I invite you to leave a comment below and test out my newly installed LiveFyre comment system. I think you will love it as much as I do. I think I have finally settled on a comment system that has all the features I want.
I am totally Fyre'd Up!
OK – -bad pun stolen from LiveFyre support. I have been struggling with what to do with comments for some time. I want to grow readership of the blog, and I know that viral exposure to social media is one way to do that. There are three tools out there that people use — Intense Debate, Disqus, and LiveFyre. The first two have been around forever, but I had never heard of LiveFyre until last month.
I seriously considered Disqus for months, but I never pulled the trigger for some reason. Not sure why — except to say that I saw several mixed reviews from people that I know. So, I held off and messed with integrating Facebook Comments instead.
I was not happy with Facebook comments. I really don't like the way Facebook comments remain on Facebook. The entire reason that I run my own domain is so that I can control my own stuff. So Facebook commenting bugs me — even though I think the social media aspect of Facebook comments is very powerful.
Then I heard Cliff Ravenscraft raving about LiveFyre.
Cliff is pretty hard core — he tests (and usually breaks) stuff. He is a very demanding technologist. So, when he endorsed LiveFyre, I had to take a look.
LiveFyre Review: Key Features
Critical features that made me switch (many also present in Intense Debate and Disqus as well)
- Cool factor is off the chart
- Works great and easy to use
- Comments remain in WP database
- Excellent social media integration
- Excellent customer support
So get this — I installed LiveFyre and exposed a small bug in their installer that was specific to my googy wordpress install. No big deal. They knew about it already and I was able to work around it without even contacting them. As a courtesy, I reported the bug. Unknown to me, the fix was already in their knowledge base (I know, RTFM).
Here is the email that I got back from them in 3 minutes (yes, I said THREE minutes):
Amazing. They acknowledged the ticket (the bug was already covered in a knowlege base article, by the way), checked on my install, and checked on my blog. When they saw a problem with my Theme, they sent me the CSS edits without me even asking. That's nuts.
So, I hope you've enjoyed my quick LiveFyre review — and I invite you to leave a comment below and test out my new LiveFyre comment system. I think you will love it as much as I do.