Blog Comment Platforms – Nicole Munoz Consulting

Get Started With Facebook Comments For WordPress

Facebook comments for WordPress allows you to put a Facebook comment box and a Facebook like box directly on your blog. Setting it up involves creating an app developer account, which can seem a little daunting at first, but really isn’t all that complicated.

Here’s how to setup Facebook Comments for WordPress.

Step 1: Install and Activate the Plugin

Search for the plugin under “Add New” in the “Plugins” tab. Install the plugin.

Activate the plugin.

Step 2: Creating a Facebook Developer Account

Click on “set your application ID and secret now” in the link that appears after activating the plugin.

Click on “Create a Facebook App.”

You’ll be prompted by Facebook to allow it to access your account. Click “Allow.”

Step 3: Creating a New App

Once signed into Facebook Developer, click “Create New App.”

Give your app a name. The public won’t actually see this, so it doesn’t matter all that much.

Click on “Web” in the left hand side navigation.

Enter the URL of the website you want your Facebook comments to show up on.

Upon hitting save changes, your Application ID and Application Secret will be displayed. Copy these.

Step 4: Entering Your Application ID

Go back into the settings for Facebook Comments. Paste your Application ID and Application Secret into their appropriate fields.

If you hit “Update” now, Facebook Comments for WordPress will go live.

Here are a few more important things to set before finishing up the installation.

Step 5: Basic Settings

Setup your basic settings, such as whether you want to display comments on blog posts (as opposed to just “Like,”) whether you want to count WordPress comments and Facebook comments together and such.

Step 6: Like Button Settings

Setup how the “Like” button on your site should look.

Step 7: Comments Box Settings

Under “Comments Box Settings” there are a few more settings you can set, such as how long the box is and whether to show only on pages, posts or both.

Once you’ve setup everything the way you want it, click “Update” and check your website to see how it looks. Congratulations! You’ve setup Facebook Comments for WordPress, which allows you to “Like” and “Comment” with Facebook’s system integrated into your blog.

Get Started With LiveFyre

by Nicole Munoz

LiveFyre is a blog commenting system that allows you to integrate social media with your blog’s comments. People will be able to sign into their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google ID accounts to post comments. They can also “like” or “share” your comments using their Facebook accounts and can also follow you using the same accounts.

Basically, LiveFyre uses existing social media logins and allows you to post to social media from your blog’s commenting system.

Here’s how to use LiveFyre.

Step 1: Install LiveFyre

Go to your plugins panel, click “Add New,” find LiveFyre and click “Install Now.”

Click “Activate Plugin” when it’s installed.

Step 2: Creating Your LiveFyre Account

In order to use LiveFyre, you’ll first need to create an account. You’ll be prompted to “confirm your blog configuration” after installing the plugin, which basically just means they want you to create an account.

Click the link that shows up after installing the plugin.

Click on “Create New account.”

Enter the login details for your account.

Upon creating your account, you’ll need to go back into your blog, click the “confirm” link again and sign in.

LiveFyre will then import all your existing contacts.

Once finished, all the old comments on your blog will be imported into LiveFyre.

Step 3: Using LiveFyre

All the comment boxes on your site will now turn into LiveFyre comment boxes.

To post a comment, just type in your comment as usual. When you click “Post comment as” however, you’ll need to sign into a social networking ID before you can post the comment. This will allow people to post with their real identities, connect with friends as well as reduce spam on your system.

This is what the login screen looks like:

In order to follow a conversation, or to post to Twitter or Facebook, they’ll also have to sign in with those IDs respectively.
That’s how to install LiveFyre, create a LiveFyre account, use the commenting system and link it to an existing social network.

Get Started With Intense Debate

by Nicole Munoz

Intense Debate is a WordPress plugin designed to facilitate active discussion and, well, debates. By default, anyone who posts a comment will be subscribed to receive emails about future comments (easy to turn off if you don’t want to.) It utilizes threaded discussions, so anyone can reply to the whole topic or to an individual poster.

Here’s how to sign up for and use Intense Debate.

Step 1: Join Intense Debate

Go to: http://intensedebate.com/signup

Fill out the form to start the signup process. Make sure to check the “I want to install IntenseDebate on my blog or site” box.

You’ll need to verify your email address. Click the link emailed to you, which will then return you to the IntenseDebate site to continue the setup process.

Enter the address of the blog you intend to setup.

Click the “Wordpress” button.

That’s all the installation you need to do on Intense Debate’s site. Next is setting up your WordPress blog.

Step 2: Install and Activate

Find the Intense Debate plugin using the plugin search at Plugins > Add New in the left hand side menu bar. Click “Install Now.”

Then click “Activate Plugin.”

Step 3: Setting Up Intense Debate on Your Blog

Intense Debate won’t immediately take you over to the setup procedure when you activate the plugin, so you’ll have to find the plugin in your “Settings” menu.

Enter the login details from the signup process in the beginning.

Step 4: Importing Your Comments

If you want to import all your previous comments from your blog into Intense Debate, click “Start Importing Comments” on the next screen.

If you import all your comments, you’ll need to wait a few hours for Intense Debate’s servers to index all of them.

If you don’t want to index comments, just click “Skip Import.”

After the import process, you’ll see the successful installation screen.

Step 5: How to Use Intense Debate

To post a comment, just type a comment in the box and click “Submit Comment.”

By default, Intense Debate will subscribe you to all the replies to your comment. This is designed to help get people back to your site more often and get people more engaged.

But if you want to change your subscription options, just click the dropdown menu before hitting submit. You can choose to get no notifications at all, or get notifications for every single comment.

To reply to a specific post rather than posting a brand new comment, click “Reply” under any comment.

This will start a threaded discussion. Anyone can respond to your message or the original poster and “talk” to you directly, rather than post to the whole thread.

Anyone subscribed to the discussion will also get notifications, which will likely spawn even more replies and more conversation.

Here’s a brief example of a threaded conversation.

Congratulations! You’ve setup Intense Debate, both on the Intense Debate site and yours. You’ve imported your old comments and learned the basics of how to use the threading and subscription system.

Get started with Disqus

by Nicole Munoz

Disqus is a blog commenting platform that’s used on hundreds of thousands of blogs. Its top features include threaded comments, so people can reply directly to someone else’s comment directly rather than all comments in general. You can also reply by logging into a social media ID, like Facebook or Twitter.

You can also use Disqus’s notification system to let people know when they’ve got a response to a comment. They can reply to the comment right in the email response.

Here’s how to sign up for and use Disqus.

Step 1: Sign Up for a Disqus Account

Go to: http://disqus.com/profile/signup/

You’ll see the signup page. Choose to sign up with either your Facebook, Twitter, Google account or an email address.

Fill out the sign up form, or fill out the connect authentication.

Step 2: Adding Your Website

Once you’re logged into your account, click “Add” under “Your Sites” to add your blog to your profile.

Fill out your website’s basic information.

Click “Continue.” Here you will get to choose your platform.

At this point, your site’s profile is setup on Disqus. The next step is to setup Disqus on your blog. You will setup instructions depending on the platform of your choice. If you choose WordPress, this is what you will get.

Step 3: Installing Disqus on Your Blog

Go to “Plugins” and “Add New.” Search for Disqus, then click “Install Now.”

Click “Activate Plugin.”

You’ll be asked to configure the plugin. Click the link.

Enter your username and password that you chose on the Disqus site.

Select the website profile you want to use. Assuming you just setup one site, there’ll only be one option.

When you hit next, the installation process is complete and Disqus will be running on your blog.

Step 4: Using the Disqus System

To make a comment, just type in a comment as you would in any other system.

Click the “Like” button to like a post. You’ll also be able to share the post on Facebook or Twitter if you choose.

To add an image to a post, just click the “+ Image” button. A file selection box will pop up and Disqus will automatically resize the image to fit its format.

To reply to a specific comment rather than the whole thread, click the “reply” button below every comment.

This allows people to reply to specific replies and create whole sub-discussions in an orderly manner. Here’s what an original post and two replies looks like.

You can subscribe to receive all future comments by email or RSS. Just click on either button on the bottom of the Disqus box.

You’ll see a confirmation box.

Congratulations! You’ve learned how to setup a Disqus membership, how to add it to your site and how to use the plugin to post comments, reply to specific comments, post images, like and share on social media as well as how to subscribe by email or RSS.