Installed Disqus last week.
disqus.com
It's a javascript snippet. Place on your website, then people can leave comments. The comments are saved in their server. You pretty don't have to manage it. All you have to do is to place the javascript code on each page. Nice.
Here's some of the pages that's got comment already.
XahLee.org has been static html for 10 years. But with comment, my experience is that it may increase traffic 10 fold.
A Little History on Website Comments and Technology
Comment started in late 1990s. By early 2000s, blog became popular, and comment follows. Many mainstream news websites such as CNN, Time mag, started to let users add comments in all their articles. Though, it is considered experimental. Some organization embraced it, some still take a watch and see stance. Some show comments on the same page, while others show comments in a separate page, still others, make a selected few comments on the article page.
By now, pretty much all websites has comments.
I never wanted comments. Because, when you look at the comments,
some perhaps 98% of it is useless drivel, factually incorrect info, or
uninformed opinion. However, from business point of view, it seems
that people like it. People want to be able to input their
opinions. For example, if you read a article and thought it's biased
bullshit, you probably want to say it. Also, comments increase your
site traffic significantly, perhaps 10 fold or 100 fold. Because, when
people leave comment, others may not agree and left a reply. So, users
came back to the site, sometimes to argue, sometimes to see what
others say, or otherwise just to keep informed on any
developments. When good comments hits the article, the original
author make correct his article, or add input from useful comments,
and that almost always happens when there are a lot comments, because
one person or one organization can hardly make write article that's
100% perfect, correct, or non-biased.
But still, i didn't see much of the positive points. Mostly what i
see is the 99% drivel. The content on XahLee.org is mostly academic
articles and tutorials on math and programing. I kinda considered it
more like writing a book. And it is a pure hobby, a love of sorts.
And i am kinda haughty. My thoughts were, if i let reader comment, then
wouldn't it rather distract my readers? Because, a page with very
informative article, or academic writing, or professional advice on
programing, now is infested with a whole bunch of random, pot-shot,
thoughts.
In the beginning, comment system is built into the website. To have
comment, basically you write code in CGI, PHP, Perl, as part of
your website system. Then in mid 2000s, web
content
management system (CMS) became popular. So, instead of coding your
own, you simply add a module. But in late 2000s, a even newer tech,
the web 2.0, became popular. It's all javascript based. Instead of
using a particular CMS and modules, there are a lot javascript
“widget” based modules that you can just plug in into your
website.
In early 2010, i started to monetize my website. And thought about
adding comments. But the problem was that i haven't looked into how i
can do that. So, in the beginning i simply linked each article to a
blogger mirror, so that those who want to comment can post there. But
this is not a good solution, because it's a extra link, comments
doesn't show in the same domain. This is not what people want.
Alternative solution is to switch my entire site of 4k static html
pages into php, or a CMS system such as WordPress. I've been wanting
to look into WordPres but never got around to it. But then i
discovered Disqus, and it works really well.
