Socialize This: How social is your site?

I have been thinking about this in recent months and the truth is nimopress is not very social. What I meant is it is not easy for readers to drop by and leave a decent comment. By decent, I mean not SPAM.

The truth is nimopress.com is new and all I have done so far is blog about stuff I want to cover here. I have done no form of advertising on link farms or any of that sort. The good news is this site is slowly climbing up Alexa ranks. 538,858 from 21,900,000+ in less than 3 months and current PR3 is not too shabby for me. I’m pretty happy there.

Except for one thing. In my fight against SPAM left on this site, I have locked things up pretty good and have reCAPTCHA installed along with some commenting plugins like IntenseDebate and Disqus. Without these, I would be getting close to 30-50 SPAM comments daily. Even with these installed, I am still getting on average 10-15 SPAM comments. In order to eliminate these as much as possible, I set the highest anti-spam settings on Disqus. Users need to login to Disqus and must have a verified email address before leaving any comments. The good news is I get ZERO SPAM now.

The bad news is I am getting ZERO comments too. If you think about it, how many of you would want to register at Disqus, verify your email, and go back to any site to leave a comment? I know I wouldn’t. So the only thing to do is to set a lower anti-spam setting. I am not out to get comments on my site but I just find it odd to lock this up so tight that it deters even legit comments.

Thank goodness for social networks and APIs. Most folks these days will be on some form of social network sites. Although Facebook is largely popular, and there are many Facebook connect plugins to choose from, that cannot be said for the others. Still, there are a few solutions.

User Integration – Easy: IntenseDebate, Disqus and Echo

IntenseDebate: Perhaps the first of its kind, IntenseDebate replaces your built-in WordPress comments function. Developed by the same people behind WordPress, the Automattic plugin should be fuss free and work seamlessly. The plugin allows users to connect via their social networks like Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and Gravatar (another Automattic product).

Disqus: Another solution like IntenseDebate, the Disqus commenting tool can be installed via a plugin and setup is relatively easy. It does however connect to Yahoo as well compared to IntenseDebate. Personally, I have used both and I prefer Disqus for its overall appearance on the blog, ease of use and speed of loading.

Echo: Just like the first 2, Echo is another commenting tool option. I have never used Echo so I cannot really say much. Like the other 2, Echo supports a number of blog platforms like Blogger, Drupal and not just WordPress.

Whichever you pick, because of all the functionality packed into these plugins, expect your site to slow down quite a bit. I have seen sites with 200+ comments a thread literally freeze on IntenseDebate. Maybe it is cheap hosting. Or maybe it just sucks up your server resources. On IntenseDebate, my sites taking 5-7 seconds longer to load up. Disqus is slightly better at 4-6 seconds. Still, if you want a quick fix, these 3 should work.

User Integration – Intermediate: RPX

Not a commenting tool, RPX is a tool that helps your users register and sign-in to your site. This is good only if you;

1. do not intend to use any commenting tools
2. do not allow non registered users to leave comments
3. have a membership driven site

It will take a fair bit of time to set RPX up and get it working. If you are looking for a plugin and go solution, RPX is not for you. Personally, I tried installing the tool and simply gave up after 5 mins. The interface and tool however looks great and will be a good add-on for corporate sites. On a blog, it might be an overkill if SPAM control and social connect ability is all you need. IntenseDebate, Disqus and Echo should be able to do that for you in 5 mins tops.

To install RPX and make sure it’s working and just so you are aware, I quote this from their website.

“Implement in less than a day.”

RPX is not free either. For use with limited functionality and extensive setup time involved, you are better off with any of the earlier commenting tools plugins. If you want full functionality on RPX, you got to pay for it.

User Integration – Advanced: Gigya

Gigya is another social connect tool built with the same purpose as RPX. If you think RPX is going to take some work, trust me when I say Gigya will have beginners left with no hair before they even get it to work. It took me almost 48hrs to get Gigya working on my demo site.

Documentation is not all that clear which can be very frustrating. It is pure madness if you are working on a live site. Apart from having to setup APIs, callbacks and such from each social application back to your site, there is the coding and possibility of scripts breaking stuff on your site.

If I have to sum this up, I will say stick to either IntenseDebate, Disqus or Echo if commenting, SPAM control and social application connect is your main need. Unless you have a membership driven corporate site with multiple admins and users, RPX and Gigya is not for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 21:00 and is filed under pressed and tagged with bad news, email address, facebook, goodness, pr3, social networks, spam, stuff, truth, verify email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.