I’m always tinkering with this site, finding ways to improve it, add functionality or speed it up etc. Recently I got bored with the default WordPress comment system so I started checking around for alternatives. I tried virtually every possible option known to man and can happily say I have settled on Disqus to handle my post comments.

Even though there really was nothing wrong with the default comment system that comes with WordPress, I wanted more. There are many key features of Disqus that I really like so I will put up a short top 10 list of the features that hooked me, remember this is what I find as my favorite features and is my no means a complete list of functionality.

1. Muitiple login options – You can select to log in using your Disqus username, your facebook account, Twitter name or OpenID or comment as a guest.
2. Logging in once, logs you in everywhere – Once you log into any site that uses Disqus you are logged into the comment system of any site that uses Disqus, this makes browsing very handy and really encourages more commenting for those who use it.
3. Moderate by email – This is a big one for me, when someone comments on one of your blogs you are notified by email and from that email you can reply with approve, delete or reply with text that will be posted as your reply to that comment, I find this very handy, especially if you have multiple sites that you moderate.
4. Commenter Profile – Hovering over a commenter’s avatar brings up a list showing their information such as their blog link, Twitter account, Facebook link etc and clicking on “expand” opens up a pop up showing sites they are active on, how many times they have commented using Disqus, what sites they are a moderator on etc.
5. Easy threaded replies – Commenter’s can easily reply to other comments in a threaded layout that makes sense.
6. Easy installation – Installation was a snap, simply sign up at Disqus.com, download the plugin, install it and do a few simple configuration steps and your done, no template editing, hacking or tweaking to get it to work.
7. Awesome comment moderation options – The back end comment moderation options are great, you can moderate from with your WordPress admin section, on the Disqus website or by email. This make is very handy to keep tabs on things, especially if you moderate more than one site.
8. Great social networking integration – The ability for commenter’s to log in through Twitter and Facebook makes it very easy for them to share your content as well as their comments on their profiles/feeds.
9. Optional widgets available – If you wish, you can easily create widgets to put on your site that list your top posts, top commentators etc, just generate the code from your admin section and put wherever you want to display these items.
10. Highly customizable – Disqus comes with multiple “theme” options and also allows you to use completely custom CSS to stlye it any way you could imagine. I haven’t done much with it yet other than add a different background color to my own comments but the options are endless to what you could do.

So there is the short of it, if you want to read more and check it out for yourself head over to Disqus.com and check it out.