Almost exactly a year from today, we decided to make a major switch in our site and ran Livefyre Commenting System to replace the default WordPress comments. It was a product that we fell in love with from the start, and we established great relationship with the folks in the company. Unfortunately, with our recent overhaul, we made the decision to part ways from Livefyre. A lot of our users have been asking us to do a detailed article on the new design and changes. The most common question we were getting was why did we switch from Livefyre. In this article, we will give you some insights into the decision of switching away from livefyre and reverting back to the default WordPress comments.
Why we initially fell in love with Livefyre
Livefyre offered real-time comments, “reduced” spam because of registration requirement, integrated with social media and brought conversation back to the site. Livefyre allowed sign-on with facebook, twitter etc as well. The thought of reducing server load was also in the back of our mind. All that sounds great, but as our site grew we saw us running into a few issues.
What the heck happened?
1. Real-Time Comments
We really enjoyed the real-time comments feature because we were able to have some great chat-like conversations in our comments. It was the best engagement experience that we have ever seen from comments. However, real-time comments got harder to moderate. Spammers realized that they were only a single registration away from getting all of their comments approved on our site.
Note: Normally we would never publish emails or IP addresses of users. This is a spammer, and we feel that it is only fair to reveal their identity.
Back to the point. So we found ourselves cleaning up a lot of these comments on a regular basis. Some would even escape our eyes and stay in for months until a user sees it and reports it as SPAM. One of the reasons why we kept this feature going while moderating these comments was that the user’s link was pointed to their livefyre profile rather than their actual website. So we weren’t out-linking to bad neighborhood sites. This came to an end when Livefyre decided to launch a new feature that allowed users to add their own website links and giving website publishers NO CONTROL over this option. We started seeing an increase in SPAM comments, so we quickly disabled the real-time feature (which was the main the thing that attracted us to Livefyre in the first place).
2. Like SPAM
One of the things that sold us to the idea was that requiring registration will reduce spam. Well that was totally WRONG. Livefyre has a feature called Like. Which obviously was created with great intentions. However, the system is being heavily abused. Let us explain the process. Any registered livefyre user can like a comment if they agree with what is being said. When a user likes a comment, their avatar shows up next to the comment with a direct backlink to the user’s site. Not to mention it is a DO-FOLLOW backlink. Below is a screenshot from Livefyre’s blog itself where you can see Like SPAM in works.
In the example above, this spammer is not a very smart one. He is using the default mystery man avatar. The spammers on our site were smarter. They had their logos as avatar. So you would see a colorful bunch of mini-icons that were being linked to spammy SEO sites, credit card offer sites etc. Some might not believe this to be a real thing, but this is happening. Below is one of the users’s profile that we reported to Livefyre almost a month ago.
No action has been taken so far. The spammer’s profile is still active or at least seems active (because it is visible). Now either this guy really loves every single comment he reads, or they are a spammer. We choose to believe the latter. Don’t believe us, go check out the site link mentioned in his profile, it is an adsense farm website.
Now you are thinking what we described above is bad. The worst part is that there is no notification of who liked what on your website. There is no way for you to know who is SPAMMING your site. The only way to find out is if a user reports it to you, or you accidentally go to one of your older posts and notice this.
When we found out that we were a victim of Like SPAM on numerous articles through out the site (and probably more that we didn’t know about), we knew that we had to switch right away. We felt helpless and out of control. One of the downside for not owning your content.
3. Social Conversation
Social conversation is a very nice option that Livefyre provides. You can choose to bring in your conversations from Twitter and Facebook back to the article. In theory this sounds great, however it has yet to be perfected. We saw a lot of irrelevant comments coming from Twitter. It is a good idea, it just needs more perfection and a better filter. We tried this feature on our site, and it did not work as great as it should have.
4. Moderation
When choosing to use Livefyre, we were under the impression that there was a two-way communication between Livefyre and your WordPress database. Which would mean that you can use WordPress moderation to approve, delete, or reply to comments. Well that was not TRUE. It seemed to work for us in the beginning, but recently it backfired. We updated the Livefyre plugin, and all of the sudden we had hundreds of comments pending moderation. Turned out all the comments we had moderated already were back (and marked as pending). Not sure what happened there. We contacted Livefyre support and got the response:
It sounds like you’re trying to moderate comments from within the WordPress Dashboard, which we do not support at the moment i.e changes within your dashboard won’t sync to Livefyre.
We are sure that it was working in the past. Don’t recall which version upgrade it was, but it seemed to mess things up. Talked with a good friend Mitch Canter (@studionashvegas), and he said it worked on his site too. He said it still works for him. So we are not entirely sure what went wrong, but nonetheless, we were left with hundreds of comments to go through and re-moderate.
We were told that in order for this to work, we have to moderate the comments using the Livefyre Moderation Panel. There were quite a few reasons why we absolutely disliked the livefyre administration panel from the start.
- No Bulk Moderation – If you want to delete multiple comments or mark them as spam, there is no way to do it easily. You have to do it individually. This remains to be the problem even in their NEW interface.
- Poor Individual Moderation – Simply deleting a comment requires 2 clicks. One is the decision to delete, then giving the reason to delete. This can get tedious. This remains to be the problem in their NEW interface.
- No control over comments – When we made the decision to switch, there was no option to edit user’s comment. This made it harder to enforce comment guidelines. For example someone leaves a great comment, but ends a signature link (which we do not allow). We either have to accept the comment as-is or delete it. This is fixed in their new interface. You can now edit comments.
- Replying is a PAIN – For a site like ours, we often find a need to reply to comments. There is no easy way to do this. You will see the comment in livefyre moderation panel. You have to open the article where you can see the comment as pending. Approve it, and then reply from there. This makes the Livefyre moderation panel pretty much useless. In WordPress backend moderation, there is a really cool feature called Reply and Approve. So you can reply to the comment without ever opening a new tab/window for the post.
5. Formatting Issues
We noticed that Livefyre was adding additional CSS as comments text for some users. It has to be some sort of user-end issue because it was only happening to a handful, but we value all of our users. Not sure if this has been fixed or not.
Another thing we noticed was that adding line breaks in your comment was a pain. So we would try to reply to someone and paste a link. However Livefyre’s auto-formatting would get rid of those. Sometimes even caused the links to be broken, so we would have to add extra spaces between the link and the text after that. The biggest problem was that when you are typing, you can use Shift + Enter, and it will show you that the line break was there. See the image below:
6. Not a Fair Compromise
When deciding to use Livefyre, we made some compromises. We gave up some opportunities to get other cool features that Livefyre was providing. But after using Livefyre for an extensive period and see the downsides, we felt that we did not make a fair compromise. Let us elaborate a little bit.
No Custom Styling
We were well aware of this when we switched to Livefyre. Anytime you use a third party script, you lose control over some of the styling. Currently our comment design matches the theme, and it looks beautiful. With Livefyre we did not have control over the looks as much. They do not have the white-labeling option available for the general public. However, we do believe that this service is provided for enterprise level customers.
No Lead Generation from Comments
We knew that once we switch to Livefyre, we would lose the lead generation opportunities from the comment form. We were doing comment redirects for first time users as well as giving the users an ability to subscribe to the newsletter from the comments. We talked with the Livefyre team about adding this. The bottom line was that there is no SIMPLE solution. The solution they proposed was that there is an API available which we can use to hook into their system and collect emails if the user checked the checkbox. There was no possible way to do comment redirect.
Our team’s thought process went a little like this:
In order for us to use this platform and get the features we want, we have to build it ourselves. Whereas there is a perfectly good commenting system in place which is much easier to work with. There are plenty of plugins already available. Well the decision was unanimous.
Third-Party Registration
Again, we were aware of this when we signed up to use Livefyre. We knew that we would have to require our users to sign up with a third-party service “Livefyre” to comment on our site. We believed that it was for the greater good because we will have meaningful conversation and other added features. All the WordCamps we attended, we always had a few users come up and complain about the commenting system. We got numerous user emails about it as well. Folks were having trouble commenting behind a firewall, some folks just felt their freedom to comment on WPBeginner was lost. Yes, a few months back Livefyre added guest commenting as a feature. But it still encourage users to signup with Livefyre afterwards. This again was not a fair compromise. We let our users down. A lot of them stopped commenting. Few would comment via email to let us know if we made a mistake etc. This was really disappointing for us. Some of these users said, they would happily register to comment, if they were signing up for WPBeginner. But we were requiring them to signup with a third party. We talked with Livefyre about this. They do have an enterprise API that will let you keep your own user base. All user data would be yours. However, the integration process didn’t seem as straight forward. Don’t recall the whole thing, but basically we would have to create a separate bbPress or BuddyPress database to hold all users. It just sounded too confusing. We chose not to go forward with that.
At the time, these compromises did not sound like a big deal compared to all the cool features that we were getting with Livefyre. However as time went by, we were able to see a clearer picture from our experience.
So What Now?
Well, we have switched back to the built-in WordPress commenting system. Few users emailed us asking what we are using to add the sign in with Twitter / Facebook option that you see below. We are using a combination of two plugins (by the same author @otto42) called Simple Twitter Connect and Simple Facebook Connect.
Update October 12, 2012: We got rid of both twitter login and FB login options mainly because we saw that people weren’t using it as much. Getting rid of them makes a significant impact on load times. We would rather have the site faster for the majority 
We have met and talked with numerous users who love using Livefyre. While it was not a right fit for our site, you are more than welcome to try it out for yourself. We would like to hear your thoughts on Livefyre. If you have an opinion, feel free to comment below.
Dirk
I like how your comments are styled, nice work!
Chetan Bhasin
Do they not have a spam policy on Livefyre, or is Akisment not working with Livefyre?
Well! I was testing Livefyre for a blog but then read this.
While I really like the social login and tagging feature on Livefyre, I can not risk my website to spam comments.
Dennis Marshall
I just decided to use LifeFyre. I have it on another blog and it seems to be pretty stable. I’ll give it 90 days.. Great Post though.. I’ll be sure to link to you guys..
Steve Wilson
I was gonna try Livefyre but then i read your post and ah… thanks buddy. I may have to stick with Disqus anyway. Oh what can you say about Disqus then?
Kathy Korman Frey
I basically did this as well. Felt sort of “doe in headlights” after this post.
Scott
What do you use for comment spam? akisment or what? thanks in advance…
Editorial Staff
We use Akismet. But we also have Sucuri which takes care of a lot of spam and malicious requests.
Admin
Danny Cruz
I have a question. I’ve had Livefyre on my guitar site for a few years now, but I was recently considering getting rid of it. In doing the research to decide whether to remove it or not, a search led me here. Great piece by the way.
My question is… When you delete Livefyre, do you lose all the comments made through the system? Or do they somehow go into your WP comment interface?
Editorial Staff
Livefyre comments are stored in your WordPress database, so they will still be there even when you disable Livefyre. The only thing that gets messed up is the conversation threading.
Admin
Linda S
Ah. now I see this. Thank you. I’ve made a long comment elsewhere that all free Livefyre “community comments” users will need to get off of this plugin now thanks to Adobe’s purchase.
Spencer Edgington
I like Disqus better …
Steve Wilson
Me too, i used for all my commenting because its pleasant to the eye and its very easy to track my comments with.
Jalil Asaria
You might want to have a look at Viafoura.
Full disclosure I work for them. But we actually displace livefyre for the ver reasons you pointed out.
PolarStar
Hi, Which plugins are you using to personalize the default comment section you have now? I mean the notify me of followup and subscribe to WPBeginner below? Also I like that people on this web use their photos. Is it only because they have Gravatar accounts?
Thanks, Polar
Editorial Staff
You can see how our comment system works here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/comments/
As for photos, yes it is through gravatar.
Admin
PolarStar
Thank your fore the reply!
himagain
Hi there!
Actually, I’ve left a couple of replies above.
But aside from getting confirmation here about dumping livefye, it helps to know that I was not alone.
BUT – it still for an unknown reason means I cannot comment on Sites running Livefyre – despite the fact that I am a member!
AND am going to look into knocking off this Theme, later!
Cheers!
Shashi
Good information about the advantages and disadvantages of Livefyre. Thanks for your time to mention all of them.
Chris
I didn’t like it either, the new Disqus is much better for that matter. And hey can you share how to make the social media share icons scroll down along with the post? Like you have it here?
Paul Shapiro
I got freaked out on my blog when I saw spammers liking comments on my posts, but I checked and the links are now “nofollow”. FYI.
Editorial Staff
Must have been a recent change that they made. However even with a nofollow link, sending traffic to spammers is not ideal. Your competitor can easily click like on all comments on your post, and they will get clicks. Would you like to send traffic to your competitors?
Admin
mre
Anyone know of an OPEN SOURCE commenting system?
Editorial Staff
Yup, the built-in commenting system.
Admin
MRE
My bad, I was commenting from my phone, not realizing this was a Wordpress blog about Wordpress. I meant a 3rd party, open-source code API comment system – like what Chromium is to Chrome or Linux is to Mac.
I want to use on a Scriptogram blog.
Mrinal
Just saved me. I was going to install it. Thank you.
MichaelADeBose
Great post. I’ll be putting up a blog soon and your post gave me some things to consider. It’s funny because I am experiencing an issue with Disqus where regardless of using Twitter sign-in or their interface and clicking that my comments on whichever site be sent to my Twitter feed, it has not been happening. For me that is important, first and foremost because it is a feature that is provided and so you would expect it to work. It’s not worked in over a week and despite interacting with some of Disqus staff, its still not working.
Getting ready to put up my own blog, between your post and my own experience, its clear that people are quite enthusiastic about comments and apparently for quite a few different reasons. It’s clear to me that I really need to weigh the options. From my sad Disqus experience, I am imminently aware that my commenter’s comments after they leave my site are as important to me as when they are on my site and I need a commenting system that both myself and my commenters can trust to do what its supposed to as its advertised. Then to your point I also need something that functions with the level of control I want, within a reasonable envelope of effort. I’m still looking for the answer, but you’ve helped me articulate for myself much more focused questions. Thanks.
Brendan
Just curious what your thoughts were on Livefyre’s StreamHub… it’s an enterprise system they offer. I’m concerned about the Do Follow on the likes you had mentioned along. However, I am able to modify comments from people who leave links in their comment. I will stick with Livefyre for at least a few months as our comments have increased 400%! Cheers.
Editorial Staff
StreamHub is a new technology they added after we switched away. So we cannot comment on those features.
Admin
Robert le Grange
I like this topic a lot, every time I catch a good read (this is one of best) I get sucked into the hunt for the perfect solution. It appears this one is solid.
One thing I would like to see happen is when a sign-in via twitter is completed that the page is jumped to the input box, otherwise lots of scrolling especially on this popular post.
What about Google sign-in integration?
Editorial Staff
We haven’t integrated Google, but we might consider in the future.
Admin
Elijah
Now you’ve just talked me out of installing Livefyre. Good read.
Arul
I was thinking about going with livefyre for the exact reasons.I simply love real time comments. Not creates a flaming argument like those and to me I thought the drawbacks are very little until I read this and now I using your own comments blueprint :). Slightly shameful in copying your entire commenting layout.
Tony Greene
Valid points for your dismissal of the awesomeness that is Livefyre. It’s not for everyone as you point out.
By the way, it looks like your twitter token is failing and the facebook button has failed to load properly.
Not a good look if you’re trying to keep the conversation going…
Editorial Staff
Yup, its a great product just not for everyone. It was in the list of to-do to get rid of both FB and Twitter connect options. Finally got rid of them.
Admin
Amber Hewitt
May I ask why you got rid of the social network sign-ins? I was thinking of adding them to my site.
Editorial Staff
Mainly because people weren’t using it as much. Almost everyone was using the name/email method. Very few were using social connect. Keeping social connect buttons on the page meant numerous additional HTTP requests and slower page load time. We decided to improve our page load time by a few seconds by getting rid of those options that people weren’t really using.
Carlos Mendoza
What is the system of comments that you are using right now!
Editorial Staff
It is default WordPress comments. You can see our blueprint link in the sidebar that will show you how we created our comments.
Admin
Carla
I am looking for a setup where discussions can happen in real time. I like Go To Meeting but I want it to be more of a commenting platform vs. a chat room platform. This is also going to be behind a membership setup and later transcripts will be added for others to read.
Does anyone have any ideas on this type of setup within Wordpress?
Editorial Staff
Behind a membership site, I think that Livefyre may be worth a try (specially if it is paid membership) because then you will weed out a lot of SPAM. Also consider looking at the P2 theme.
Admin
Reasonably Good
Hi, we’re having similar debates over commenting systems & have discounted using Disqus & livefyre due to lack of control/ownership of discussions.
Can i ask if you’ve looked at IntenseDebate? It’s main attraction to us is that comments are hosted on your own DB and seem to work in tandem with WP’s own comment system. In fact, according to Mashable, Automatic (WP’s owners) have bought IntenseDebate so it should sync in really well.
It appears to offer the FB & Twitter integration most people want and offers a growing list of 3rd party add ons too.
Would like to hear your take on it if you’ve given it the once over.
Editorial Staff
We used intense debate briefly on a client’s site. Even livefyre and Disqus hosts keeps a backup of your comments in your database (which makes it easy to switch back). Yes its true that Automattic bought Intense Debate. It seems though that they are more focused on JetPack comments now. We probably would not use another third party commenting system anytime soon.
Admin
Oliver Nielsen
I recently killed Jetpack on my site, as I hate the default on-status of the modules. No control with what’s activated and what isn’t, after updating Jetpack.
So I came here to read peoples experiences with Livefyre and Disqus. I’ve had terrible experiences with IntenseDebate a few years ago, so I’m very wary about trying those two alternatives.
Daniel Green
I’d been using Livefyre for a while now, but in the past week my spam comments sky rocketed to 70 odd in the space of a couple of days.. and not just a sentence or two but huge paragraphs of nonsense. Then I found out that for some reason the plugin had just stopped working all together. (I couldnt login OR post as guest). The fact is though, ever since using LF the only comments I ever received were Spam.
Previous to this I tried Comment_Luv, but this just turned out to be a blogging Circle-Jerk. People would only comment on other Com Luv enabled sites, just to get those special backlinks. This also rendered commenting on blogs without the plugin useless, or at least far less appealing.
So now I’m trying Disqus. For one thing, you get access to moderation through the WP-admin panel (via a secondary login), so you dont have to leave WP. The 2012 update also seems quite appealing. You have the option to sign in via the usual twitter, facebook and google, but you can also just leave your name email and website, similar to standard WP comments.
Editorial Staff
Yeah one of the reasons why we disable links on our site is because we don’t want users to comment on the site just for the sake of backlinks. If you want to say something and add value to the content, you will do so regardless of the link or not. In the future, we may work out some sort of loyalty based program, but that is not the priority at the moment.
Admin
Meghan Krane
I’m Meghan with Livefyre. Did you ever contact our customer support regarding your spam issues? Had you contacted us we would have looked into this immediately and worked to resolve the situation. We haven’t received any customer complaints from anyone in our network about paragraphs of spam in Livefyre comments, and we definitely want to investigate this matter further. We weren’t able to locate you anywhere in our database, would you mind sharing the URL of your site with us?
himagain
@meghan HAHAHA! You couldn’t find anyone here??
I’ve been going nutz trying to get ANYTHING to work on YOUR Site.
On several of my key contact Sites I can no longer post messages.
It has taken quite a lot of frustrated detective work to realise it is YOUR system causing my problems.
A really dumb message comes up as I try to post and it doesn’t matter whether I try to bypass Livefyre or not I get:
“It seems you’re attempting to post malformed content.”
I AM registered in your operation.
I cannot get ANY response from your Website Support at all.
Try to place a support message and it will bomb you out with a script error of its own:
“You haven’t selected a topic” – Ihad – twice!
Typed in a long supprt report and to add insult to injury -the above error simply alsowipes your message!
Email didn’t work either.
SO there is a good reason that you aren’t getting complaints – we can’t post them!
Amber Hewitt
I found this article while researching Wordpress commenting systems. I was going to pick Disqus or Livefyre, but after reading your article, I’ll try the built-in Wordpress commenting system with a few plugins. I looked up Otto42’s plugins to download and found one by Otto42 that solves a different problem I have!
Thank you!
Rourke Decker
Just a little tip: The verbiage under Add a Comment should read, “We’re glad you have chosen to leave a comment.”
I am giving serious thought to removing Livefyre from my own site (the main reason why I found your article). The problem is I would probably also lose the majority of my readership. They come to my site for the real-time interaction that Livefyre offers, which is lacking in the default Wordpress commenting system.
A wonderful compromise would be for the Livefyre plugin not to entirely hijack the commenting system, allowing people who don’t want to sign up for Livefyre (or who are behind corporate firewalls, which has been a big problem for my readers) to leave comments through the default interface. That would be the best of both worlds.
Editorial Staff
Fixed the verbiage.
As for real-time comments, you can see how P2 theme allows for real-time comment notifications. Require user to register on your own site, and go that route.
Admin
Rourke Decker
But it still requires refreshing the page to see the new comments, right? That’s why we went to Livefyre in the first place — to obviate the need for refreshing constantly.
Editorial Staff
Well, unfortunately no one has gone ahead to turn this technique into a plugin yet:
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/05/09/building-real-time-commenting-system/
Joey
This works very well: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-ajaxify-comments/
Andy Bailey
Excellent article, I really enjoyed reading this and the points you made about no custom styling and the disadvantages of 3rd party registration issues were interesting.
And its an interesting thing to remove the URL field to combat spam, do you find that your legitimate comments have decreased because of this?
I made the commentluv plugin and I think I can integrate a sort of halfway measure in to the premium version if removing the URL field is working for you… How about only enabling it if a user has made a certain amount of approved comments?
I could set the plugin to recognise the email address and if it was a user who had left the right amount of comments, it could reveal the URL field.
What do you think? I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts…
Editorial Staff
Andy, I don’t think legitimate comments went down because of no URL field. We have seen an increase in comments since taking out Livefyre. A lot of the users who stopped commenting (because of registration) are now back. We did see a SIGNIFICANT increase in SPAM comments, but Akismet is doing a really good job at filtering those.
I’m looking at it from this perspective. If you were going to comment to add value, you will comment regardless of the link. Worried about identity? Your gravatar is there, people can still identify you. We don’t want comments like “Great article”. Often folks leave those type of comments because they are commenting for incentive (backlink).
Your suggestion of the loyalty reward is a good idea. I’ve been thinking of ways to add some sort of reward system in WPBeginner (still in early thought phase). Still not sure how I want us to approach that. I think your idea is very solid, and a lot of folks can benefit from it.
One thing I want to do though is NOT add a link input field for everyone. It should only appear to those with the right email. For example, once a user hits an XXX amount of comments, an automated email gets sent out. The user can choose to display their Twitter. After they hit XXX, then we let them have their website URL. I hope I’m making sense. Also it would be cool to detect user’s email and show up badges next to their name.
Admin
himagain
Just butting in here: ME TOO!
I’d be interested in your proposal there -and I don’t even know the commentluv package… yet.
Paul
This is very interesting, I currently use Disqus on my site and since their recent upgrade, which I believe has added a lot of features which livefyre has. Since the upgrade I’ve not really like the experience you get with it and thinking of moving back to the Wordpress comments.
Since reading this article it has made up my mind to remove Disqus and go back to using the Wordpress comment system and get control back.
Joey
Interesting. Let’s see how and when Livefyre handles these issues.
I’m unable to integrate FB and twitter connect the exact same way you guys have. Can you explain how that was done?
Also, any chance of an advanced article on making themes with genesis?
Editorial Staff
Not sure what you mean by not able to integrate it like how we have. Are you talking about styling? If so, then we simply styled the div those two buttons are wrapped. That is just CSS. To add that separator, you may have to edit your comment form. Our theme is a custom Genesis Child theme and we had to do that. There are no immediate plans of showing “how-to” build a theme. Because there are so many levels of users. Not sure at what point we start teaching WordPress theme development vs. HTML / CSS.
Admin
Emily
That sounds like a pain. I wasn’t around during the Livefyre comments but compared to the screenshots, the new comments also fit the site a lot better. I almost went for them just for the connect with Twitter and Facebook features, but because you posted links to completely separate plugins for that, I’m not even going to try Livefyre and instead go straight for the two other plugins, which look great.
Andreas
Do you know the “Social” plugin by Mailchimp? I think it improves the commenting system a lot and keeps all the comments “inhouse”.
Editorial Staff
Yes we are aware of that. Just didn’t like the UI.
Admin
Faris
Why don’t you guys use the Official Facebook for Wordpress plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook/
Editorial Staff
First because it JUST came out. Second, because it doesn’t have the Facebook Connect for default comments. It has Facebook Comments which is what we don’t want.
Admin
Gautam Doddamani
and thirdly it creates a conflict with the fb open graph meta tags…wpbeginner is already using it in his header files…if we activate that plugin graph protocols may become broken
Albert Albs
Thanks for the update. Yes seen some spamming over the comment author profiles with LiveFyre system. Your decision is correct. I would suggest adding Comment Author URL form with No-Follow attribute to encourage decent commentators. And use Akismat spam plugin. That is it. 80% Problem solved.
Also as I said earlier, I’m not getting any comment notification, even after selecting the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” option.
Also check out: Today Jetpack shipped Comment system for self-hosted WordPress blogs. I will mention you in the Google+ Post.
Gautam Doddamani
albert, website field is already external nofollow by default in wordpress…as wpbeginner stated in one of the comments..dey r using it to further help reduce spammers.
and about the notification problem have you ticked the box and then added your comment? if so u should be getting notificiations!!
i dont use jetpack..but wil try it today..thanx for the update..jetpack is growing a lot these days..apart from ATD and sharedaddy implementation i believe all other plugins are not so useful in it.
Albert Albs
Hi Gautam, Thanks for the inputs regarding Comment Author URL field.
About Notification problem: Yes. I clicked that check box (“Notify me of followup comments via email”). And your reply to my comment also did not come as a notification.
I manually checked this post for any reply and commenting now.
B/w All the time I logined using my Twitter account.
Keith Davis
Sorry for second comment guys – only just noticed that you are running on Genesis.
Nice one boys.
What about a post on why you went over to Genesis… or did I miss that one?
Editorial Staff
That will be coming soon
Admin
Gautam Doddamani
yes syed i have a lot of confusion about geneis and thesis…dont know which framework is the best…and the pros and cons of each one of em. really want your opinion on these guys..wil be waiting for ur post
Jenna Langer
Hey there, Jenna from Livefyre here. Syed, we’ve spoken about this in person, and on the phone, and of course we’re sad to see you go. A lot of the issues you were having are covered in our new Admin Dashboard (i.e. bulk actions, edit comments) and others will be fixed in the new Livefyre Comments 3 (i.e. formatting of comments, like spam, easier custom styling which is currently supported via CSS).
We’re taking all your feedback to continue to add more features to our platform, and thanks for taking the time to share it with us.
Editorial Staff
Hey Jenna, I was sad to switch away as well. I had a great time hanging out with the Livefyre crew in person. Had a pleasure working with you guys on your blog redesign. Nothing about this decision was personal. David, Amanda, Muhammad, and I discussed this thoroughly. I know that Livefyre is still a very young platform. I know you guys are working hard every day into improving the platform and making users happy. I probably would have never authorized this write up if the users didn’t ask for it. Because I had already talked to you about this via email, over the phone, and in person at BWENY. Upon the redesign, we got a lot of emails, FB messages, twitter DMs regarding the new features we added. Some users wanted to know why we switched away from Livefyre. We decided to do the article once we saw a comment on our original Livefyre article (where the user asked, why are you not using it anymore). I felt that we cannot ignore that comment. It was almost impossible to explain everything to detail in one comment. This was the reason why we did this post.
Like I said over our phone call and our in-person meeting, I am always happy to review and give feedback to improve a product (specially for friends).
Admin
Brad Dalton
I installed the Livefyre plugin and it duplicated over 1000 spam comments into approved spam comments that took me days to remove without removing the entire comments from my site.
I eventually worked out a way to remove them using a database request but it was a giant mess.
That was 6 months ago and they still haven’t come up with a fix.
Keith Davis
Hi Guys
I’ve been wondering about using Livefyre so this post has come just right for me.
Appreciate you taking the time to put the various points together and a great case you’ve made for not using LF.
Might try the facebook and twitter connect plugins – nice to integrate the social media side in to the comments.
John Bolyard
I tried LIvefyre on a few clients websites but we got a lot of feedback about the third party registration.
Good article – I was considering trying Livefyre again but I don’t think it would be worth it.
Chris Rouse
First time commenting here, but I’ve been reading for a few months. All I can say is “Thank you for abandoning Livefyre.” Another blog I read recently switched from Disqus and I haven’t been able to comment since then. This post is literally the first time I knew that I had to make a Livefyre account to leave a comment on that blog. I don’t see the point of creating another account to leave an occasional comment when Disqus and Wordpress both allow logging in with my Twitter account.
Bob R
Can I ask you a question? Why did you strip off the website field in the commenting form? Just noticed I cannot click on any of your reader’s name to see what they were up to…
Editorial Staff
As for removing the website field, the main reason is SPAM. All comment links are external nofollow. However, this doesn’t really prevent SPAM. By getting rid of the website field altogether, it gives spammers no reason to comment on our site. They can still put links in the content of their comment, but Akismet is pretty good at detecting that.
Now users should comment only if they wish to add value to the article. We do understand that this sort of takes away from user’s web identity. We are still trying to figure out how to rectify that situation. Some suggestions are adding a twitter field, so usernames link to the twitter profile. But no decision has been made yet.
Admin
Gautam Doddamani
personally i think livefyre is really not even worth to try..hehe you should definitely suggest this article to the guys at the THENEXTWEB…dey r using d same commenting platform.
one more question i wanted to ask you guys was..why did u remove the Website field in the comment section?? is it because when someone specifies his/her own site we are passing a dofollow link?
and another thing is i believe otto’s facebook and twitter connect adds a lot of plugin files slowing down the blog load time…is it still worth it?
also do you think DISQUS is a good commenting platform? they have recently released the DISQUS 2012 version and i am currently using it…and it reduces a lot of plugins. i really want your opinions on this!
Thanks in advance
Editorial Staff
Gautam, from what I have heard TNW has their own user database. So when you register there, it is different from your Livefyre account. They have also integrated Livefyre with reward based system.
As for removing the website field, the main reason is SPAM. All comment links are external nofollow. However, this doesn’t really prevent SPAM. By getting rid of the website field altogether, it gives spammers no reason to comment on our site. They can still put links in the content of their comment, but Akismet is pretty good at detecting that.
I don’t think Otto would add anything that is not necessary into the plugin. SFC and STC does have a lot of options. But he only loads those if you activate all. For us, we are only using like one feature from each of his plugins. The load time slowdown is mostly because it reaches out to the FB and Twitter API. If you have stats to prove otherwise, we would be happy to look at those.
Never tried Disqus. One lesson we learned with this was to keep our comments in-house if we want full control.
Admin
Gautam Doddamani
wao…seriously dats a very gud logic…spammers are always looking for a way to give exposure to their sites through any and all means, and now as there is no website field, only genuine commenters will spend their time commenting!
yes as for otto’s plugin..i have personally used it! yea i know, only if we activate a specific module, those particular files will be loaded..but don’t you think signing in to facebook is rather time consuming? and not to mention users already have to bypass a third party app (not yours) to actually start commenting.
i personally prefer the seo facebook comment plugin…fb users can directly comment if they are already signed into their facebook account or are visiting your post from a facebook url …they have no need to sign in…also this system is being used by techcrunch.
disqus is really worth it…i am speaking this from experience…my spam has reduced a lot and i am honestly using only one single plugin for comments. no need for akismet (in-built spam system), no need for subscribe to comments plugin or mailchimp (in-built subscribe via email/rss system), social sharing is fully supported, seo is completely organic, if there are links present in the comment dey directly goto pending or spam folder, commenters r recognized thru there unique disqus profiles and not der websites, liking (upvoting) a comment doesnt show which user upvoted a comment (unlike livefyre), and lot many other features.
Bob R
I think you’ve done the right thing. You are not the ones that decided the WP commenting system is the safest and the best option. I couldn’t comment on WP Beginner from work as we are behind some firewall that made Livefyre “dead” – I could put nothing in the comment box.
New design of wpbeginner looks great. Is this a Genesis child theme? eleven40 modified?
Editorial Staff
Yes we are glad to have you back commenting here. WPBeginner’s design is NOT a child theme of eleven40. It is a custom child theme of Genesis though
Admin
Rev. Voodoo
I read your site all the time in my google reader. But I’d given up coming to the site. I couldn’t comment on Livefyre … I’m stuck using IE at work, and it just plain wouldn’t work! I’m glad you posted this article, or I never would have known I could come and leave comments again!
Editorial Staff
Thanks for dropping by. Yes, we did notice a drop in comments from a lot of regular users like yourself.
Admin
Tony Greene
I found a plugin that merges with the Livefyre comments to keep lead generation going. However, the comment redirect plugin from Yoast failed to do this.
Shikeb Ali
It is funny that I received an email from Disqus that they are starting real-time comments and new voting features. I was really looking into it, almost about to implement it on my blog.
But now, I think will give it a second thought. ‘Cause I hate spammers too and I don’t want to spend my half day deleting spam comments.
Gautam Doddamani
shikeb disqus hav really improved their overall spam system..you dont even need aksimet now..all the comments whether they are coming from a registered or an unregistered user shud go through your moderation before it becomes approved.
and further they have made smart improvements wherein if you put a link in your comment it automatically goes into the spam folder or becomes pending until you manually approve it.
Ankur
I personally like default wordpress comment system. its simple and straight forward.
Acc to my experience, newbie are more comfortable with simple commenting system whereas people who comment more like disqus etc. Moreover, default comment system improves site loading time.
Gautam Doddamani
i totally agree with you ankur…no external javascripts, no iframes, etc will definitely increase the site load and also if we get a lot of comments we can go one step further and cache all the gravatars which will make loading a page superfast
Zhen
Having the same problem about the syncing thing and even new comments would take hours before showing up in WP dashboard. Would really hope Livefyre to work those problems out in their upcoming version.
Paul H
I’ve played with different comment systems. I liked the Facebook comments until I remembered Facebook is blocked or difficult to access in a handful of countries. You wouldn’t notice comments from China or Vietnam dropping off – but going to those countries and not being able to read parts of your own site is frustrating.
I now prefer commenting where everything works within Wordpress. Nothing worse than part of a page not loading – unless it’s the whole page not loading.
Tony Greene
What kind of value would you see coming from the commentary of countries like China or Vietnam?
Editorial Staff
WOW. So are you suggesting that the voices and opinions of people living in China and Vietnam are not important?
Admin
Ahmad Awais
Well, I was waiting for this post, buh I shifted myself and found the original commenting system way better to customize and get subscribers.
Working with the Twitter Connect and Fb Connect , are you going to write about it or not?
Editorial Staff
Yes there might be an article on that. The process is very simple. Its merely putting in the information in the two plugins that we mentioned. Then activating the specific feature.
Admin
Shad
Should change this article to “6 Reasons Why We Switched Away from Livefyre” and fix the numbering.
Editorial Staff
Ah what a huge oversight. Fixed.
Admin
Russ Henneberry
Hey guys,
I have found LiveFyre to be very frustrating when I leave a comment. I have thrown up my hands a number of times trying to leave comments on sites that use the plug-in.
I think you made the right choice.
Russ
Lee Schuenemeyer
Won’t forcing Facebook comments fix most of these errors?
Editorial Staff
Not exactly. We will be limited to a specific platform. We would require our users to once again signup with a third party. We won’t be able to do any of the lead generation. We won’t be able to customize the look.
Admin