I started with Blogger many years ago. It worked well for a while and then it didn't. I forget why but I wrote a tool to migrate from Blogger to BlogEngine.net.
BlogEngine.net was good for a while, but I never loved the commenting system. I switched to Disqus and I wrote a tool for that as well.
Then Disqus decided to monetize more aggressively than I liked, and I moved on to Facebook comments. Having used these for a while I have come to the conclusion that most people just hate Facebook comments. They're convenient but not many people use them. Also, pages just load much faster without all the Facebook JavaScript. So today I'm switching to home grown manually moderated comments. Just about every comment ever left on this blog has made it from Blogger to BlogEngine.net to Disqus and finally the new system, even the nasty ones. I'll moderate to cut out spam but never dissent. Enjoy!
(Published to the Fediverse as: Commentary #marketing #comments #blogger #disqus #facebook The evolution of comments on ITHCWY. From Blogger, BlogEngine.net, Disqus, Facebook and then finally I give up and write and moderate my own system. )
I've restored all the comments that vanished after I removed Disqus last weekend. This is after a considerable effort to get everything out of BlogML and into WXR a couple of years ago. At some point I'll just have to give up and decide it's faster to write my own blogging and commenting system but for now Facebook Comments are enabled for all posts.
I just discovered that Disqus started running adverts on my blog without permission. It's probably been going on for a little while and I should have paid more attention, sorry.
By 'without permission' I mean that I'm sure I clicked though and didn't read a terms of service document that said they could do what the fuck they like to my site. And reading other accounts of this issue I'm sure I filed without reading the email they sent out that mentioned this new 'feature' in passing. So in a legal sense they probably had all the permission they needed. In a moral sense they're switch-and-bait scum of the highest order.
They should have made this feature opt-in and then sent out an email explaining it in detail. Some sites don't want to run ads. You could have non-commercial Creative Commons content on a site that is suddenly a commercial concern.
It's a free service and at some point they need to make money, fine. If this had been presented as an option I might have considered it. If they wanted to charge for the service I'd probably have paid for it.
Instead I've disabled Disqus and hastily hacked in Facebook Comments which should be coming online as I write this post.
A side effect of this is that all the existing comments are currently unavailable. I have an archive and will try to get them resurrected soon.
(Since writing this post I have also ditched Facebook comments and now have a fully home grown solution that I moderate by hand.)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Disqust #marketing #disqus #comments #facebook Disqus sneak in ads and so I rip out Discuss in favor of Facebook Comments and eventually my own system. )
I’ve just moved ITHCWY comments over to Disqus. BlogEngine.NET now supports Disqus out of the box, but doesn’t export comments to anything that Disqus is willing to eat. I’ve knocked up a quick converter that takes a full BlogML export from BlogEngine.NET (and at least in theory any other source of BlogML) and converts the comments to WXR. You can import the WXR file under the Generic option in Disqus.
The tool is a Windows console application that takes two parameters, the BlogML import file and the WXR output, i.e.:
BlogMLtoDisqus.exe C:\BlogML.xml C:\ForDisqus.wxr
It isn’t fancy and there is no error checking so it will either work or die horribly. If the latter, leave a comment and I’ll try to fix it for you.
Download BlogMLtoDisqus.exe. You’ll need to install .NET 4.0 as well if you don’t already have it.
Updated 2011-04-22: Added an optional third parameter that specifies the XML namespace for BlogML in case you need to override the default.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Convert BlogML comments to WXR for Disqus #code #blogengine.net #c# #.net #blogml #wxr #disqus A command line tool to convert BlogML comments to WXR (i.e. for Disqus). )
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