1FPS|by David Chartier

Disqus is an interesting new hosted comment solution for blogs and websites. I’m trying it out here at 1FPS because of some unique features, such as threaded and more interactive comments than you get with WordPress and many of its plug-ins.

A definite downside for users of WordPress and similar platforms is that you no longer get your commenter’s e-mail address sent in comment notifications. If you require those for off-the-record correspondence with readers, you may need to find a workaround or bug the company to add this feature. Off the top of my head, I think a reasonable solution would be to enable this as an option for publishers (probably by default, since it’s the default of every CMS I’ve ever tried), but also allow registered commenters to control whether their e-mail address is sent in Disqus comment notifications to publishers.

Speaking of new features, though, Disqus has been busy. Users can now enable trackbacks, and the company added support for logging in via OpenID (for registered users/commenters at the main website, not logging in at just anyone’s site—yet). There are also now easy-breezy Disqus plug-ins for Joomla and Drupal as well.

If you want to learn more about Disqus you can of course visit the site, but a recent post on the company’s blog titled A Commenter’s Rights also explains more of the philosophy behind the company’s hosted comment approach.

Update: Guillermo Esteves says you actually can see a commenter’s e-mail address in your Disqus dashboard. It may not be as convenient as getting them via e-mail for some users, but at least they’re there if you need them.