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DisqusDisqus is a commenting system and moderation tool for your site or blog. It’s pretty amazing; I use it here at U Stand Out. It’s super easy to use and is packed with neat features including social network integration, powerful moderation/spam filter tools, and connection to an entire discussion community. Disqus V3 is being launched today, and now offers a management system for the commenters themselves.

Disqus already had advantages to both commenters and publishers, but especially publishers. With features like integrated Facebook Connect and the ability to sign in with other social networking accounts, including Twitter, publishers don’t have to worry about configuring comment registration themselves. In case you haven’t tried it, installing Facebook Connect yourself and actually getting it to work can be a major headache.

So what’s so cool about V3?

Disqus Profile

Disqus - Profile

Not to worry; the Disqus Profile is not another profile you have to manage (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc ^infinity). It’s a management tool for commenters to control all their comments, subscriptions, and profiles, all in one place.

You can browse your comment history, and view, edit, or delete comments without having the visit the specific site or blog. You can also add your various social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to your Disqus profile and syndicate your comments through Disqus to all or some of those networks.

The advantage of catering to users in addition to publishers isn’t only that it makes the system more efficient (which is definitely true), but that it will encourage users to be more active commenters. This is good news for bloggers out there who have Disqus installed, and is also a good reason to use Disqus on your own blog if you’re not already.

Disqus Comments

Disqus Comments was amazing even before V3. In case you have not used Disqus before, here are some of my favorite features to begin with:

  • Comment format: threaded comments and replies
  • SEO Friendly: comments indexable by search engines (which as an SEO nerd makes me very happy)
  • Social Login Capabilities: allows users to sign in with other social network logins (Facebook Connect, sign in with Twitter, Open ID, etc)
  • Moderation: powerful moderation and spam filtering tools
  • Auto-sync: easy to import existing comments and backup comments
  • Subscription: easy-to-use subscription and RSS options help you keep your readership numbers
  • Discussion community: Connection with a large discussion community, which leads to increased exposure and readership. I get lots of traffic through Disqus

Here are some new features V3 has to offer:

Disqus - Filter

  • Moderation interface: has been redesigned to an inbox-style that makes moderation super easy
  • Filtering options: You can now filter by comment, thread, or search term
  • Word filter: enter words that will trigger moderation if mentioned in comments
  • Whitelist or blacklist: ban or always allow email addresses or usernames to comment
  • Customization: includes nicer styling options for your comments section

The one problem I have with Disqus is the inability to change your username. Now that V3 allows you to have your own Disqus vanity URL (mine is http://disqus/dianaf86), I care more about changing my screen name created last year to my more universal dianafreedman screen name. Upon asking the people at Disqus if I could switch (I already made sure to snatch up dianafreedman), they informed me it wasn’t possible. Hmph.

What do you think of the latest version of Disqus? How do you manage comments on your site? Do you think you’ll use Disqus to manage your own comments?

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Topics: Blogging • Tools

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