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Ask YC: Best hosted comment system?

I need a hosted comment system that supports the following: 1. Import my existing comments from Wordpress. 2. Take care of all the user/spam issues. 3. Be able to fetch the comment list and count via an API. 4. Add some kind of other value (user pages, threading, etc.) I want to like Disqus. Really I do. I like their philosophy, and their site is nice to use. They seem to do it all so very right. And yet, I find it hard to trust their service when the Wordpress plugin is so badly broken out of the box. (Parse errors that make me wonder how anyone's actually using it with a stock PHP install, not to mention very broken markup.) Tangler, IntenseDebate and SezWho have also been recommended. I've also contemplated some kind of automated system that would let you choose your favorite social media site (HN, Reddit, Digg, etc.), and then auto-post and just get feedback there. Anyone with experience with any of these care to share? (Or, anyone from Disqus wanna fix the broken?)

danielha 18y ago
I did see all 3 tweets you sent about this, but I didn't get a chance to respond yet. >> Parse errors that make me wonder how anyone's actually using it with a stock PHP install There was one line that would result in a parse error if your server does not have shorthand support enabled. Syntactically correct, but compatibility oversight. It was fixed a while ago and will be included in the next release tonight. >> not to mention very broken markup. What's broken about the markup?
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  Ah, ok, fixing the <? was pretty easy, then. Thanks for the fast response. My complaints about the markup: 1. img tags without alt, which is invalid HTML, and an accessibility problem. Further, some of these are "fake" links, in that they have inline styles to make them appear like links, and inline onclick actions, but are not wrapped in anchors, or given tabindex=0 to make them focusable. You actually can't activate them without using a mouse. 2. css included in the <body>, which causes an unsightly reflow, and is not valid html or xhtml. Wordpress provides an event that triggers at the closing </head> tag, I believe. 3. despite the included css, and an id on almost everything, several elements have inline style attributes. Why is this necessary? 4. An empty inline script tag? What's that all about? Is it really necessary to require javascript to even view comments properly? It seems like there's a lot of anchors with href="#" that could have reasonable fallback URLs given the data in $dsq_response. Heck, even the form could post to a disqus.com url, so you could comment without JS. Also, like I said, I do really like where you guys are coming from. Seems like you've got the right idea.

danielha 18y ago

I did see all 3 tweets you sent about this, but I didn't get a chance to respond yet. >> Parse errors that make me wonder how anyone's actually using it with a stock PHP install There was one line that would result in a parse error if your server does not have shorthand support enabled. Syntactically correct, but compatibility oversight. It was fixed a while ago and will be included in the next release tonight. >> not to mention very broken markup. What's broken about the markup?

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
Ah, ok, fixing the <? was pretty easy, then. Thanks for the fast response. My complaints about the markup: 1. img tags without alt, which is invalid HTML, and an accessibility problem. Further, some of these are "fake" links, in that they have inline styles to make them appear like links, and inline onclick actions, but are not wrapped in anchors, or given tabindex=0 to make them focusable. You actually can't activate them without using a mouse. 2. css included in the <body>, which causes an unsightly reflow, and is not valid html or xhtml. Wordpress provides an event that triggers at the closing </head> tag, I believe. 3. despite the included css, and an id on almost everything, several elements have inline style attributes. Why is this necessary? 4. An empty inline script tag? What's that all about? Is it really necessary to require javascript to even view comments properly? It seems like there's a lot of anchors with href="#" that could have reasonable fallback URLs given the data in $dsq_response. Heck, even the form could post to a disqus.com url, so you could comment without JS. Also, like I said, I do really like where you guys are coming from. Seems like you've got the right idea.