Let’s return on the topic for the WordPress comment system. We already know the benefits of having Facebook comments on your website as well as the solution to add this functionality. Now I will talk about two other options.

One of them is called Disqus which is an externally added comment system and the other one is Jetpack Comments which improves the functionality of the core WordPress comment system.

Let’s begin with Disqus. First of all I’d like to explain why you might want to have this solution as your main WordPress comment system.

Disqus is a great platform. It combines discussions from all over the world wide web and you can easily find a conversation about a topic that you find interesting and of course join it. This service is used by many websites (hundreds of thousands, according to the Disqus help pages). Adding Disqus to your website will allow you to integrate a modern comment system with many features. Additional bonus is the full social network integration of Disqus. Worry about SPAM? Well… don’t be! Disqus comes with a powerful administration and moderation features so that you can fight the spammy comments with style.

But the main reason why you’d want to have it as your main WordPress comment system is that this will create a community around your content. And you want this to happen! Integrating Disqus will add your website in its platform and therefore you may attract more traffic from visitors that use Disqus. We are speaking of a community from over 60 million profiles and a vast number of global conversations. So you can imagine why you might want to attract users from this platform to comment on your website and possibly start a conversation regarding your content.

Disqus is also aiding the performance of your WordPress site. Having too many comments in your own database might slow down your page loading speed. But if you are using external comments systems like Disqus you can remove this burden since the comments simply won’t load from your database and thus your speed will be improved. Also if someone tries to hack your comments you can be sure that you can be safe as any hack attack has to pass through Disqus first and the platform is well protected. Also you can import/export comments which is very important but we’ll go back on this functionality later.

If you are interested in more information about Disqus (and I know that you are) you can find out more about the network and the comment system in the official help pages.

OK so now you know the important benefits of using Disqus as your main WordPress comment system. But how to integrate it?

First of all you need to install and activate the official Disqus WordPress plugin. It is called Disqus Comment System. Bear in mind that it is important to make a complete backup of your database (I’d make a backup of the files as well – better safe than sorry) before you continue with the integration of Disqus.

Now if everything was correct you should have the plugin installed and activated and a new subsection in your WordPress admin panel should be added. It is under Comments and is called Disqus. A note about WordPress 2.0 users: You should look for Options -> Disqus.

Then you need a Disqus account. Create one and in the plugin’s options add your username and password. After this choose the website that you are adding comments to from the list of your websites. If you haven’t added your website you may do this from a link in the options menu. And that’s it. Now you can moderate your comments by going to Comments -> Disqus. You can also import old WordPress comments to Disqus and what is more important – you can export comments as well. This is a major advantage since you do not need to depend on any external comment system for your comments in case you are considering a switch to another one.

The Disqus plugin is well supported and if you have any troubleshooting with your theme or a conflict between plugins then you can be aided on time.

Now – let’s return to the core WordPress comment system and see how to make it better by using Jetpack.

Jetpack will help you by reducing SPAM and adding additional functionality to the core WordPress comment system such as the ability to comment using:

• WordPress.com account
• Twitter account
• Facebook account
• Google+ account

This saves time and effort to fill in additional details. This is one of the options, the other is to allow the user to enter their email, name and Website to comment so it is a good idea to mark some of these fields as required.

As for the social media integration – the users will be asked to allow access to the WP.com apps for the respective social media. This might be considered for a con.

To use the Jetpack Comment system you need to install, activate Jetpack itself and then from the plugin’s settings you need to activate the comment functionality. This will add additional options to the main settings for the core WordPress comment system under Settings -> Discussion.

So this is it, friends. It’s up to you to decide!