My experience with IntenseDebate

Well, I might as well post this seeing I have used it for a while now I thought I would do an article on it and what I felt about it.

To be honest that to start with IntenseDebate didn’t suit any of my needs at all but now using it overtime, it got to a point in which I honestly can’t see nothing wrong with it and don’t know why I removed it the first time anymore. I first looked into IntenseDebate after I installed the WordPress plugin qTranslate to have Tweaked for your Pleasure in both English and Hebrew.

Sadly, over some time, the comments started to merge into English and Hebrew. This was because qTranslate couldn’t support comments in two languages so it never had an idea on how to do that so it just displayed them both. While this was fine for people whom could read both languages, my “visitors” got to the stage where neither of the two could read the other language.

Naturally, this started to cause a problem. So I set out looking for a comment system that would work with qTranslate but this was never the answer as I never found a plugin that did. But, the first plugin I tried was IntenseDebate. IntenseDebate installed without any issues and I set it up quite quickly and there wasn’t really any issue other than one thing – user logins.

As some of my regulars commenter(s) will know that this become a massive issue. After posting it on IntenseDebate help forums, I got a reply back saying it was not possible and that OpenID may have been an answer. After messing around with OpenID provider on Tweaked for your Pleasure, I gave up and went back to the old commenting system in WordPress. Still, I was back at step one.

I then looked into DISQUS and after a while, I notice that it had a “stand alone” installer. After looking at this, I notice it was perfect for what I needed. It meant I needed two installations – one for English and one for Hebrew. Also what was better that DISQUS had more then one language support. I thought this was perfect but after a while, I noticed that it wasn’t.

It was at this time, I called it quits and disabled comments on the Hebrew side of the website. However after a month or so like this, the “Hebrew” section of the website screwed up so I disabled it completely. But after a bit longer, I decided to get it all working again and it was at this time I once again looked at IntenseDebate. Now, I ain’t sure how I missed it last time but I saw at this time IntenseDebate had a stand alone installer as well. Even better, it was also at this time IntenseDebate opened up translations to the public.

Not wasting time, I went ahead and installed the WordPress plugin for the English site and the stand alone installer on the Hebrew section and set it up to use the Arabic language (this is until it supports Hebrew as most whom understands Hebrew knows Arabic) and up to today, it working well and perfectly. But there was still one issue left – users. Not only did I miss that, I also missed User Synchronisation. After setting that up for all my users (wasn’t easy, took along time).

After that was done, my members are now happy about it and from after installing IntenseDebate, some articles published on here has now actually got people debating in a way I wouldn’t have seen on the old comment system. Not including support for OpenID, Facebook etc that other members has enjoyed and use. What I was also happy about is what there was a replacement for my webcam commenting system that I had on the old one. I would have loved IntenseDebate to have used Riffly but we will see in time.

Also, I have to say that support is very good as well. If you have a problem, then do look into it and help you and I do have to say, one of the staff that is very helpful is Michael Koenig.

So to sum it up. Well, would I advice someone to use IntenseDebate?

Well, I wouldn’t use it on Ask a Jew, Behind The Science, Matthew’s Portfolio (all languages), Tweaked for your Pleasure and Ultima Development Laboratories if I didn’t 😉