See Here: Comment Calamity? No. Not anymore.

Why stop at a new theme when you can also make your comments section more lively?

I have now installed the IntenseDebate plugin and am ready to intensely debate things… or, you know, talk. But what you want to know is what in the blue blazes is this IntenseDebate thingum? Well, you could click the link, yeah? You could leave a comment and see for yourself, right? And maybe you would, if only I’d stop frakkin around and give you something to work with. Ahem. I know. OK then. Check it. Here is their official press release:

IntenseDebate provides many new features meant to inspire discussion and easily follow the conversation. In order to better organize the discussion, we’ve implemented comment threading which allows users to directly reply to one another. Users also have an identity that spans across all blogs powered by IntenseDebate. Along with this is a reputation value, based on the quantity and quality of the comments users make, meant to give an overview of a user’s commenting history. Quality is determined by the users through comment voting, which also serves to move the best comments to the top. With all of our comment systems being interconnected, we make it easy to track users and their activities across all blogs using our system by providing email and rss notifications. In short, IntenseDebate has completely transformed the commenting experience. IntenseDebate. Comments Rediscovered.

That’s fairly straightforward. And so was the process of installing the plugin and signing up. The only snag was in the importation of comments. On my first try there were a few comments lost (not really lost, but they failed to show up on the blog even as they were still found backstage—where all the magic happens!). I reset the plugin with the conveniently located button and re-imported my comments. This time they were there. So, a few minutes of WTF? followed by the FTW! moment.