Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

New JS-Kit Comments, Now Public Beta

The unfortunate thing about commenting on blogs is that it’s all too often basically a silo: your message lives in one place, requires a specific login for that site alone, and can be difficult to share out if you feel you’ve been particularly insightful.

Systems like Disqus (which we use on Web Upd8) have been developed to start addressing the silo problem, providing a unifying login for sites that employ it and a way to track and distribute the conversation more widely on the web.

jskit

After a short private beta test, JS-Kit just announced that Echo, its new blog commenting platform, is now available as a public beta. Echo aggregates conversations around a blog post from across the Internet and allows users to share their comments on Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. Echo offers a number of well-designed and unique features, including real-time updating and the ability to capture social gestures related to a blog's content like star ratings and 'likes' from across the Web. In addition, at least for the time being, JS-Kit also offers good spam and obscenity filters.

jskit comments

The Echo comment form takes a cue from email, with From and To fields that let you associate multiple digital identities (your Facebook, Twitter (Twitter), OpenID, even your personal blog) with your comments. The To field then allows you to share your comment with multiple “recipients” — sending it to Facebook, Twitter, Google (Google) or Yahoo. This effectively makes the comments form distributed in both directions: your other networks travel with you, and your comments can be easily sent back out along them as well.

You might also want to read about the best 3 comments system.

3 Alternatives to Blogger's Default Comment System

I said "for Blogger" because blogspot.com's comment system sucks, but they also work in Wordpress, TypePad, Movable Type, Tumblr, etc.

These 3 websites let you change the comments system in your blog, by disabling your default comment module and replacing it with a new one (just a JavaScript).

1. IntenseDebate offers automated installation for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and Tumblr, comment threating and pagination like in the new Wordpress 2.7, full Gravatar support, reply-by-email, open-id support, import-export and of course commenter profiles. Also, when you post a comment with IntenseDebate you have the option to send a Tweet on a post-by-post basis letting your followers know you commented on a post.

IntenseDebate recently added plugins such as embedding YouTube videos or polls in comments.

Link to all the features.

Demo.

2. JS-Kit Comments (formerly Halloscan) supports automated installation for Wordpress and Blogger but you can insert the JavaScript on any platform.

Among top-features are: Akismet spam control, e-mail notification, skins and multiple display modes, comment pagination, rich text editor, YouTube embedded videos in comments, Gravatar support and comment sync with Wordpress and Blogger and of course, comment ratings and user carma, trackbacks/pingbacks, RSS feeds for the comment threads.

JS-Kit has probably the most features among these three alternatives.

Link to all the features.

Demo.

3. Disqus - automated installation for WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, MovableType, TypePad but of course, you can insert the JavaScript code on any platform.

Disqus has all the features mentioned above like comment threading and pagination, commenter profile, Gravatar support and so on but also integrates best with your blog's CSS as Disqus tries to use the same colors ad your blog does. Also, you can se custom CSS for it.

For a demo, just check the comment form on this page, it uses Disqus :)

You're probably wondering why i use Disqus on my blog, and not the other two. Well, because for one: IntenseDebate did not work with Opera, i just couldn't click the "Submit" button, but mostly because it loads faster than the other services like it AND has all the features such a service needs. I fully recommend it.