WordPress’s default comment system isn’t exactly the greatest, and whilst you can improve the comment system manually, not everyone has the time or skill to do so. Thankfully, one of Automattic’s recent acquisitions, IntenseDebate can help.

Before we dive into installing IntenseDebate (which is really easy!), here is why you should use it, according to the IntenseDebate website:

So IntenseDebate is pretty much everything you could want from a comment system, so next we’re going to walk through the installation.

First thing is to go to www.intensedebate.com and signup. Next you’ll be asked to enter the URL of the site you want to install IntenseDebate on. Do so and click next. Assuming you’re running WordPress, you’ll be told you need to install the plugin:

Before you intsall the plugin, make sure you backup your database.

Once you’re backed up, follow the instructions above to step four. Once you’re at the tab, login with the account you just created, and then on the next screen click the big ‘Import Comments’ button. Sit back whilst your comments import themselves. When it is done, this screen will appear:

You’ll find a whole load of options to fiddle around with, so fiddle away, and then you’re done. Told you it way easy!

This was a guest post by Alex Denning, a WordPress power user, web design freelancer and Twitter fanatic (follow him here!). You can check out his site, Nometet.com here. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

There are all sorts of WordPress hacks people can easily do to customize and improve both the look and functionality of their WordPress blog, but I’ve always felt that the comments section is one of the best ways to truly customize your WordPress theme.   After all, blogging is all about author interaction, and the comments go a long way towards conversations happening.

If you are looking to improve the comments field of your blog’s theme, Instant Shift recently took the time to feature a number of comment hacks, which can be viewed here.   Looks like they’ve already got 30 hacks included, including a few we’ve featured here in the past.

One of the lesser talked about features introduced in WordPress 2.7 is the new feature that breaks comments into multiple pages to create faster load times.   By default, this feature is activated and set to allow 50 comments before the break.    The problem is, with this new feature activated, your WordPress blog is creating duplicate content.

Here is what I found while checking my Google Webmaster Tools account for this website:

Duplicate Title Tags

Duplicate Descriptions

Is this a huge deal?  Probably not, but you may want to consider unchecking this box in your Dashboard > Settings > Discussion tab.   Hopefully in a future version of WordPress this will NOT be checked by default and instead be an option.

It is with great sadness that yesterday I discovered one of my favorite services, Co.mments, is shutting down.  It looks like today is the last day.

Here is the message provided by the owners:

For those unfamiliar with the service, it allows you to track follow up comments.  I used it whenever I left a comment on a blog post, so now I’m not sure what service I will be using.   I prefer a bookmarklet, so I’ll have to look around and see if there is anything that can accommodate me.

What do you guys use to track follow up comments?

Are you in need of some more commentators or want to allow commentators to receive points for commenting to get something?

With the CubePoints WordPress plugin you can, CubePoints allows you to choose a certain amount of points for each comment posted by a certain commentator. You can offer premium content, allow readers to purchase merchandise or maybe even an advertisement for your blog with a certain amount of points.

When they post a comment the points set in the administration panel is added to that person’s comment account and if their comment is deleted, it automatically removes the points. You, as the administrator can even alter the points quickly and easily from administration!

If you want to display how many points a commentator has accumulated in the sidebar, you can use this code:

<?php cp_displayPoints(); ?>

You can download and install this plugin from the WordPress Directory.  It was just added on December 26th.