opinion on Disqus commenting system?
Thanks
Deno
Hi Deno,
Sorry for the lateness of my reply. I don’t know much about Disqus. I keep meaning to check it out as several of my blogger friends here in Taiwan use it. You’ll have to let me know what you decide. Thanks for stopping by!
I’m having the same issues with ID ..and it sucks.. I’m going to switch over to Disquis…but it seems like such a hassle.
On one level, I’m glad I’m not the only one having trouble with ID..i was starting to think it was just me!
[...] been hesitant to try it on my blogs due to some bloggers having significant challenges with it (example) To be fair though, I’ve come across a lot of bloggers who love it and prefer it over Disqus. [...]
One lesson I learned here is to not rely on external services for my blog. Everything should be kept in the regular WordPress database.
I had it on my blog for a day. I would have kept it if the comments weren’t running off the left side of my page. Intense Debate is disappointing.
.-= David Knapp´s last blog ..Is Intense Debate Worth It? =-.
David,
Have you been using the plugin recently? I had issues with it last year, but no one has confirmed that the problems have been fixed. Any idea?
The Intense Debate Commenting System is not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, the I.D. points system seems very flaky. (Wonder if anybody else has noticed this?)
After all the crap that ONE PARTICULAR blogging site (to remain unnamed for now) and Intense Debate put us through, forcing us to sign up if we wish to make comments there, and forcing us to open up our systems to Cookies & Javascripting (and God knows what else) so they can monitor/surveill/dossier everything we say, you would think they would consider it a priority to give us “our rightful comment-points” as a friendly little enticement to keep us participating. Apparently not the case…
Not that the “points score” is a big deal in anybody’s life, but why even have it if you can’t make it work accurately? It seemed odd that the score associated with our sign-on handle would keep bouncing around the way it has done, so we took time to mull through the various pages of postings and individually add up the points for each comment, then compared that total against the total points being published on the Profile page: Total for individual postings is 97, whereas the points showing on the Profile page are 59. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?!
Intense Debate is basically a surveillance/censoring system that provides a blog-owner more databasing & censoring or deleting of people’s comments, with a lot of self-promotional HYPE from I.D. about how great the I.D. system is, but so far all we’ve seen has been: bogus point-scoring system, a helluva lot of hidden scriptings & ads & cookies going in and out of our hard drives, and unbelievably kludgey & slow page-loading because of aforementioned scripting, cookies, snooping, and oddball stuff. In the old days of the internet, we could just TURN OFF graphics, cookies, scripting, popups, and whatever else we did NOT want to be encumbered with, and just load the “meat” of the webpage and read what interested us. Not so with this new Intense Debate system! Intense Debate does not even try to load comments until all the aforementioned KLUDGE & CLUTTER is done coming and going, loaded and nosing around in our machines. You can try to block things like google’s or akamai’s endless snoops, but good luck at receiving page loads if you do so. And God forbid that you should have to RELOAD the page if the first time around failed–because you’re going to have to go through all that slow loading crap all over again. Or maybe you need to check something offsite before you finalize a post: Be careful about turning off Javascripting and cookies so you can traverse the Net without other sites trailing your every move, because when you come back to the posting site, ready to make your post, you probably will find your “log-in has expired,” so you’ll have to re-log in and reload the page all over again. Talk about wasting time and energy!
Furthermore, Intense Debate is rather heavyhanded in not allowing a poster to make his Profile private if he prefers. Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea to be “followed” (stalked?). Not everyone WANTS their comments to be “universal” across the entire worldwide web just because they felt moved to comment on a story on a particular site. Why isn’t there an option given for Public or Private participation? As for improving the quality of comments on a site, when I.D. is used, that’s debatable. Seems the points system mostly invites people to assault each other and compete with each other at least as much if not more than the older system where people merely commented on things and moved on. All this seems to be a distraction away from the content that the site is trying to provide.
One last irritant is that the SIGN IN and SIGN UP links are mixed up on the site. Instead of having a simple way to LOG IN, I.D. has at least three different methods and they’re all mixed up, with no clear solution until you waste hours and finally learn your way through their illogical maze.
For a company that claims to be among the “best” blogging and commenting sites on the planet, this I.D. system seems very unwieldy and aggravating. The original idea to provide content and allow folks to comment on it was pretty brilliant, and we’ve enjoyed using the particular site in question for quite some time, but this latest twist of forcing Intense Debate as our “gatekeeper” is pretty annoying… and may force us to go elsewhere to make our pithy remarks–which, regardless of which “Points Score” you use, seem to be pretty appeciated by other visitors of the site in question.
Have you thought about giving IntenseDebate another shot? It seems all the problems most people have been having have been dealt with. I went with ID and it seems to be working great so far….but we’ll have to see with time.
.-= Jason Manheim´s last blog ..8 Steps to Launching a Blog =-.
Nope. Their support time dropped the ball too many times and I’m not interested in wasting any more time with them. Good luck, though.
Came across this great thread while researching ID for a friend who uses it — it’s effectively kept me from commenting on her blog at all. Maybe they haven’t resolved this stuff, after all. I’ve found examples of disappearing comments, comments going into moderation well after I’ve already commented without moderation on other posts, the first line of a comment persisting to the empty comments box after a refresh… I can use neither my Blackberry nor any of five different browsers to comment there from work (possibly a Websense problem); at home, I use Linux and have encountered the above problems using Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Love her site, and it’s frustrating to see others commenting apparently without difficulty, and I don’t want her to drop ID just for me… but man, this makes me nuts.
(Fwiw, she tells me she gets great support from ID support. So, who knows.)
.-= JES´s last blog ..Paying Attention to the Momentous =-.
Got here via google…figured the comment might be useful to a future googler.
Been using IDC for nearly a year now.
It took a little while to get the moderation settings dialed in (too many comments caught Vs spam getting through), but after that it works well 90% of the time.
…but that 10%…hoo-boy. Comments disappear, comments show up in the “Recent Comments” widget, but aren’t on the page, the “reply via email” function only kinda works (usually with a 2 hour delay), the “email when someone replies” function seems to only work for about 8 hours after a comment.
We’re a car site, so I tend to refer to IDC as the “Alfa Romeo of commenting systems” beautiful and awesome…when it’s working.
There are also complaints from the more militantly open-source, privacy-centric, anti-commercial users of wordpress that IDC amounts to a trojan horse, collecting all kinds of personal data for some kind of nefarious commercial purpose.
If native WP comments could do the whole (or even most of) the IDC feature set, I’d drop them like a hot lug nut.
(lug nuts get hot when you take them off with an impact wrench)
Wow! ID just screwed up my blog as well.
Hi Carrie, thanks for this post & also to those who left comments. I have been having the same disappearing comments problem. Came across this post from a Google search & it made me realise it wasn’t just something I was doing wrong. I have just uninstalled ID plugin from my site & all the comments seem back where they belong. I have had a few other past hassles too where the culprit was eventually found to be a plugin caused problem.
Thinking of switching one of our blogs over to Intense Debate, can someone advise where there is a config available in the admin options that allows comment links to be dofollow or nofollow?
Thanks
Hi Geoff,
Unfortunately, I haven’t had anything to do with Intense Debate since I quit using the plugin. Sorry.
My experience with IntenseDebate on Blogspot was ultimately a nightmare. I installed the software because I’d wanted comment threading and a way for guests to contribute to the discussion with identifiable names instead of “Anonymous.” I installed it easily and it ran quite smoothly for the almost one year that I used it.
Once, I emailed support about a minor bug, and they responded promptly. They instructed me to send them my template so they could examine the code and fix the issue. Three weeks later, I still hadn’t heard back from them. I assumed they couldn’t fix the problem, so I decided to just live with the bug.
One day, a test post was published to my account. I saw that the post didn’t actually appear on my blog. I clicked the title, and it lead me to a what appeared to be a sandbox site dedicated to testing IntenseDebate. I figured that the IntenseDebate support team was testing my template code to make sure it worked before sending the template back to me.
Imagine my confusion when, the next day, I started getting tons of comments from multiple users for a post that didn’t exist and never had existed on my blog! I clicked the post title listed on the comments, and it took me to another person’s blog. Obviously, the comments that were supposed to be associated with her account for her blog were coming to mine instead, as if our blog wires had gotten crossed. I notified the woman by email. She explained that, after having serious, repeated functionality issues with IntenseDebate comments, she’d sent her template to support so they could reinstall the comment system on it. At the time, Blogspot had recently come out with their new, fancier templates. I’m guessing that the IntenseDebate support team was not yet that familiar with it, and thus was using my code (in which IntenseDebate was correctly installed) as a reference. Somehow during the process, they must have managed to get my code into her template.
Each of us contacted support multiple times by email, and were shocked when neither of us EVER received a reply. We tried to fix it ourselves, but we never could figure out what the issue is. The User ID on her blog wasn’t the same as mine. It was an inconvenience to her to have to rely on someone else to control her comments, and it was probably a bigger inconvenience to me and confusion for my readers to have the comments for someone else’s blog filling up my “Recent Comments” widget, and for my readers who were subscribed to my comments feed to keep getting email notifications for comments for someone else’s completely unrelated blog. After nearly two weeks of this aggravation (during which time we still had not received a reply from support), the woman decided to permanently uninstall IntenseDebate. After the horrible incident and lack of support, I wanted to do the same – but realized I was stuck. I couldn’t import my IntenseDebate comments into Blogspot because the Comment Importer tool was disabled, a fact IntenseDebate neglected to mention. They still list the Importer as a feature in their FAQ section and other areas of the site, which is false advertising; I wouldn’t have installed IntenseDebate in the first place had I known I’d lose all comments if I decided I didn’t like it and wanted to uninstall. My only option for getting my comments back was to buy a domain and install the self-hosted version of WordPress, and then use the plugin importer.
Some users told me they were happy at the switch, because they couldn’t even SEE the IntenseDebate comments the whole time I had them, especially the users. Three people had complained to me while I had it that they had trouble commenting. That made me think the trouble may have been more widespread.
The moral of the story is that it’s better not to rely on third parties to deliver essential content to your blog. If things go screwy (which they probably will eventually) then you’re just screwed. Google won’t help you undo the damage you did to your blog with this buggy third party software.
I meant to say the mobile users, especially, seem to be unable to view IntenseDebate comments.
By the way, your blog design here is beautiful.
Just signing up for a profile seems to have bugs in it. The entire system seems to be buggy and very poorly executed. Quite frankly, I didn’t garner much trust in their system overall.
Was considering using Intense Debate for my blog.
About to sign up, actually.
Thought: I’d better search (Bing) for some reviews.
This blog forum came up top of the list.
Thank goodness!
You’ve probably saved me from making a huge mistake. Thanks!