Improve WordPress Comments System with Social Comments

The default comments system built into WordPress is very basic and not good as we expected to prevent spam (How To Stop WordPress Spam Comments?), connect to your audience… and it’s lacking of advanced functionality to improve the way to commenting on your website. Thankfully, WordPress plugins can help you done with threaded commenting (include in core comments system), use social media accout to login and comment, mark a comment as favorite/like/helpful or not …
The Social Comments System like Facebook, Google+, Disqus… breaking down the barriers between you and your audience. When someone reads an article on your site and wants to comment, they can now use one of their existing social networking accounts to post a comment.
Let’s take a look at some Social Comment Systems that will elevate you above the default WordPress comments system.

Notes: All the Social Comment Systems below are WordPress plugins, you can add it to your WordPress very easilly by Plugins > Add New then search for the plugin’s name.

1. Jetpack Comments By WordPress

Jetpack Comments replaces your default comment form with a new comment system that has integrated social media login options. It enables your visitors to use their WordPress.com, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook accounts when commenting on your site. After a visitor has written a comment, they will have several ways to identify themselves or just commenting as a Guest (Guest commenting is still controlled by the options in Settings → Discussion; if you disable guest commenting, visitors will not be able to use this option in Jetpack Comments).

Jetpack tries to match your site’s color scheme automatically, but you can make manual adjustments at the bottom of the Discussion Settings page.
Jetpack is one of the most popular plugins installed on WordPress sites because of the additional features it has. JetPack Comments System is good enough to improve WordPress Comments System with Social Media Account like Twiter, Facebook, Google+ and WordPress.com.

2. Disqus Comment System

Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

The Disqus for WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates using the Disqus API and by syncing with WordPress comments.

Disqus for WordPress

• Uses the Disqus API
• Comments indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
• Support for importing existing comments
• Auto-sync (backup) of comments with Disqus and WordPress database

Disqus Features

• Threaded comments and replies
• Notifications and reply by email
• Subscribe and RSS options
• Aggregated comments and social mentions
• Powerful moderation and admin tools
• Full spam filtering, blacklists and whitelists
• Support for Disqus community widgets
• Connected with a large discussion community
• Increased exposure and readership

By using Disqus Comment System, your audience can carries a record of every comment they make on their account and can be followed by other Disqus users.

3. Livefyre Comments 3

The main rival to DISQUS is LiveFyre. Livefyre Comments is a comment platform for real-time conversations. Comments 3 centralizes conversations from around the social web back to your site, and encouragwa engagement between readers on your site to build community around your content. It is used by many top websites such as Mashable and Engadget.

Livefyre comment platform is to bring the social-web conversation about your content back to your content. This gives your community the most quality online conversation experience possible.
With their Livefyre Comments 3 plugin, you can syncs all of your comments back to your website database so that you can easily switch back to WordPress’s commenting system at any time.

4. Cackle comments

Cackle is a global comment system with the ability to login via popular social networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru and many others.

Cackle for WordPress

• Uses Cackle API
• Comments indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
• Auto-sync (backup) of comments with Cackle and WordPress database
• Export local comments to cackle
• Comments administration through wordpress
• Manual desynchronizing comments
• Custom html for seo
• Comments counter for each post
• Support disable comments for each post or page through wordpress’s “Quick edit”
• Support Single Sign-On (SSO)

Cackle Comment is premium service (with 5 days trial) start from $16 per year, after installed this plugin, you need to get the keys then verify your account status before using it.

5. Convatic

Convatic is a revolutionary social commenting system for websites. This plugin overlays and plays nicely with themes and other plugins. The idea behind Convatic is freedom. Freedom builds communities. Convatic promotes and engages visitors turning websites into vibrant communities.
It’s very new member of Social Comment System market but it’s promising because it enhanced default WordPress Comment System with more advanced features:

• Store comments within your website and completely own them.
• Use Akismet for spam protection.
• Commenter ratings – Users can up and down vote comments affecting commenter rating across the Convatic network of sites. This promotes good commenting and helps your visitors decipher bad comments.
• Signup freedom – Commenters create profiles across the Convatic community by simply writing a comment. Registration and commenting are combined to streamline conversations. Commenters have the option to password protect their email. Password protection is optional since most people just want to comment.
• Allow commenters to subscribe to email notifications for comment threads

6. Vicomi Comment System

Vicomi comments is a free comment platform with a new cool, stylish graphic interface that replaces your default WordPress comment system. It is one of the lesser-known external comment solutions that allows users to register using email of Facebook.

The platform presents web-based comments in a visual, interactive and personalized manner for the first time; helping your website to increase session time, engagement, retention, stickiness and page views amount (internal site circulation) while giving readers the benefit of a more meaningful and relevant commenting experience (better comments).
A refreshing change than the old disqus or livefyre comments platform! The Vicomi comments plugin for wordpress plugin seamlessly integrates using the Vicomi API and disable all spam comments at once. Add comments platform in minutes! All comments can be moderated in Vicomi comments moderation dashboard site. Comments can be approved or deleted via this system. All data (comments) is stored at Vicomi(amazon) servers with no cost.

Vicomi for WordPress

1. Allowing stylish emotional comments.
2. Not only is it free, it increases user engagement to your website.
3. Increased page views amount by 3%-10% (more traffic!) thanks to the recommendation widget that recommends other content (comments) within your website.
4. Easy to install, 5 minute installation! Add this comments platform for free.
5. Allowing moderation tools, moderation insights, spam tools.
6. Comments indexable by search engines (iFrame SEO-friendly).
7. Attach your feelings to a comment. Create better comments experience.
8. Uses the Vicomi API. Gives you free admin and the best moderation & analytics web tools.
9. Add comments in few minutes.

Vicomi Features

1. Recommendation comments widget for increasing page-views and engagement.
2. Emotional stylish comments.
3. Facebook connect, share tools.
4. Social Network integrated inside – users are able to follow other users or be followed by others.
5. Your own profile, where you can see all your comments in one place.
6. Threaded comments and replies.
7. Free moderation, analytics and admin tools.
8. Spam filtering, URL filtering. Spam blacklist moderation tools.
9. Statistics tools.
10. SSL dashboard login.
11. Feelbacks. Feelbacks are the number of votes for each comment. Move your mouse over a comment and share your opinion(comment feel-back).

It is easily recognisable by its unique emoticon feature that lets you rate comments from other users as intellectual, worrisome, funny, a question or maddening.

7. Facebook Comment System

Facebook are by far and away the largest social media website on the internet and the second most visited website after Google. You will get all the Facebook Comment’s features after integrade its Comment System into your website. There are too many WordPress plugins can help you done from the Official Facebook WordPress plugin to 3rd plugins like Facebook Comments, Facebook Comments for WordPress…

The comments box is fast and allows comments to be ordered by time or quality (aka Social Relevance). Since people tend to use their real name on Facebook, implementing Facebook comments on your website should cut down on spam. Comments associated with a post are sorted according to social signals including friend networks, most liked, or the most active discussion threads. Advanced features include moderation, blacklisted words, automatic grammar correction, and login support for AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! accounts.

The most problem when use Facebook or Google+ Comment Systems are a lot of people who do not use Facebook / Google+, therefore using Facebook / Google+ exclusively for your comments will stop many people from posting comments as a Guest.

Adding Facebook Comments in WordPress Manually

You will need a Facebook application in order to be able to get the codes required to run Facebook commenting system for your website. Do not worry, as this process is fairly quick, easy and free. Skip this step if you already have created a Facebook application that you can use.

• Go to Facebook Developers Apps
• Click on the Create New App button present on the top right.
• Give your app a Display Name, a unique namespace, a category and then click on Create App button.
• Visit Facebook Comments comments and input certain values such as width, number of posts and color scheme. Don’t worry about URL to comment as we will configure it later.
• After basic configuration, click on Get Code button.
• Make sure that your app is selected on the next screen and you will get the following lines of code:

  <div id="fb-root"></div>
  <script>(function(d, s, id) {
  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
  js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=429051310480444&version=v2.0";
  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
  }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>

Display Facebook Comment Count

In WordPress templates, you can also display the comment count for your posts. For that use the following code:

<fb:comments-count href=<?php the_permalink() ?> /></fb:comments-count>

Setting Facebook Admin for specified WordPress Account

You can also set an admin account which can moderate the comments made in your website via Facebook. For that add the following code before the </head> part of your WordPress blog.

<meta property="fb:admins" content="<YOUR_FACEBOOK_USER_ID>"/>

or
<meta property=”fb:app_id” content=”<YOUR_APPLICATION_ID>”/>

Use your application id when you have to specify more than one comment moderators. If you use your application id, all the administrators of your Facebook app can moderate comments.

8. Google+ Comments

Similar to Facebook’s comment system, Google has created an embeddable comment system that can be added to websites and blogs. In my opinion, it looks very nice and works quite well, as well as integrating into Google+.

There is no official WordPress plugin from Google, however there are plugins such as SZ – Google for WordPress and Comments Evolved for WordPress that allow you to integrate Google+ comments with your website.
As Facebook, your audience can’t comments on your website as a Guest and the comments database has stored on Google server and your must use tools or by your own method to convert it back to WordPress.

How to add Google+ Comments to any Website

The big problem of Google+ Comments System is only officially available for Blogger, and it’s not obvious how to add it to your website.
Luckily, it’s actually quite easy to add Google+ comments to your own website. All you have to do is embed this little HTML snippet in your page and a comment box will appear there.

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<div id="comments"></div>
<script>
gapi.comments.render('comments', {
    href: window.location,
    width: '624',
    first_party_property: 'BLOGGER',
    view_type: 'FILTERED_POSTMOD'
});
</script>

The first script is essential, as without it you’ll be left with a blank box instead of comments. The width component in the call to gapi.comments.render is also configurable – you can use it to set the default width of the comment box. However, it’s responsive so it’ll fit in a smaller box if you want it to.
There is however a limitation with this method of creating a comment box – for some reason there is a minimum height of around 600px so you may be left with a bit of blank space underneath your comment box.

What’s best suitable for your website?

As you can see, there are several quality options available, and they all come with pros and cons. It is therefore important to test out a service before using it on your live website. In the future, I guess Jetpack Comments will leading the Social Comments War ^^ because WordPress is the most popular CMS software and JetPack has WordPress rich features which make it as must-use WordPress plugins.
What commenting systems or WordPress plugins have you been using for on-site discussion? I’d love to hear from you though use a third-party commenting solution. What is your favourite service and why?