Looking for a 3rd Party Commenting Platform? We Recommend Disqus!

• My client wants to go with a third-party commenting platform that they can implement across several sites they own. I know you have recommended Disqus in the past but what are your thoughts on LiveFyre and other options? Is Disqus still your top recommendation and why?

Answer: Good question. Third party commenting platforms continue to rise in popularity due to the fact that they inherently provide more security for the average user and cut down on comment spam. They also uniformly have other benefits including the following:

• Better functionality: you can follow and leave comments easier and be notified of comments being left via more avenues.
• Better engagement: you can follow other users, like other user comments, and be informed when your favorite users leave comments on your site and others.
• Better community tools: you can register in one place but be able to comment across multiple social platforms. You can also increase your community by subscribing through RSS tools.

Although Google+ and Facebook can be considered third-party commenting platforms because you can add these as your main commenting platforms into your site, we don't recommend you use these. Why? First, because not every one of your blog visitors is going to be on Facebook or Google+ you stand to alienate a portion of your site audience.

Secondly, and by far the biggest downside, you don't control the comments that are left on your site. Facebook, Google+, and the Vicomi platform do not provide a way to sync your comments with your database. Comments accumulated on these platforms are stored only on their third party serve...