Difference between Intense Debate and Disqus
Comment systems are essential components of any blog, and systems such as Intense Debate and Disqus have become indispensable to a growing number of bloggers on the Internet. With the need to "follow" other users having become an increasingly important concern, these tools provide a much-needed service to the blogging community as you will see in this comparison article.
Features And Integration
Intense Debate does not provide an iFrame for users, instead showing all comments right in WordPress. This essentially gives users a single access point to various Intense Debate services. Disqus on the other hand has a more convoluted user interface, which doesn't give you access to all the moderation features in the admin view, although it does so right in the post.
FriendFeed comments are another matter. Intense Debate has the ability to import FriendFeed comments directly into the comment thread, making them essentially appear as regular comments. While Disqus has announced that they would be providing similar functionality as well, the company has yet to implement this at the time of this writing.
Twitter support is not one of the features that either service advertises aggressively, although the vast popularity of the platform may make this a necessity. Intense Debate does allow users to Tweet comments along with links, but Disqus currently does not offer such functionality.
The widgets that come with Disqus are generally easier to integrate with blogs, and they don’t suffer from the clumsiness and other issues that plague Intense Debate’s widgets. In addition, the Intense Debate widgets also have to undergo a lot of hacking in order to look good, while Disqus widgets look great right out of the box.
Bugs
Unfortunately, Intense Debate is plagued with quite a lot of bugs as well. Some issues that have cropped up in particular have to do with local issues with the Intense Debate code, a problem that many users have reported on numerous Internet forums. Intense Debate also does not offer support for WordPress 2.7, which is quite odd since both Intense Debate and WordPress are owned by the same company, Automattic.
Community
One of the most telling factors in the choice between the two is community. In this regard, Disqus has the edge over Intense Debate in that it has many more communities linked to it. While Intense Debate certainly does have a fairly active community of its own, the wider range offered by Disqus makes it the overwhelming choice for a growing number of bloggers today.
Similarities and Differences
Intense Debate
- Shows all comments right in WordPress
- Has the ability to import FriendFeed comments directly into the comment thread
- Allow users to Tweet comments along with links
- Widgets have to undergo a lot of hacking in order to look good
Disqus
- Has a more convoluted user interface, that doesn't give you access to all the moderation features in the admin view
- Widgets that come with Disqus are generally easier to integrate with blogs
- Widgets look great right out of the box
