Detailed Review of WordPress Plugin Disqus – Easy Way to Increase Your Blog Comments
Writing posts on everyday basis is the best way to reach out to a larger audience and increase your website traffic. However, doing this is not an easy task. You write down the text, pick a catchy title, SEO optimize it, add some pictures, and still after all these hours spent writing the perfect article, you are not sure whether your visitors enjoyed it, or not, why? Because the comment boxes below your articles are still sitting empty.
Encouraging people to leave comments in your posts, is one of the best ways to build strong relationship between you and your potential buyers. If you do it right, this will also bring more traffic to your site, because it will trigger communication between other people. Also, we all know that Google likes sites with more comments.
Considering the said above, an easy way to increase your blog comments, and make it even more comfortable for people to share their thoughts, is by installing Disqus Comments system on your site.
The great interface provided by the plugin will make it much more easier for your visitors to comment and interact on your WordPress pages and posts.
Inside this detailed review, we will see how Disqus Comment system works and how it will help you increase your blog comments.
What does this plugin actually do?
By default a WordPress website will require from a someone who wants to submit a comment an email, name and a website url. This plugin will replace your WordPress comments section with one much more interactive and user friendly. Doing so, this will make it much more easier for people to engage and leave valuable comment on your posts.
Who is this plugin for?
When starting a website one of the main things that will help you bring more visitors to your site is by interacting with more and more people. By encouraging people to leave comments to your site you will be able to start conversation and build trust in them. So if you are a website owner, and you are using WordPress, installing Disqus comment system will be most probably one of the best decision you can ever make.
Increase your blog comments by installing Disqus
As I already noted, the plugins has really impressive design, but the installation process takes a bit more time then usual which is a bit annoying. Let see how long it will take us to add this plugin to an WordPress installation.
Since the plugin is free, it can be installed very easily from the administrative dashboard > Plugins > Add new.
However, after the initial easy installation, here the process becomes more complex and time consuming. Lets proceed:
Once activated, in order to start using Disqus on the site, go to the Comments section and click on the newly added menu > Disqus. The next step will be to Upgrade the database by clinking the corresponding button: Upgrade.
Once we have done that, the next step will be to create Disqus account. The requirements here are only few: Name; Email and password:
Ok, we are ready with the new account, now what? Simply use the login details to access the admin area.
The good thing here is that you won’t be obliged to verify your email or something like that.
The first thing you will see is the welcome screen, providing us with a couple of steps to complete. Well, the fastest way to proceed is by clicking on the wheel on the top right and choosing > Add Disqus to site:
Here we need to add info about the site: name of the site; unique url; in which category your site fits:
Moving on to: Choosing your Platform. As we can see from the screen, Disqus can be used from most of the famous application available, in our case we need to go with WordPress:
Once we proceed with our application, we will see step by step guide to adding Disqus on the site. Even though there are 5 steps displayed, since we already installed the plugin itself we can move straight to step 5: Login inside your account.
Keep in mind that this should be done from the backend of your WordPress application. Add your email/user name and password and the new commenting system will be live on your site:
As you can see, the installation process is not at all a straightforward process.I know what I am doing, and it still took me a while to add this.
Moving on to:
How to configure Disqus for your community
The installation is in place, now let see what are the available configuration options.
When you click on the Go to configuration button inside the Comments section on WordPress, this will direct you to the Disqus dashboard.
The setup button on the top is the one containing all the options. And the first section we will see is: Configure Disqus for your community. And the standout sections are the following:
Appearance: Disqus gives us with two different color schemes: for sites with white background and with dark ones. When the option is set to Auto, as you probably guessed, this will automatically detect the background and make the comment section with the according color.
Comment Count Link: How to display different types of comments. For example you can modify the way 0 comments are shown, or multiple ones.
Default Sort: If you want to change the sorting of the comments on your website, here is the place. You have the option to change the order to: Newest, Oldest and Best First. The best comments are consider the ones with most “likes”.
Moving on to the next section; Site identity
Website Name: Add the name of your site/business
Website URL: The URL of your website starting with http://
Category: The category your site fits in
Description: You can add a short description about your site and the niche it focuses on.
Language: With Disqus installed, you can easily change the default language inside the comments to be the one you want. This plugins supports 30+ languages, just pick yours.
Allow and block comments with Disqus
The last section inside the basic setup page is the Community Rules. This section allows you to block, or approve comments before they are live on your posts. Here are main options:
Guest Commenting: Guest commenters do not receive email notifications and do not have profiles showing their comment history. This one you should definitely enable, that way everyone can leave comment on your site.
Pre-moderation: If you want to approve comments here you can activate this.
Links in Comments: Do you want to allow links inside your comments? A lot of people are using commenting to get back links to theirs websites not that this is a bad thing, but quite often people abuse it.
Media Attachments: Automatically attach and display images and videos that are mentioned with comments.
Flagged Comments: Someone may flag comments for your attention. Once done, you will need to manually approve it.
Automatic Closing: Close comments after certain amount of time.
One more cool thing that might help you increase your blog comments
When someone leave a comment to your website, and he doesn’t have a profile, on the picture besides his thoughts will show the default one:
But you can easily change that, with custom made one from Setup > Advanced section inside your Disqus dashboard:
How Disqus works, from the visitor point of view
There is no reason to add any plugin or theme unless it eases some task either for you, or for your visitors. Let see what is the difference between the default WordPress commenting and when Disqus is addded.
When people want to leave a comment before you’ve installed Disqus, they will need to provide a name, email, website (if they have one) and of course the comment they want to leave:
And now let see what is required from your visitor when you are using Disqus.
They can easily sign with Disqus, Facebook, Google + or Twitter to leave a comment to your posts. They can also sign up for a new Disqus account using the fields:
The required information from WordPress is not that much, but considering the fact that nowadays everybody has at least one Social Media profile, this will encourage people to add their voice to your articles.
Pricing
The price is 0, this plugin is free and it will only require a couple of MB on your hosting.
Pros and cons of the WordPress plugin Visual Composer
Pros:
New commenting system that will ease and encourage people to leave comments to your website.
Eliminating the standard required fields and adding FaceBook, Google +, Twitter integration.
Various options for better managing the comments.
A way to change the default picture when someone without one leaves a comment.
Export and Import option.
Cons:
Long installation process.
Still no way for someone to add a comment without any information.
Final Thoughts
Disqus comment system is designed to encourage people to leave more comments to your website which potentially will rank you better in the search results.
The overall installation process is not quite simple, but once you set everything up, you won’t need to make any changes.
As you may have seen, I am using it on my website which consequently. If you are not getting the needed attention and you are looking for a way to increase your blog comments, I personally recommend adding this plugin to your website. And yes, it’s 100% free.
I am curious to hear your thoughts about this. Are you using this plugin, or the default commenting system?
Detailed Review of WordPress Plugin Disqus – Easy Way to Increase Your Blog Comments
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Detailed Review of WordPress Plugin Disqus – Easy Way to Increase Your Blog Comments
Writing posts on everyday basis is the best way to reach out to a larger audience and increase your website traffic. However, doing this is not an easy task. You write down the text, pick a catchy title, SEO optimize it, add some pictures, and still after all these hours spent writing the perfect article, you are not sure whether your visitors enjoyed it, or not, why? Because the comment boxes below your articles are still sitting empty.
Encouraging people to leave comments in your posts, is one of the best ways to build strong relationship between you and your potential buyers. If you do it right, this will also bring more traffic to your site, because it will trigger communication between other people. Also, we all know that Google likes sites with more comments.
Considering the said above, an easy way to increase your blog comments, and make it even more comfortable for people to share their thoughts, is by installing Disqus Comments system on your site.
The great interface provided by the plugin will make it much more easier for your visitors to comment and interact on your WordPress pages and posts.
Inside this detailed review, we will see how Disqus Comment system works and how it will help you increase your blog comments.
What does this plugin actually do?
By default a WordPress website will require from a someone who wants to submit a comment an email, name and a website url. This plugin will replace your WordPress comments section with one much more interactive and user friendly. Doing so, this will make it much more easier for people to engage and leave valuable comment on your posts.
Who is this plugin for?
When starting a website one of the main things that will help you bring more visitors to your site is by interacting with more and more people. By encouraging people to leave comments to your site you will be able to start conversation and build trust in them. So if you are a website owner, and you are using WordPress, installing Disqus comment system will be most probably one of the best decision you can ever make.
Increase your blog comments by installing Disqus
As I already noted, the plugins has really impressive design, but the installation process takes a bit more time then usual which is a bit annoying. Let see how long it will take us to add this plugin to an WordPress installation.
Since the plugin is free, it can be installed very easily from the administrative dashboard > Plugins > Add new.
However, after the initial easy installation, here the process becomes more complex and time consuming. Lets proceed:
Once activated, in order to start using Disqus on the site, go to the Comments section and click on the newly added menu > Disqus. The next step will be to Upgrade the database by clinking the corresponding button: Upgrade.
Once we have done that, the next step will be to create Disqus account. The requirements here are only few: Name; Email and password:
Ok, we are ready with the new account, now what? Simply use the login details to access the admin area.
The good thing here is that you won’t be obliged to verify your email or something like that.
The first thing you will see is the welcome screen, providing us with a couple of steps to complete. Well, the fastest way to proceed is by clicking on the wheel on the top right and choosing > Add Disqus to site:
Here we need to add info about the site: name of the site; unique url; in which category your site fits:
Moving on to: Choosing your Platform. As we can see from the screen, Disqus can be used from most of the famous application available, in our case we need to go with WordPress:
Once we proceed with our application, we will see step by step guide to adding Disqus on the site. Even though there are 5 steps displayed, since we already installed the plugin itself we can move straight to step 5: Login inside your account.
Keep in mind that this should be done from the backend of your WordPress application. Add your email/user name and password and the new commenting system will be live on your site:
As you can see, the installation process is not at all a straightforward process.I know what I am doing, and it still took me a while to add this.
Moving on to:
How to configure Disqus for your community
The installation is in place, now let see what are the available configuration options.
When you click on the Go to configuration button inside the Comments section on WordPress, this will direct you to the Disqus dashboard.
The setup button on the top is the one containing all the options. And the first section we will see is: Configure Disqus for your community. And the standout sections are the following:
Appearance: Disqus gives us with two different color schemes: for sites with white background and with dark ones. When the option is set to Auto, as you probably guessed, this will automatically detect the background and make the comment section with the according color.
Comment Count Link: How to display different types of comments. For example you can modify the way 0 comments are shown, or multiple ones.
Default Sort: If you want to change the sorting of the comments on your website, here is the place. You have the option to change the order to: Newest, Oldest and Best First. The best comments are consider the ones with most “likes”.
Moving on to the next section; Site identity
Website Name: Add the name of your site/business
Website URL: The URL of your website starting with http://
Category: The category your site fits in
Description: You can add a short description about your site and the niche it focuses on.
Language: With Disqus installed, you can easily change the default language inside the comments to be the one you want. This plugins supports 30+ languages, just pick yours.
Allow and block comments with Disqus
The last section inside the basic setup page is the Community Rules. This section allows you to block, or approve comments before they are live on your posts. Here are main options:
Guest Commenting: Guest commenters do not receive email notifications and do not have profiles showing their comment history. This one you should definitely enable, that way everyone can leave comment on your site.
Pre-moderation: If you want to approve comments here you can activate this.
Links in Comments: Do you want to allow links inside your comments? A lot of people are using commenting to get back links to theirs websites not that this is a bad thing, but quite often people abuse it.
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Media Attachments: Automatically attach and display images and videos that are mentioned with comments.
Flagged Comments: Someone may flag comments for your attention. Once done, you will need to manually approve it.
Automatic Closing: Close comments after certain amount of time.
One more cool thing that might help you increase your blog comments
When someone leave a comment to your website, and he doesn’t have a profile, on the picture besides his thoughts will show the default one:
But you can easily change that, with custom made one from Setup > Advanced section inside your Disqus dashboard:
How Disqus works, from the visitor point of view
There is no reason to add any plugin or theme unless it eases some task either for you, or for your visitors. Let see what is the difference between the default WordPress commenting and when Disqus is addded.
When people want to leave a comment before you’ve installed Disqus, they will need to provide a name, email, website (if they have one) and of course the comment they want to leave:
And now let see what is required from your visitor when you are using Disqus.
They can easily sign with Disqus, Facebook, Google + or Twitter to leave a comment to your posts. They can also sign up for a new Disqus account using the fields:
The required information from WordPress is not that much, but considering the fact that nowadays everybody has at least one Social Media profile, this will encourage people to add their voice to your articles.
Pricing
The price is 0, this plugin is free and it will only require a couple of MB on your hosting.
Pros and cons of the WordPress plugin Visual Composer
Pros:
Cons:
Final Thoughts
Disqus comment system is designed to encourage people to leave more comments to your website which potentially will rank you better in the search results.
The overall installation process is not quite simple, but once you set everything up, you won’t need to make any changes.
As you may have seen, I am using it on my website which consequently. If you are not getting the needed attention and you are looking for a way to increase your blog comments, I personally recommend adding this plugin to your website. And yes, it’s 100% free.
I am curious to hear your thoughts about this. Are you using this plugin, or the default commenting system?
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