How to Add Disqus Comment System in WordPress (Easy Method)

Adding the Disqus comment system is a great way to overcome the limitations of the default WordPress comment system.

Here’s why: managing comments on a WordPress site can quickly become overwhelming, especially with spam clogging up your dashboard. While the default system works, it lacks advanced moderation tools and interactive features that promote meaningful engagement.

Disqus is one of the most popular comment platforms, offering a sleek interface, threaded discussions, and social media login options.

And in this guide, we will show you an easy way to add Disqus to your WordPress site.

Should You Use Disqus With WordPress?

Disqus is one of the most popular third-party comment systems available for WordPress users. Apart from its user-friendliness and customization options, it also offers a third-party hosting platform for storing and managing comments.

Since Disqus handles comments on a separate server from your WordPress hosting, using it can help your website’s overall performance. That’s why many WordPress users use it as an alternative to the default WordPress comment system.

That said, Disqus is not the best comment system we’ve tried. While it helped with our website performance, we were not fans of its moderation capabilities, and it added affiliate links to our content without our permission.

After disabling Disqus, we saw our comment engagement rate increase significantly. You can read more about our experience in our Disqus review.

Of course, whether you choose to use Disqus or other platforms is up to you. But if you are looking for Disqus alternatives, then we have some recommendations.

What WordPress Comment System Should You Use Instead of Disqus?

After trying out different comment plugins, we have found Thrive Comments to be the best Disqus alternative.

Thrive Comments is an all-in-one comment plugin with an easy-to-use interface that is perfect for blogging beginners and experts alike. For more details, you can see our review of the Thrive Themes suite, which contains a section specifically about Thrive Comments.

Besides comment management and moderation features, you can use Thrive Comments to boost user engagement with post-comment actions. After the user leaves a comment, you can redirect them to related posts or a custom thank you message with a free gift.

Furthermore, you can add likes and dislikes as well as upvotes and downvotes to encourage audience interaction in your comment section. Plus, you can send commenters notifications when their comment gets replies.

If Thrive Comments doesn’t suit your needs, then you can also check out our full list of the best WordPress plugins to improve comments.

If you are still interested in using Disqus, don’t worry. We will walk you through how to add the Disqus comment system plugin. You can use the quick links to skip to different sections:

Let’s jump right in!

Step 1: Create a Disqus Account

The first step to installing Disqus comments in WordPress is to create a Disqus account. To do this, you need to go to the Disqus website (disqus.com) and sign up.

Once you’ve done that, you should see the page below. Just go ahead and click ‘I want to install Disqus on my site.’

On the next page, you will have to add the details for your new Disqus site, which is where you will manage all your Disqus comments. These include Site Owner, Website Name, and Category.

In the ‘Website Name’ field, you can insert your desired Disqus site subdomain. After that, simply click ‘Create Site.’

You will now arrive at the Disqus site dashboard.

At this point, you will need to pick one of the Disqus plans to be able to set up the comment system in WordPress. If you are not sure which one to use yet, then you can get started with the free Basic plan.

You will now be asked to choose a platform.

Just select ‘WordPress’ to continue.

You will now see the WordPress installation page.

Here, you’ll want to take note of the ‘Installation Token’ field, which will be useful for the setup later.

You can leave this tab open while you continue with the next steps.

Step 2: Install the Disqus Comment System Plugin

Now, you can open your WordPress dashboard to install the Disqus Comment System plugin. For step-by-step instructions, you’ll want to check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, let’s go to the Disqus menu from your WordPress dashboard. Then, under ‘Do you have a Disqus account?’ simply click ‘Yes.’

You will now see the question, ‘Do you have a site registered on Disqus you want to use?’

Go ahead and select ‘Yes.’

At this point, you will see some WordPress installation instructions and a sync token to copy.

Go ahead and click the ‘Copy’ button here.

Let’s now return to the Disqus website.

Here, you’ll need to paste the token you’ve just copied from the WordPress dashboard in the appropriate field.

Then, you can hit the ‘Install [Disqus site name] on your site’ button and click ‘Configure’ at the bottom.

And that’s it!

If you refresh the Disqus menu in your WordPress dashboard, you should now see an interface similar to this:

Now, let’s see if Disqus has been successfully enabled in your comment section.

Simply open a WordPress blog post on the front end and scroll down to the comments. Here’s what it should look like if the installation was done correctly:

Step 3: Import and Export Older WordPress Comments into Disqus

Once you’ve installed the Disqus commenting system, it will take over the native WordPress comments on your site. In other words, the existing comments stored on your WordPress website will not be visible to users.

To fix this, you will have to import any existing comments into the Disqus commenting system. In the WordPress admin area, go to the Disqus plugin’s settings page, scroll down, and navigate to the ‘Syncing’ tab.

Then, let’s scroll down and select ‘Import Comments.’

You will see which of your comments have been successfully imported in the table at the bottom.

One thing to note is that if you have custom post types, then you may notice that your older comments are not appearing after switching to Disqus. To resolve this, you will need to deactivate Disqus on custom post types.

For hands-on guidance, you can check out our article on how to disable Disqus on custom post types.

How to Moderate and Configure Disqus Comments

If you want to moderate comments using Disqus, you can click the ‘Moderate’ button on the Disqus plugin page.

This will bring you to the moderation page on the Disqus website.

If you’re familiar with the WordPress comments page, then navigating the Disqus one won’t be a problem. Here, you can approve, delete, or mark comments as spam.

For tips and tricks on WordPress comment moderation, you can check out the following articles:

• Beginner’s Guide on How to Moderate Comments in WordPress
• How to Allow Blog Users to Moderate Comments in WordPress
• How to Allow Users to Edit Their Comments in WordPress

How to Troubleshoot Disqus Comment Display Issue

On some WordPress themes, the Disqus comment area may appear wider than the rest of the post area. To fix this, you will need to add some custom CSS to your theme or child theme’s stylesheet.

While you can add custom CSS through the theme file editor, we don’t recommend it. Tracking changes becomes tricky, making it unclear which code is from the theme and which is custom.

Instead, we suggest using WPCode, which is the easiest code snippets plugin. It lets you safely add and manage custom code on your WordPress site. If the code doesn’t work, then you can easily remove the snippet within the plugin.

The code you will need to add is below:

#disqus_thread {
	margin: 0 auto;
	max-width: 650px;
}

This CSS sets the comment area’s max-width to 650px and centers it on the screen. Your theme may have a different width, so you will have to adjust it to meet your needs.

For a step-by-step tutorial, you can read our guide on how to easily add custom CSS to your WordPress site.

Here’s what it should look like on WPCode:

Learn More Ways to Manage Your WordPress Comments

Using Disqus is just one way to manage your WordPress comments. Here are more guides you can check out to improve your comment engagement:

• How to Allow Users to Report Inappropriate Comments in WordPress
• How to Install and Setup Facebook Comments in WordPress
• How to Paginate Comments in WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Add Videos and More in WordPress Comments with oEmbed
• How to Allow Users to Edit Their Comments in WordPress
• How to Style the WordPress Comment Form (Ultimate Guide)
• How to Send a Thank You Email to Blog Commenters in WordPress

We hope this article has helped you learn how to add the Disqus comment system in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to feature or bury comments in WordPress and our expert picks for the best plugins to improve WordPress comments.

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