Ever since our latest redesigns (5.0 & 5.1), we’ve been toying around with the idea of replacing our comments system, and now, after some late night research and beta testing, we decided to give Disqus a try on Carscoop.
For those of you unfamiliar with Disqus, it is a popular commenting platform for websites that provides readers with a variety of options for commenting and participating in conversations in a more active way. Other sites currently using Disqus include Time Magazine, CNN, Engadget and the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Among other features, readers can spiff up their posts with videos and photos, reply to other comments directly, rate and flag users, have their own avatar (no, we’re not giving away blue-hued bomb shells from the planet Pandora) and some more.
We’ve opted to allow you to comment either as a guest by providing an email and a name or nickname, or if you prefer, by using your account on Disqus, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo or OpenID.
A few things we’d like you to know:
1) We’re still working on the styling details of the comments section,
2) All of our previous comments are currently being transferred over to the new system, but due to the large number of posts (more than 15,000), this may take some time to complete.
3) This is not a done deal, as we’ll be monitoring the Disqus commenting system to see how it goes and how you, our readers, respond to it. If we’re not content we’ll either try something else or revert back to the previous commenting system.
Give it a test run below and let us know what you think about it as well as what you’d like to be improved and if you happen to have any kind of problems.
By John Halas