IntenseDebate, the third party commenting service which Automattic acquired back on September 23rd, 2008 has announced that they will have their own plugin repository.
IntenseDebate has had some harsh criticism as of late for seemingly not obeying the wishes of quite a few users who have requested that IntenseDebate implement FaceBook Connect. At one point, ID told users that FaceBook Connect was not on the development list for implementation but rather, innovations were in the works and would be released soon. Little did we know that these innovations are the plugin API.
There is a brand spanking new Plugins tab in your IntenseDebate dashboard that lists the current plugins available. To activate a plugin just select “Activate” next to the plugin when you are logged into your account. Check out the comment section on your blog and you’ll find a plugin icon at the top right of the comment box. To use the plugin just select the icon and you’ll be ready to roll.
So far, IntenseDebate has four plugins to choose from. PollDaddy for creating polls, Seesmic for creating video based comments, YouTube integration and Smileys. Here is a bit more information regarding the plugins.
So now it looks like we won’t need to rely so much on the core developers of the service to add new features in. It will be interesting to see how far this plugin repository gets off the ground but I think its a great step in the right direction.
Let me see if I’ve got this. Now, the plugin will have plugins. Seems a little ridiculous to me. How deep do we go? Will the plugins for ID have plugins of their own to improve something or other. I don’t know.
(I still think I’m sticking with WP’s comment system. The devil I know.)
@Patrick D. – Hmm, I didn’t think of it that way. It’s a third party service with plugin support but I guess if you use the ID plugin for your blog, then it can be a plugin with plugin support which does sound funny!
Maybe I am missing something but why would I would want a third party service handling the comments on my blog?!? I just don’t think the bells and whistles make it any pretty than it is.
The Gravatar service makes sense but taking the comments to a service just feels an unnecessary.
@BlaKKJaKK – Well, the third party service argument is sort of moot considering that ID automatically syncs comments made on the service to your WordPress blog so when you turn the plugin off, you still have all of those comments in your database. I’m still on the side of handling comments on my own blog.
@Jeffro – That’s a great point, Jeff. It’s the one thing that was holding me back from using ID. I like that it syncs. My reason now not to jump to ID is because I don’t want my page to slow waiting on a third-party site that could have issues. Not that my site couldn’t have issues, but why take the chance? Is the service THAT good to risk it?
@Patrick D. – Well, I’ve never come across a site where the page takes forever to load because of IntenseDebate on their blog.