A quasi un anno esatto da oggi, abbiamo deciso di cambiare radicalmente il nostro sito e abbiamo utilizzato Livefyre Commenting System per sostituire i commenti predefiniti di WordPress. È stato un prodotto di cui ci siamo innamorati fin dall’inizio e con cui abbiamo instaurato un ottimo rapporto con i dipendenti dell’azienda. Purtroppo, con la nostra recente revisione, abbiamo deciso di separarci da Livefyre. Molti utenti ci hanno chiesto di scrivere un articolo dettagliato sul nuovo design e sui cambiamenti. La domanda più frequente che abbiamo ricevuto è stata perché siamo passati da Livefyre. In questo articolo, vi daremo alcune informazioni sulla decisione di abbandonare Livefyre e di tornare ai commenti predefiniti di WordPress.
Perché ci siamo inizialmente innamorati di Livefyre
Livefyre offriva commenti in tempo reale, “riduceva” lo spam grazie all’obbligo di registrazione, si integrava con i media e riportava la conversazione sul sito. Livefyre consentiva l’accesso anche a Facebook, Twitter ecc. Abbiamo anche pensato di ridurre il carico del server. Tutto ciò sembra fantastico, ma con la crescita del sito abbiamo riscontrato alcuni problemi.
Che cosa è successo?
1. Commenti in tempo reale
Abbiamo apprezzato molto la caratteristica dei commenti in tempo reale, perché abbiamo potuto avere delle conversazioni simili a quelle di una chat nei nostri commenti. È stata la migliore esperienza di coinvolgimento che abbiamo mai visto nei commenti. Tuttavia, i commenti in tempo reale sono diventati più difficili da moderare. Gli spammer hanno capito che bastava una sola registrazione per far approvare tutti i loro commenti sul nostro sito.
Nota: normalmente non pubblicheremmo mai gli indirizzi email o IP degli utenti. Si tratta di uno spammer e riteniamo giusto rivelarne l’identità.
Torniamo al punto. Ci siamo quindi trovati a ripulire molti commenti su base normale. Alcuni escludevano i nostri occhi e rimanevano per mesi finché un utente non li vedeva e li segnalava come spam. Uno dei motivi per cui abbiamo mantenuto questa caratteristica durante la moderazione dei commenti è che il collega dell’utente puntava al suo profilo livefyre piuttosto che al suo sito web. In questo modo non stavamo collegando siti di cattivo vicinato. Questa situazione è terminata quando Livefyre ha deciso di lanciare una nuova caratteristica che consentiva agli utenti di aggiungere i propri collegamenti al sito web, senza dare agli editori di siti web alcun controllo su questa opzione. Abbiamo iniziato a vedere un aumento dei commenti di spam, quindi abbiamo disabilitato rapidamente la caratteristica in tempo reale (che era la cosa principale che ci aveva attirato a Livefyre in primo luogo).
2. Come lo spam
Una delle cose che ci ha convinto è che la registrazione necessaria riduce lo spam. Ebbene, questo era totalmente SBAGLIATO. Livefyre ha una caratteristica chiamata Like. Che ovviamente è stata creata con grandi intenzioni. Tuttavia, il sistema viene pesantemente abusato. Spieghiamo il processo. Ogni utente registrato di Livefyre può mettere “Mi piace” a un commento se è d’accordo con quanto viene detto. Quando un utente mette “mi piace” a un commento, il suo avatar appare accanto al commento con un backlink diretto al sito dell’utente. Inoltre, si tratta di un backlink DO-FOLLOW. Di seguito è riportato uno screenshot dal blog stesso di Livefyre in cui è possibile vedere Like SPAM in corso.
Nell’esempio qui sopra, questo spammer non è molto intelligente. Sta usando l’avatar predefinito dell’uomo misterioso. Gli spammer sul nostro sito erano più intelligenti. Avevano i loro loghi come avatar. Così si vedeva un gruppo colorato di mini-icone che venivano collegate a siti SEO di spam, a siti di offerte di carte di credito e così via. Alcuni potrebbero non credere che sia una cosa reale, ma sta accadendo. Di seguito è riportato il profilo di uno degli utenti che abbiamo segnalato a Livefyre quasi un mese fa.
Finora non è stato preso alcun provvedimento. Il profilo dello spammer è ancora attivo o almeno sembra tale (perché è visibile). Ora, o questo tizio ama davvero ogni singolo commento che legge, oppure si tratta di uno spammer. Noi scegliamo di credere alla seconda ipotesi. Se non ci credete, andate a controllare il sito collegato al suo profilo: si tratta di un sito web di una fattoria di adsense.
Ora state pensando che ciò che abbiamo descritto sopra è negativo. La cosa peggiore è che non c’è alcuna notifica di chi ha apprezzato cosa sul vostro sito web. Non c’è modo di sapere chi sta facendo spam sul vostro sito. L’unico modo per scoprirlo è che un utente ve lo segnali, oppure che andiate per sbaglio su uno dei vostri articoli meno recenti e notiate questo fenomeno.
Quando abbiamo scoperto di essere vittima di Like SPAM su numerosi articoli del sito (e probabilmente altri di cui non eravamo a conoscenza), abbiamo capito che dovevamo cambiare subito. Ci siamo sentiti impotenti e fuori controllo. Uno degli svantaggi di non possedere i propri contenuti.
3. Conversazione sociale
La conversazione sociale è un’opzione molto interessante offerta da Livefyre. È possibile scegliere di riportare le conversazioni da Twitter e Facebook all’articolo. In teoria questo sembra ottimo, ma deve ancora essere perfezionato. Abbiamo visto molti commenti irrilevanti provenienti da Twitter. È una buona idea, ma ha bisogno di essere perfezionata e di un filtro migliore. Abbiamo provato questa caratteristica sul nostro sito e non ha funzionato come avrebbe dovuto.
4. Moderazione
Quando abbiamo scelto di utilizzare Livefyre, abbiamo avuto l’impressione che ci fosse una comunicazione bidirezionale tra Livefyre e il database di WordPress. Ciò significa che è possibile utilizzare la moderazione di WordPress per approvare, eliminare o rispondere ai commenti. Questo non è vero. All’inizio sembrava funzionare, ma di recente si è ritorto contro di noi. Abbiamo aggiornato il plugin Livefyre e all’improvviso abbiamo avuto centinaia di commenti in attesa di moderazione. Si è scoperto che tutti i commenti che avevamo già moderato erano tornati (e segnati come in attesa). Non sono sicuro di cosa sia successo. Abbiamo contattato il supporto di Livefyre e abbiamo ricevuto una risposta:
Sembra che tu stia cercando di moderare i commenti dalla Bacheca di WordPress, cosa che al momento non supportiamo, ovvero le modifiche all’interno della Bacheca non si sincronizzano con Livefyre.
Siamo sicuri che in passato la procedura funzionava. Non ricordo quale sia stato l’aggiornamento della versione, ma sembrava che avesse creato dei problemi. Abbiamo parlato con un buon amico, Mitch Canter (@studionashvegas), e ci ha detto che ha funzionato anche sul suo sito. Ha detto che per lui funziona ancora. Quindi non siamo del tutto sicuri di cosa sia andato storto, ma comunque ci siamo ritrovati con centinaia di commenti da esaminare e rimodernare.
Ci è stato detto che per far sì che questo funzioni, dobbiamo moderare i commenti utilizzando il pannello di moderazione di Livefyre. Ci sono diverse ragioni per cui il pannello di amministrazione di Livefyre non ci è piaciuto fin dall’inizio.
- Nessuna moderazione di massa – Se si desidera eliminare più commenti o contrassegnarli come spam, non c’è modo di farlo facilmente. Bisogna farlo individualmente. Questo rimane il problema anche nella loro NUOVA interfaccia.
- Scarsa moderazione individuale – Per eliminare un commento è necessario fare due clic. Uno è la decisione di eliminare, l’altro è la motivazione dell’eliminazione. Questo può diventare noioso. Questo rimane un problema anche nella NUOVA interfaccia.
- Nessun controllo sui commenti – Quando abbiamo deciso di cambiare, non c’era alcuna opzione per modificare i commenti degli utenti. Questo ha reso più difficile far rispettare le linee guida sui commenti. Ad esempio, qualcuno lascia un ottimo commento, ma inserisce un collega per la firma (che noi non permettiamo). Dobbiamo accettare il commento così com’è o eliminarlo. Questo problema è stato corretto nella nuova interfaccia. Ora è possibile modificare i commenti.
- Rispondere è un DOLORE – Per un sito come il nostro, spesso abbiamo bisogno di rispondere ai commenti. Non c’è un modo semplice per farlo. Il commento viene visualizzato nel pannello di moderazione di Livefyre. Bisogna aprire l’articolo e vedere il commento in attesa. Approvarlo e poi rispondere da lì. Questo rende il pannello di moderazione di Livefyre praticamente inutile. Nella moderazione del backend di WordPress, c’è una caratteristica davvero interessante chiamata Rispondi e approva. In questo modo è possibile rispondere al commento senza aprire una nuova scheda/finestra per l’articolo.
5. Problemi di formattazione
Abbiamo notato che Livefyre aggiungeva del CSS aggiuntivo al testo dei commenti per alcuni utenti. Deve trattarsi di una sorta di problema dell’utente, perché succedeva solo a pochi, ma noi teniamo a tutti i nostri utenti. Non siamo sicuri che il problema sia stato corretto o meno.
Un’altra cosa che abbiamo notato è che l’aggiunta di interruzioni di riga nei commenti era una rottura. Così abbiamo provato a rispondere a qualcuno e a incollare un collega. Tuttavia, la formattazione automatica di Livefyre le eliminava. A volte i collegamenti erano addirittura interrotti, quindi dovevamo aggiungere spazi extra tra il link e il testo successivo. Il problema più grande è che durante la digitazione si può usare Shift + Invio e viene mostrato che l’interruzione di riga c’è stata. Si veda l’immagine qui sotto:
6. Un compromesso non equo
Quando abbiamo deciso di usare Livefyre, abbiamo fatto alcuni compromessi. Abbiamo rinunciato ad alcune opportunità per ottenere altre caratteristiche interessanti che Livefyre offriva. Ma dopo aver usato Livefyre per un lungo periodo e averne visto gli aspetti negativi, abbiamo pensato di non aver fatto un giusto compromesso. Vediamo di approfondire un po’.
Nessuna personalizzazione dello stile
Ne eravamo ben consapevoli quando siamo passati a Livefyre. Ogni volta che si utilizza uno script di terze parti, si perde il controllo su una parte dello stile. Attualmente il design dei nostri commenti corrisponde al tema ed è bellissimo. Con Livefyre non avevamo il controllo sull’aspetto. Non hanno l’opzione di etichetta bianca disponibile per il pubblico. Tuttavia, crediamo che questo servizio sia disponibile per i clienti di livello aziendale.
Nessuna generazione di lead dai commenti
Sapevamo che, una volta passati a Livefyre, avremmo perso le opportunità di generazione di lead dal modulo dei commenti. Facevamo reindirizzare i commenti per la prima volta e davamo agli utenti la possibilità di iscriversi alla newsletter dai commenti. Abbiamo discusso con il team di Livefyre su come aggiungere questo aspetto. Il risultato è stato che non esiste una soluzione semplice. La soluzione proposta è stata che esiste un’API che possiamo utilizzare per agganciarci al loro sistema e raccogliere le email se l’utente ha selezionato il checkbox. Non c’era modo di fare una reindirizzazione dei commenti.
Il processo di pensiero del nostro team si è svolto più o meno così:
Per poter utilizzare questa piattaforma e ottenere le caratteristiche che desideriamo, dobbiamo costruirla noi stessi. Invece esiste un sistema di commenti perfettamente funzionante, con il quale è molto più facile lavorare. Ci sono molti plugin già disponibili. La decisione è stata unanime.
Registrazione di terze parti
Anche in questo caso, eravamo consapevoli di questo aspetto quando ci siamo iscritti a Livefyre. Sapevamo che avremmo dovuto richiedere ai nostri utenti di iscriversi a un servizio di terze parti “Livefyre” per commentare sul nostro sito. Pensavamo che fosse per il bene comune, perché avremmo avuto conversazioni significative e altre caratteristiche aggiuntive. In tutti i WordCamp a cui abbiamo partecipato, alcuni utenti si sono sempre lamentati del sistema di commento. Abbiamo ricevuto numerose email da parte di utenti che si lamentavano di questo aspetto. Alcuni avevano problemi a commentare dietro un firewall, altri sentivano che la loro libertà di commentare su WPBeginner era andata persa. Sì, qualche mese fa Livefyre ha aggiunto i commenti degli ospiti come caratteristica. Ma ha continuato a incoraggiare gli utenti a iscriversi a Livefyre in seguito. Anche questo non è stato un compromesso equo. Abbiamo deluso i nostri utenti. Molti di loro hanno smesso di commentare. Pochi commentavano via email per farci sapere se avevamo commesso un errore, ecc. Questo è stato davvero deludente per noi. Alcuni di questi utenti hanno detto che si sarebbero registrati volentieri per commentare, se si fossero iscritti a WPBeginner. Ma era necessario che si registrassero con una terza parte. Abbiamo parlato di questo con Livefyre. Loro hanno un’API aziendale che vi permetterà di mantenere la vostra base di utenti. Tutti i dati degli utenti saranno vostri. Tuttavia, il processo di integrazione non sembrava così semplice. Non ricordo tutto, ma in pratica avremmo dovuto creare un database bbPress o BuddyPress separato per contenere tutti gli utenti. Sembrava troppo confuso. Abbiamo scelto di non procedere in questo modo.
All’epoca, questi compromessi non sembravano un grosso problema rispetto a tutte le caratteristiche interessanti che stavamo ottenendo con Livefyre. Tuttavia, con il passare del tempo, la nostra esperienza ci ha permesso di avere un quadro più chiaro.
E adesso?
Siamo tornati al sistema di commenti integrato di WordPress. Alcuni utenti ci hanno inviato un’email chiedendoci cosa stiamo usando per aggiungere l’opzione di accesso con Twitter/Facebook che vedete qui sotto. Stiamo usando una combinazione di due plugin (dello stesso autore @otto42) chiamati Simple Twitter Connect e Simple Facebook Connect.
Aggiornamento del 12 ottobre 2012: Abbiamo eliminato le opzioni di accesso a Twitter e a FB principalmente perché abbiamo visto che le persone non le usavano più così tanto. Eliminarle ha un impatto significativo sui tempi di caricamento. Preferiamo che il sito sia più veloce per la maggior parte delle persone 
Abbiamo incontrato e parlato con numerosi utenti che amano usare Livefyre. Anche se non era adatto al nostro sito, siete più che benvenuti a provarlo voi stessi. Ci piacerebbe sentire le vostre opinioni su Livefyre. Se avete un’opinione, commentate gratuitamente qui sotto.
Lev
Thanks for sharing.
Tommy
Good article.
WPBeginner Staff
None yet.
Steve Borgman
I’ve had a problem in that all my livefyre comments are now gone and did not transfer over to Disqus on my site. Any recommendations for what I should do to get them to transfer over to Disqus?
K Stone
Will the comments post automatically to the social media account chosen? Thanks.
Kris
Are you finding any downside to disqus?
zack
Seems this uses Discuss, not default Wordpress any more.
Zac
It seems like the summary for most of your points was “there was a perfectly viable solution to this, but it sounded too hard or confusing,” which is not really an excuse at all when you are working on a technical project. If it is too hard for your engineers, you need better engineers.
forcedalias
Livefyre has been buggy for me on both Firefox and Chrome (both up-to-date) on multiple sites.
I’ve never had a problem with Disqus — it’s always worked.
Sandeep Kumar
Sir I am very confused about the plugin for commenting on my blog. I was going for livefyre but after reading your article. I will not use this. So what I use for commenting????
WPBeginner Support
At WPBeginner we use the default WordPress commenting system.
Admin
Michael Podboreski
I am starting to learn that defaults – are defaults for a reason.
Lorenzo
The only thing I don’t like about Disqus is that it’s limited to FB, Twitter, and G+ users. I wish they would also include other platforms
Dogguie
Que tal Disqus?
Brian
So, what about using ajax in comments? Which services make use of ajax?
Chris
Not trying to bash or anything but, just so you know, you can easly edit Livefyre’s CSS by adding ” !important ” to all its statements. I.E. background-color: #2d2d2d !important; and so on
Jack
Hey Bro,
I am a new blogger and i was confused with livefyre or disqus. After reading your experience, i will definitely use livefyre on my blog.
WPBeginner Support
Jack, seems like you didn’t read the article. Our experience with Livefyre was not good.
Admin
Tim Arthur
Great post. I hope to leverage these login options in the future on our site
Glenn Younger
Thank you so much for this article! My two websites were spammed so badly, and so filled with various strains of freezer-virus (I made that name up because I got frozen out of my own sites and couldn’t even access the dashboard), that I have to build both again from scratch.
Naturally, I decided to do it “right’ this time (of course I’m still a rookie despite the 200 pages lost on one of my sites). I have put hours of research into how I want to do the comment section. Do I use disqus? Livefyre? Comment Luv? The list goes on. I was leaning towards Livefyre and now I see that isn’t the way to go. BUT, the best part about this article is I discovered your website WPBeginner. Fingers crossed that it will help me move up from a rookie site builder to (I hope) a competent one. For that, I’m giving you a double thank-you.
Angel Rodriguez
I played with livefyre sometime ago, then switched out to “Social” by mailchimp. That plugin was pretty good, but it doesn’t like my current template. The great thing about social is that it actually pulls in every post on twitter and facebook that is made and includes the url of your post. It’s pretty cool, but also pulls over some garbage as well.
Currently I’m on livefyre, but it’s not importing or tagging users as I hoped it would, which really is the main motivation for me to have it. Most of my dialogue happens on FB and twitter, so I enjoy bringing over the conversation, even if it’s just static data that doesn’t necessarily interact with the site itself.
I’ve also been considering disqus, I do enjoy using that one, but it doesn’t interact with my social media well. I’m considering going back to “social” and trying to tweak the template myself.
Neil Ferree
I like to adding Google+ comments with CommentLuv in most of my sites these days.
Angel Rodriguez
How are you doing that Neil?
GD
I really still can’t decide.
Disqus looks the best but not if you can lose your comments when they go down.
Peter
Disqus sucks, because it required a double registration – firstly to a social media than to disqus – this can uncourage a lot of people…
Matthew Barnes
Also I found that Disquis can slow down your site. I saw Disquis on some very popular blogs, and sometimes Disquis would fail to load. Fail to load, with no comments. Thumbs down on Disquis for me
Mark McIntyre
The slow load / failure to load is the main reason I switched from Disqus to LIvefyre.
Antano Solar John
Thank you. Very well written article. I am glad I read this instead of switching to livefyre. I had an intuition that it wasn’t going to work for me.
Greg
Anyone using Jetpack comments?
Connor Gurney
Essentially it is just the WordPress comments with a comment form that uses Ajax and social sign in options. Clever idea, however.
To answer the question, yes, I am.
Mayur
I have not used WordPress Native Commenting system but, I used Disqus & Livefyre & as a UX point of view I found Disqus is much better than Livefyre.
Adil
so whats a best comments system?huh
WPBeginner Support
Right now we are using default WordPress comments system, it works well on all our sites.
Admin
Kevin Bolger
But you have to scroll to the bottom to find the post new comment box. Surely that should be above the rest of the comments?
Faris
I am using Disqus on my two sites (one personal / one professional) and I like it. Was considering switching to LiveFyre for the more social aspect, but after reading this article I definitely won’t be!
Matt Kettlewell
Great job on writing an article so long ago that’s still relevant, useful and pulling in new comments and conversation!
I, like most reading your article, are looking for that perfect commenting system.
One that allows Facebook & twitter comments to become part of the discussion.
One that allows logins through the social media vendor of your choice.
And to eliminate spam comments 100% ( or at least 95% )…
And to allow custom styling
And not slow things down
And allow integration with newsletters and local functionality/API integration…
we all want this perfect commenting system, but it just doesn’t exist ( unfortunately ).
I keep wanting to use LiveFyre or Discus, or Intense Debate, but none of them are perfect, and in the end, decided to use the WordPress commenting system as well.
I have my sneaking suspicions that in the near future ( by end of 2014 ), we’ll have a nearly complete solution. There are good frameworks that just need a few extras integrated.
I do, however, view these upgrades as a premium feature that will help monetize the base company, where what we see today will remain free, and the complete integration package will be paid.
I for one would gladly pay to have it all!
Daneil
Hi
I am also using WordPress comments with my child theme. The one thing I do’t like is the inability to go back an make edits once you have posted. -esp for those of us who have bad spelling! Are there plugins which will allow this on WordPress comments or do I need to evaluate Discus et al. .Maybe there is a review of all of them out there?
Editorial Staff
Yes, you can use this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-comment-editing/
Admin
Bryan
Is this the way the default WordPress comment board looks?
mAsT3RpEE | Walter Otsyula
Thanks for this. I was wondering weather to choose livefyre or disqus. Do you also have a review of disqus? I hate the native system (spam even worse). It uses javascript to load comments so I think that should stop most bots (I’m just guessing). Users can flag comments (I think, just installed it).
Can you also explain the obsession with backlinks outgoing links google rank etc? I thought the point was to make a website and leave the search engine geeks to tinker with their ai’s intelligence. If google’s bot is so easy to fool why do we all search using it.
Fortunately for me I’m still new and my site uses free hosting. So right now a low ranking is what I’m looking for. If my rank goes to high my dns provider might park my domain -_-. Any advice on keeping a ranking low?
Thanks in advance.
allergicvegetarian
I researched LiveFyre and decided not to use it as I wasn’t totally impressed. I just had a gut feeling that it wouldn’t work for me. I do want to be accessible to all people regardless of who they are. Discus is what I’m using currently anyways, and do recognize that this won’t work for those who need yellow background and bold black text. I do use Akismet too. Spammers will always be there, and they will always get in. Can’t stop that easily.
Spam: I found that banning IPs from certain countries, using the backend, has really helped a lot. However, the pro spammers are really good at hacking IP addresses. A Ukrainian fool, is so good, that he has hacked into a Netherland’s IP address. I had to ban registration out right, and manually register people. This was NOT on a WP account though, it was eFiction. My other blog by ?b-evolution? something like that, had tons of spam. I stopped allowing comments. My WP blog, using WP commenting, gets less spam so far, but you can almost gauge how good your SEO is, by the amount of spam you get. The more spam, the better your SEO (does not apply to forums, only blogs).
If you go to stopforumspam dot org, they have all the IP addresses and other data of spammers. Bottom line is though, no matter what you do, short of disallowing commenting, you are going to have the spammers.
Social Media: I found that commenting on a post is more necessary if its a how-to article and someone needs help. Otherwise, most things can be discussed in a forum. There, you can have 1 thread in 1 board that is exclusively for people who want an account. Then, if they are approved, you can set them up. And, leave the commenting as disallowed on all the articles. I may end up doing this on my recipe blog (WIP, no link given). The only drawback of a forum is that people lose interest quickly but the spammers don’t. I think this is largely due to our “instant gratification expectation” culture we’ve become.
(Not clicking notify me, but will check back.)
Sebastian
Very very helpful. thank you guys
Tim
Good article and case study. I use Livefyre and find it disappointing that I can’t style how I want without heartache involved (I understand code – CSS/HTML, etc.) but styling Livefyre for my site was a pain. I gave up in the end, and I can tell you that my “digital” defeats are few!
Vishal Verma
Livefyre=slow down your blog+some comment are always missing
Dirtysouthrep79
Nailed it. Slow as hell and auto mod won’t let simple benign messages through.
Rourke Decker
I am guessing this is the fault of user error or wrong settings, then. We have never experienced anything like this. If messages are getting caught up in the spam filter, it’s usually because similar messages have been flagged or deleted by moderators. Check into that first.
Gracy
Thanks for the great article. I was looking for a commenting system for my website and I was leaning towards using Livefyre. BUT now I am lil confused. I might just go for WP default commenting system.
Carlos
Hi
Great post, just I’m looking for a comment script for some of my clients.
What do you think about Disqus for comments?
Regards
Carlos
Editorial Staff
We personally wouldn’t use a third party commenting system unless our site is getting thousands of comments every minute.
Admin
Sue Kearney
I’ve been back to default WP comments for maybe a month now, and I don’t see any significant increase (or decrease for that matter) in spam.
I’m really happy with this choice, and how pretty I’ve been able to make the comments section look (thanks to tips I’ve shamelessly copied from wpbeginner, thanks for your generosity and transparency!).
Love and light,
Sue
Editorial Staff
We do all we can to help Sue
Admin
thomas wooldridge
i was checking out livefyre and looking for opinions and found this site.. I got tired of the spam on the default WP comments.
Added disqus and so far so good..
David Chantry
I think that the default comments is the best comments.
Adam
I am using third-party comment systems for a few blogs instead of the default Wordpress comment system mainly because of the amount of spam the default WP receives. Even using Akismet we would still get tons of spam. So one blog we’re using Disqus and the other we’re using LiveFyre and we don’t get much spam at all, if any. The number of comments though is now lower, but that could be because of the content. But if I had to choose, I like Disqus more than LiveFyre or the default WP comment system.
skopp
What font is this, for comments?
Editorial Staff
Using the combination of Google Fonts: Oswald for Names and Lora for comment text.
Admin
skopp
Hi… I keep getting mailed about new comments here, so felt I have to chip in with my 20c as well. If you really want it done right, as with anything, you…?
Yup. Do it yourself. I’m not saying start your own Livefyre or Disqus (unless you want to). But the next best thing – better than even builtin WP comments – is Github Gists – as comments.Go as Open Source as you can. But Disqus is okay – I use it. I just hate the “around the web” feature.
Sara Soueidan
You can stop that feature from the admin panel.
Bava
Thanks for the genuine review after trying out. I was about to use livefyre because of it’s appealing features. I think it’s always better to stick with the default wordpress commenting system.
John
I agree with the comments here. Let’s see.
Steve Demmitt
I recently had a similar problem with the Disqus commenting system. But the main reason for my switch had to do with slow server issues on their end. Comments would not post at a quick enough rate. I switched back to my old system and couldn’t be happier. I’m sure there are benefits to a commenting system like Disqus and Livefyre but for most sites I would say the stock commenting system does the job well.
Rourke Decker
Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I want to emphasize that am not badmouthing Livefyre. I have the utmost respect for them as an organization. They have always treated us extremely well; their customer service is professional, competent, and courteous — second to none, really. I think Livefyre is a great product produced by a great organization. I think it would be a great fit for many sites. I am just struggling with disillusionment at the frequency with which the conversations on our articles have nothing to do with the articles themselves, and that is obviously not the fault of Livefyre.
Maybe I simply have unrealistic expectations when I hope that a sports site could trigger relevant conversations that lasted more than a few minutes. That is entirely possible.
Sue Kearney
I disabled Livefyre today! Too much aggravation with the comment counter not matching the actual comment count, and even more important, some of my readers didn’t want to have to create LF accounts. I finally gave up.
Your article was very helpful, I’m using the native WP comments for now.
Thanks!
Love and light,
Sue
Rourke Decker
I have had Livefyre installed on my website since April 2012 and could probably count on two hands the total number of spam comments we’ve seen. I would be willing to wager that 99% of the spam people are complaining about is trackback spam. If you’re tired of rooting out trackback spam from your moderation queue, simply turn off trackbacks in your Wordpress Dashboard. Problem solved.
Editorial Staff
No. The spam we referred to in this article is about Like Spam where livefyre users will like all comments to get their favicon show up next to the comment. Those favicon would link to their site which gives spammers even more incentive to like just about every comment with their company profile.
Also, you don’t see these likes as easily on your site because there is no tab in your dashboard that shows comment likes. We only noticed this because several of our users reported it.
Admin
Rourke Decker
I know that you were referring to “like spam” in your article. I was mainly addressing the comments made by other people in this thread. We have experienced fewer than 10 instances of spam, almost all spambots shilling e-readers for Amazon.com, and it was easily taken care of with the ban button.
On our site, we have never — not once — experienced “like spam,” and I can say this with complete assurance because there is a weird culture of competition among our readers to collect the most likes, so all likes are closely monitored.
We are considering removing Livefyre for other reasons — it reduces both the quality and longevity of conversations on an article, guaranteeing the conversation dies as soon as the next article is published — but spam has never been an issue for us.
Editorial Staff
Thanks for sharing your input Rourke. Would be really interested in learning about your experience, and what you mean by “it reduces the quality and longevity of conversations”. Perhaps via a comment, or we can talk it out via email
-Syed
Rourke Decker
The problem with real-time commenting like Livefyre is that it turns your commenting stream into a chat room; in essence, your site, no matter how serious it may be, devolves into nothing more than a social networking hangout. Our author work very hard on our articles — some of them take many hours of research to write — but we’re lucky if even one percent of the comments people make have anything to do with the article at all. Livefyre has a lot of features that make commenting a lot of fun, but those end up being a distraction from the article.
For example, readers love the media embedding features, but all that means is that the vast majority of our comments are just people posting funny pictures and videos instead of talking about the article. This has the negative side effect of drastically increasing resource consumption and slowing down page-load times. I have seen my articles taking up well over 100 MB of RAM in a Chrome tab.
Because they’re hooked on the real-time instant gratification, as opposed to having to refresh to see new comments, readers migrate to the next article as soon as it’s published, completely ignoring the old article. Not that it matters, considering they’re not talking about the old article anyway. Comments that come hours or days later are ignored as an unintended side effect of the fact that Livefyre sends out an email notifying you of new comments, which means people quickly turn that feature off. As a result, people who discover our articles later through Google or other means don’t feel welcomed and engaged, leave a single comment, and never come back. If Livefyre had a feature allowing notifications to be sent out only for articles that were, say, at least one week old, then we could respond to these late comments, keep the conversation going, and hopefully engage some new readers. As it stands, I only accidentally discover these comments if I happen to be checking back on an old article.
By contrast, I have seen sites on which articles are still receiving meaningful comments six years after the article was written, and some of those comments are longer and more in depth than the article itself! Look at this article: it was last updated in October 2012, but it’s still sparking discussion. That is what I would like for our site. Unfortunately, our articles just die as soon as the next one is published, because they’re little more than a chat room anyway.
I want my site to have staying power. I want it to be seen as a reputable source of information on our topic. I am seriously tempted to disable Livefyre and go back to the default WP commenting system, while installing a chat room that people can use for all their silly pictures, videos, and off-topic nonsense chatter. Something else I have considered is creating a mirror of my site that does not have Livefyre and loading our more important articles there. I don’t care so much if people chatter off topic on the morning links articles. But I want the statistical articles that takes days, sometimes weeks, of research to write to be provoking conversation five years ago. And I just don’t see that happening with Livefyre, at least not as long as everyone turns off new-comment notifications to avoid their email inbox being flooded.
Editorial Staff
Thanks for sharing that Rourke. Really appreciate the insights. Yes there is that issue of alienating your audience, but creating a live chatroom might be a good solution to keeping things relevant on the articles while still giving your audience a place to goof around. I think you are in the same boat that I found myself in. All the features that attracted me to livefyre at first ended up being the reason for me leaving the platform.
Do keep me in the loop of your decision. Feel free to send an email or tweet whenever you think I could be of any help.
-Syed
Sue Kearney
I was going to ask the same thing Syed asked. I’d love to hear more about reducing the quality and longevity of conversations.
I’m on my first day post-Livefyre. And I’m basing my comments styling on what you have here, Syed, should be fully formed by Monday.
Thanks!
Editorial Staff
Sweet. Keep me in the loop Sue. I think the article we wrote today about styling the comment form might help a bit in terms of plugins for checkboxes that we have. Let me know if I could be of any help.
-Syed
Rourke Decker
Holy typos, Batman. “Our authors” . . . “five years from now.”
I forgot to add that I have a feeling I will alienate the majority of my readership if I disable Livefyre. They’re so used to using the site purely as a social hangout that they might not come back if they have to refresh to see new comments. If that happens, I might well lose a significant proportion of my writers too. It’s a risk I am weighing and one I hesitate to make, because it might mean starting over at square one trying to build up a readership. On the other hand, it’s extremely demotivating to spend so much time writing meaningful content, only to have no one even engage it — or worse, openly poo-poo it. Part of me thinks I’d rather have 10 comments contributing to the conversation and spurring new ideas than a thousand off-topic one liners and memes, most of which have been repeated ad nauseam already.
Meghan Krane
Hi Rourke,
I’d love to talk with you more about the changes that you want to make on your site and brainstorm a bit about ways that you can adjust Livefyre to better meet the needs of your community. We’re always open to feedback about how we can improve our tools. I’d really like to speak with you, whatever your decision ends up being, so that I can share your thoughts and feedback with the Livefyre team. I’ll be getting in touch shortly.
Best regards,
Meghan
Director of Community at Livefyre.
Gemma Wild
I was under the impression Livefyre completely replaces the default WordPress system but this doesn’t seem to be the case for me.
I’m using the current Livefyre (4.0.3) on my WordPress blog and am receiving regular spam comments directly through the WordPress commenting system, not via Livefyre.
I realise spammers can be quite clever and find ‘back ways’ in but this does defeat the purpose of incorporating an external commenting system.
Did you guys ever experience this or did your spam come through Livefyre?
Editorial Staff
In our case, SPAM came through livefyre.
Admin
Meghan Krane
Hi Gemma, I’m Meghan, Director of Community at Livefyre. Our Comments 3 plugin does replace the default WordPress comment system. One of the features of Comments 3 is that we write all of the comments that we process through Livefyre back to your WordPress comment database, so that you always have access to all of your comments in one place.
If Comments 3 is installed correctly all comments on your site will be processed through Livefyre, our spam filter, and any moderation rules you have set up. You can track all incoming comments from the Livefyre admin panel. If you are seeing comments on your posts that are not appearing in your Livefyre admin please send us an email at support[at]Livefyre.com and we can investigate and get that sorted out for you.
Robert
I noticed you don’t use Disqus, LiverFyre or any 3rd-party commenting system now. Is there a reason for that? Are native wordpress comments just plain better?
Editorial Staff
Hey Robert,
We decided not to use any third-party commenting system because we wanted to have the freedom to do things our way. For example, if we want to allow users to subscribe to our newsletter from the comments, or redirect first-time commenters to a new page, etc. We can do that. We also wanted control over how comments were displayed. The native WordPress comments are the most flexible, and in our opinion the best solution for most sites.
If you are running a site that is getting tens of thousands of comments a day, then comments will become a hassle for your server to manage. In those cases, people utilize 3rd-party commenting systems to off-load server resources.
Admin
Sue Kearney
Hi, thanks for a helpful article. Tell me, please, did you still have all your comments on your site, and visible, when you disabled LF? I’m afraid I’ll lose everything!
Thanks,
Sue
Editorial Staff
All your comments will stay on your WordPress install.
Admin
Adamo "Aerendir" Crespi
Hi guys,
i came on this article serching for an article about your comment system: i’m a new WordPress User, coming from the Joomla! world.
Very interesting article, especially for the opinions about LiveFyre: it is now used by Mashable and i searched for info about it some days ago, and now, serendipitously, i’ve found the bad opinions i were searching for.
Anyway, i’ve yet decided to use the default WordPress’ comment system but a question is going around and around in my head: what about the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” and the “Subscribe to WPBeginner Updates (Weekly Email)” checkboxes? Which plugins are you using? And how do you synch the newsletter subscription here in the comments with MailChimp?
Best regards guys, your is a very helpful blog, and not only for its contents!
Editorial Staff
Hey Adamo,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, some larger sites like Mashable and TC are starting to use Livefyre, but we believe that’s the enterprise version with custom user database. Every thing that we use on the site can be seen on our blueprint page: https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/
Here is the page about comment section specifically
https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/comments/
Admin
Kathy Korman Frey
Hi folks – I was recently impressed by LiveFyre because it kept hooking me back into a discussion via Twitter. Someone mentioned me in a comment by my Twitter handle, I was compelled to reply – whereas normally I think that post would have been buried in utter obscurity.
This is so key for me. On our site, we have Disqus. We have great content and no one comments, yet we have a very active Twitter following. I thought LiveFyre might be great for this.
I figured it might be between CommentLuv and LiveFyre, now, I am not sure and feel as if creepy crawlies will get into my site with LifeFyre, and our comment threading will be compromised when / if we switch.
So – after reading this, I plan to have another cup of coffee and do nothing. “Is doing nothing an option” is one of my favorite tips for busy women who follow our project…and, now I will be doing it myself. Gracias!
Justin
Thanks for the follow-up post – I’ve been evaluating comment systems and having a hard time deciding. It seems there is no perfect solution