My Disqus Experiment is over. I’ve disabled Disqus on blogan.net (temporarily losing a whole five comments in the process, which I may yet manually add to my WordPress database should I exert the effort).
The deal breaker for me was the complete lack of control over the comments on my blog. I could only approve them or delete them. I couldn’t:
- Censor gratuitous profanity in an otherwise valuable comment;
- Shorten an URL that extends into the margin or fix one that the commenter almost got right; or
- Delete personal information (e-mail address, phone number, etc.) that the commenter left in a comment and asked to have removed.
Disqus has no ability to import existing comments into its system so I ended up having two commenting systems on blogan.net. This may get fixed in the future.
There also is no ability to export comments from Disqus and then import them into my WordPress database. This is another feature that I expect will get implemented later, but for now, the longer I stayed with Disqus, the more I would be held hostage.
There is no documentation on what HTML is allowed in a comment. Bold and italics worked; images didn’t (and probably just as well without being able to edit the comments).
I’ll continue to watch Disqus. I want it to work. It’s just not there yet.
In the meantime, blogan.net has two features that make commenting better than on a barebones WordPress blog:
- You can subscribe to comments when you leave a comment. That way you will know if anyone has responded.
- You can preview your comment before posting it. You’ll know beforehand whether the HTML you’ve used will work.
What should I experiment with next?
Ryan Spoon writes “15 Websites / Services I’d Actually Pay For.” Like Spoon, I have a top 15 list. Unlike Spoon, I’m not willing to pay for any of them. If anything on my top list started charging, I could easily find a free alternative. Would I get exactly the same benefits? No, but I’m cheap frugal.
Here’s my list and some other free alternatives:
- WordPress. The blogging application I use on blogan.net. I’ve used both WordPress and Blogger. Blogger just works but WordPress gives incredible control. Free and open source. Alternatives: Habari, MovableType, Blogger, and many others.
- K2 WordPress Theme. Not so much a theme as a theme foundation. Supports menus, asides, sidebar modules (much superior option to widgets), live archives, advanced navigation, live search, etc. Has an active support community. Alternatives: Too many to list.
- Akismet. Akismet has blocked more than 135,000 spam comments from appearing on blogan.net. That’s a huge time savings. Alternatives: Bad Behavior, Spam Karma 2 (which I’m using with Akismet) or outsourcing the problem with Disqus (see below, which I believe also uses Akismet).
- Firefox. Tabs and addons. What more can I say? Alternatives: Internet Explorer 7 or Opera. I used IE7 until I couldn’t access a web app at work. Attempting to uninstall IE7 to go back to IE6 borked my OS.
- Firebug. Let’s me easily determine which style(s) apply to the various elements of my blog. Also makes it easy to help others debug their issues. Alternatives: The Web Developer Plugin has some of the same features, but is not a real replacement for Firebug.
- Google Reader. I used to use a standalone RSS reader until my computer died and I lost all my feeds. Google Reader keeps track for me and lets me access my feeds from anywhere. I like the share feature and am waiting for a widget that better integrates the new share with notes feature with my blog. Alternatives: Bloglines.
- Google Search. Google is synonymous with search for me. Alternatives: you tell me. Ms Dewey?
- Twitter. The best address on the web to expose my life in 140-characters or less. Like Google Reader’s share feature, Twitter has decreased the volume of my blogging. Alternatives: I could use “asides” on my blog for shorts posts. But the real value of Twitter is the community. I don’t think it would exist if Twitter charged.
- Streaming Radio Guide. A comprehensive compilation of streaming radio stations. Alternatives: I don’t know. Once I found SRG, I quit looking.
- Simple Weather. All the weather you need and nothing else. Alternatives: Lots, but they are so cluttered compared to Simple Weather.
- Google Maps. Fast and simple. Google continues to add new features. I particularly like being able to compare travel times for various paths between two points. Alternatives: Do people still use MapQuest?
- myvidoop. OpenID provider that also tracks my logins and passwords for sites that don’t accept OpenID. Initial login can be a little slow. Alternatives: myOpenID and claimID, though I don’t think they track your other logins and passwords.
- Disqus. Comment system that can be added to blogs. I like how it lets me track my comments on other blogs that also use Disqus. Alternatives: Intense Debate and others.
- YouTube. Publish videos and watch others’. Alternatives: Bunches of them, but when people think of video on the Internet, they’re likely thinking of YouTube.
- Snopes. If more people read Snopes, we’d have less forwarded junk mail. Alternatives: Break the Chain.
So what would you put on your top 15 list of web sites and services? Would you be willing to pay for any of them?
Hat tip: Mark Ghosh at Weblog Tools Collection, who provides his own list.
Jamison’s question for me today (one of many…):
What’s your favorite arthropod?
Um, Herbert?
photo credit: MooreALXPolitico speculates on the pros and cons of an Obama-Clinton ticket.
I don’t see it happening. How could a Obama, the “candidate of change,” choose Clinton? We’ve had a Bush or Clinton in the White House since 1981.
Dave Winer asks, “Is Obama Black?”
I ask, “Who cares?”
After all, is Tiger Woods black? His ancestry is as multiracial as Obama’s and equally irrelevant. Last I checked, a golf ball doesn’t care about the the golfer’s ancestry or skin color. And the only sort of golf club that cares is a racist institution. What’s important is Tiger’s skill, his ability to get the ball in the hole with the minimum number of strokes.
Voters should “be the ball” and ignore Obama’s skin color. Ask instead what are his positions on the issues, his plans for the future, his experience, his character, or even his attitude.
Or be dumb as a club and focus on his color.
___
Note: Although this post could be interpreted as attacking Dave Winer by either calling him a racist or “dumb as a stick,” please don’t interpret it that way. Although I disagree with Winer’s politics, I admire his fearlessness in writing honestly about race issues. His willingness to continue the discussion, at the risk of being called a racist by those who disagree with him, is an example I wish more would follow. I’m arguing a different point than Dave. Rather than arguing that Obama is black and Obama’s candidacy shows a turning point for African Americans, I look forward to a time when Americans are “afflicted” with colorblindness.
Or maybe back to an earlier time in Obama’s candidacy when his color didn’t seem to matter.
Blogan.net now allows you to leave comments using your OpenID URL using the magic of the WP-OpenID plugin.
The plugin also is supposed to allow me to associate my OpenID URL with my account so I could login using my OpenID URL. Only one problem: I couldn’t get it to work. Then I found the patch suggested by Aliaksei Harabchuk on the WordPress support forums. Success!
I believe this patch allows administrators to associate and prevents other users from being able to do so. If that is a concern for you, reverse the patch when you’re through working with your administrator account.
Update. Okay, I tried. I really did. It’s not worth it. I got 100% false positive spam plus WP-OpenID is incompatible with another plugin I would rather have. Maybe later…
This morning, when I checked blogan.net, it wasn’t there. Instead, I had the famous WordPress 5-minute installation screen. Entering the correct information didn’t work. Okay, that’s an understatement; I got multiple pages of database error messages.
Doing a repair on the MySQL database seemed to fix the problem until I looked closer. My static pages were gone. Time for a restore from backup.
Thanks to the WordPress Database Backup widget, blogan.net’s database gets backed up every evening, with the backup e-mailed to my Gmail e-mail account. Unfortunately, my most recent backup was corrupted and the prior backup was one post and one comment out of date. (Don’t tell me that inactive blogs don’t have their advantages.)
Following the standard Wordpress Restore instructions didn’t work. I got another database error message. Tamba2’s instructions provided the little boost I needed. By cutting and pasted from the backup file into the phpMyAdmin SQL field, I was able to isolate which table had problems. It turned out to be an unneeded table used by a plugin I no longer use. After I limited the backup to the core WordPress tables, the restore worked smoothly.
A couple of my plugins needed to be reinitialized because I didn’t restore their settings. I then replaced the missing post and comment. I think (famous last words) that blogan.net is back.
As for the cause, I don’t know. It’s not surprising that I’d have some problems once in a while. I’m running the latest beta versions of both WordPress and K2.
Sometimes the bleeding edge just is.
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Intense Debate Doesn’t Allow Blog Owners to Edit Comments
I asked Intense Debate whether blog owners have the ability to edit comments using their commenting system and received the following response:
The search for improved commenting continues.