Whilst I wrote this, a lot has happened. Several javascript URLs are now indexed in Google. Disqus was suggested by Andy Beard earlier. But some of the concerns were discussed on IntenseDebate.
A high proportion of authors appear to be resorting to complex commenting services such as Disqus, Sez Who, and IntenseDebate – which provide thread comments, cross-site popularity scores, and other features – after becoming dissatisfied with the out-of-the-box operation of their blog’s commenting system.
When you use these on your site, you’ll probably be concealing your comments from Search engine crawlers, which isn’t good for Search Engine Optimization and delivering customer service that’s unavailable to individuals who don’t have javascript turned on.
(Wp 2.7 will also offer threaded comments, which will be useful for WordPress users.)
Javascript is dismissed by Google.
Whenever Google crawls a webpage, it doesn’t consider running javascript. The issue with all these commenting setups is that they are using javascript not only for their complex capabilities but also for simple things like displaying the comments.
An announcement made by IntenseDate on the 7th of November: IntenseDebate has announced that an edition with no Javascript will be released soon – read the post below for more information.
Seeing what I mean, try the experimental links below with javascript turned off (in your browser settings on a Mac, perhaps in settings on a PC).
Looking for the username of the individual who posted the initial remark on the page yields no results, proving that Google isn’t crawling the comments for Disqus and IntenseDebate. (For example, this query yields matches for the Disqus page rather than the simple page.)
4/10 for Disqus without javascript.
There’s a link that reads ‘View this discussion thread’ at which comments should be. This will send you to a webpage upon the said Disqus site with all of your blog’s comments.
This is more than nothing because it includes a link back to your website. However, this indicates that Google believes the material in the comments belongs to Disqus rather than you.
http://simpable.com/code/disqus/ was used to test this; http://www.sexywidget.com/my weblog/2008/08/disqus-updates.html
6/10 for Sezwho with javascript turned off
You end up losing usability (couldn’t they at least supply a fixed link to the information?)
However, the comments are at least viewable.
http://www.webbiestuffs.com/2008/07/how-i-solved-sezwho-problem.html was used to test this; http://andybeard.eu/2008/03/mybloglog-social-activity-time-line-disappoints.html.
With javascript turned off, IntenseDebate scores 0/10 (going to ?/10).
Once you tap on the ‘leave a response’ button, nothing occurs. As a result, the comments are hidden from Google, and the execution is awful – certainly, they could’ve had something meaningful occur when you tap it?
http://www.ultimatenoob.com/?p=425 was the page that was used to test this.
See Jon’s thread below for more information on an updated non-javascript version. Nevertheless, the number of posts displayed with javascript enabled, such as his most recent post, is nine. You can see 4 with it off.
Some posts are also available without javascript. JS is enabled in 37 posts when turned on, although, It’s 15 when JS isn’t turned on. However, the latest version is still in beta, further testing may be necessary!!
So far, Typepad Connect has a score of 0/10.
Typepad connect was tested out on two blogs both picked at randomly, courtesy of the suggestion below. There are no comments when javascript is disabled. Instead, a link to ‘View the whole comment thread’ displays.
When you tap on this link, the page will reopen, but no comments will show. This appears to be yet an additional indication of the non-JS version’s terrible code. They’re still in beta, so there’s definitely time to correct it.
