Fortunately I am in the early stages of my website where I can switch to using Facebook comments and completely avoid using WordPress comments – because I don’t have any comments yet!
It was not easy. I tried different methods. The easiest and best way is to use the popular plugin called “Facebook Comments for WordPress” by we8u. The instructions are pretty straightforward. There were apparently a few bugs in the initial few days after FB released the API. But FB has fixed them.
Note that when you install it, even after following all the instructions, you will see strange warnings at random places. This only lasts a few minutes. It happened on both my websites. Look It Up 4 Me, and on this one. I think that once the plugin synced with FB all the errors went away (or may be because I was tinkering with it.) It was easier the second time though.
I have completely turned off the WordPress comments. I also had to disable the other FB like. It was superfluous anyway.
The main advantage of FB Comments is that if the viewer is logged in to facebook, the comments rearrange themselves to be relevant to him or her based on his facebook profile. That is a wonderful experience, compared to static comments in sequence. There may be some disadvantages as well, but lets wait and see what happens.
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RonGee
February 3, 2012 at 4:24 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
Now that’s ironic, you’ve written an article about using Facebook style comments in your blog, yet this does not look like a Facebook comment.
JohnVarghese
February 3, 2012 at 4:50 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
Yes Ron, it is ironic now. One of the main benefits of FB comments was the complete elimination of spam and fake comments. But it never brought any of the benefits it promised. FB comments also limits you to facebook (at least it did then).
With LiveFyre (as with disqus and others) you can sign in with what ever you want and comment. And you are still a real person. I am shy to post my comments from here to FB, so it is not a great benefit to me.
So far I lie what I see in livefyre. But when I go to the stock market, I will still by FB.
Daniel Green
March 22, 2012 at 3:20 am (UTC -8) Link to this comment
With Livefyre, are you as the blog owner still able to comment as a logged in WP admin? Or do you have to login as a livefyre account holder? This is one thing that holds me back from using livefyre…
John Varghese
March 22, 2012 at 12:23 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
I guess I am replying here as a wordpress admin. Not as a livefyre user. Out of curiosity though, why do you need that facility?
JohnVarghese
March 22, 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
@Daniel Green Hi Dan. I replied to your comment as a WP admin. Essentially I logged in to the wp-admin page and hit reply to your comment. Nope, it did not show up here. It is still there in my admin page.
Out of curiosity, why do you need this facility?
Daniel Green
March 22, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
@JohnVarghese Its more about trying to keep the number of services you have to log into down to a minimum. I find it funny that I log into WP to run the website, add posts and everything else, but with this I now have to make sure im logged into another service for the comments.
I’m roadtesting LF on my blog now, so I’ll be seeing how it goes.
Dhara Mistry
March 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
@Daniel Green @JohnVarghese Thanks for your feedback. Totally understand what you’re saying here. At the moment, changes made within the WP admin don’t sync to Livefyre. We’ll be adding a deeper integration feature with the WP-admin in future, where you’ll be able to moderate comments from within the dashboard as well as log in and comment using your WP account. Thanks for your patience as we continue to develop our product!
Daniel Green
March 23, 2012 at 4:29 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
@Dhara Mistry Thanks for your input! Looking forward to seeing how LF develops
ferriol
April 7, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
testing it.
ferriol
April 7, 2012 at 4:41 pm (UTC -8) Link to this comment
it s cool.