Is anyone here currently using Disqus with WordPress? Are you happy you switched? If you don't like it, will you lose all of your comments or can it export them back in to your wordpress database? Thanks in advance for your answers.
Yeah I am using Disqus in my blog. It has reduced the spam comments tremendously for me (from 20+ a day to 1-2 a week). Also a commentor can login via his twitter/facebook account which is an added bonus. If you revert back to the wordpress comment system all of your comments will be preserved.
Yup, i also like Disqus because it makes your site more professional looking. And it has good social network capabilities.
To be honest, i hate disquss, it loads slow, and for the commenters point of view, it is a more complicated than normal comment template. Disquss can decrease the commenters amount, if you aim to have traffic by having commenters, i suggest dont use disquss. To avoid spams can be done by adding growmap antibot plugin and akismet. People, including myself prefer everything which is simple.
Thanks for the input so far. I'm still looking in to it, but it's good to know that if I do switch, I can always switch back without losing all of my new and old comments.
Yeah, you can definitely switch back. Your comments are stored in WP, synched with Disqus. They also let you export from Disqus and make it clear they don't intend to trap you. I like it because users can connect using Facebook, Yahoo, etc. and it looks really nice. I tried IntenseDebate but it was a little "clunky" compared to Disqus (maybe it'll be better later). But also Kimi is right about the load time. It has a pretty big footprint. I was shocked at how much size it added to my page loads when I look at it with Firebug/PageSpeed. Pros outweigh the cons in my opinion though.
Worth taking this into consideration, im glad i read this point about keeping it simple. I imagine that those that dont use social networking sites and are not bothered about being up to date with everything will appreaciate a standard and simple commenting option. And maybe those who spend a lot of time using social sites etc might like seeing disqus in place. I was just considering adding this to my blog but ive just thought about who my blog visitors are and i dont think they are avid facebook, twitter types so probably not worth it in my case.