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How to Add Disqus Comment System in WordPress (Easy Method)

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Do you want to add the Disqus comment system to your WordPress website?

Disqus is one of the most popular comment platforms on the market. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and comment hosting service, making it a go-to choice for popular sites like PBS and Bloomberg.

In this guide, we will talk about whether you should add Disqus to your website and how to enable it in WordPress.

How to Add Disqus Comment System in WordPress

Should You Use Disqus With WordPress?

While the default WordPress comment system is suitable for simple comments, it’s not the most powerful. That’s why many WordPress users look for alternatives like Disqus.

The Disqus comment system is quite popular among large-scale websites. Apart from its user-friendliness and customization options, it also offers a third-party hosting platform for storing and managing comments.

Since Disqus handles comments on a separate server from your WordPress hosting, using it can help your website’s overall performance.

That said, in our opinion, Disqus is not the best comment system we’ve tried. While it helped with our website performance, we were not a fan of its moderation capabilities, and it added affiliate links to our content without our permission.

After disabling Disqus, we saw our engagement rate increase significantly. You can read more about our experience in our Disqus review.

Of course, whether you choose to use Disqus or other platforms is up to you. But if you are looking for Disqus alternatives, then we have some recommendations.

What to Use Instead of Disqus

After trying out different comment plugins, we have found Thrive Comments to be the best Disqus alternative.

Thrive Comments is an all-in-one comment plugin with an easy-to-use interface that is perfect for blogging beginners and experts alike.

The Thrive Comments WordPress plugin

Besides comment management and moderation features, you can use Thrive Comments to boost user engagement with post-comment actions. After the user leaves a comment, you can redirect them to related posts or a custom thank you message with a free gift.

Furthermore, you can add likes and dislikes as well as upvotes and downvotes to encourage audience interaction in your comment section.

For more details, you can see our review of the Thrive Themes suite, which contains a section specifically about Thrive Comments.

If Thrive Comments doesn’t suit your needs, then you can also check out our full list of the best WordPress plugins to improve comments.

If you are still interested in using Disqus, don’t worry. We will walk you through how to add the Disqus comment system plugin. You can use the quick links to skip to different sections:

Setting Up Disqus Commenting System in WordPress

The first step to installing Disqus comments in WordPress is to create a Disqus account. To do this, you need to go to the Disqus website and sign up.

Once you’ve done that, you should see the page below. Just go ahead and click ‘I want to install Disqus on my site.’

Clicking on the I want to install Disqus on my site button

On the next page, you will have to add the details for your new Disqus site, which is where you will manage all your Disqus comments. These include Site Owner, Website Name, and Category.

In the Website Name field, you can insert your desired Disqus site subdomain. After that, simply click ‘Create Site.’

Creating a new Disqus site

You will now arrive at the Disqus site dashboard.

At this point, you will need to pick one of the Disqus plans to be able to set up the comment system in WordPress. If you are not sure which one to use yet, then you can get started with the free Basic plan.

Choosing a Disqus plan

You will now be asked to choose a platform.

Just select ‘WordPress’ to continue.

Choosing WordPress in the Disqus website

You will now see the WordPress installation page. Take note of the Installation Token field, which will be useful for the setup later.

You can leave this tab open while you continue with the next steps.

The empty Disqus WordPress installation token field

Now, open your WordPress dashboard to install the Disqus Comment System plugin. For step-by-step instructions, check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, go to the Disqus menu from your WordPress dashboard. Under ‘Do you have a Disqus account?’ click ‘Yes.’

Saying Yes to the Do you have a Disqus account question in WordPress

You will now see the question, ‘Do you have a site registered on Disqus you want to use?’

Select ‘Yes.’

Saying I have a registered site on Disqus in WordPress

At this point, you will see some WordPress installation instructions and a sync token to copy.

Go ahead and click the ‘Copy’ button here.

Copying the Disqus installation token in WordPress

Let’s now return to the Disqus website. Paste the token you’ve just copied from the WordPress dashboard in the appropriate field.

Then, hit the ‘Install [Disqus site name] on your site’ button and click ‘Configure’ at the bottom.

Pasting the WordPress installation token in Disqus

And that’s it!

If you refresh the Disqus menu in your WordPress dashboard, you should now see an interface similar to this:

The Disqus WordPress plugin page

Now, let’s see if Disqus has been successfully enabled in your comment section.

Simply open a WordPress blog post on the front end and scroll down to the comments. Here’s what it should look like if the installation was done correctly:

Example of the Disqus comment section on a WordPress website

Exporting Older WordPress Comments into Disqus

Once you’ve installed the Disqus commenting system, it will take over the native WordPress comments on your site. In other words, the existing comments stored on your WordPress website will not be visible to users.

To fix this, you will have to import any existing comments into the Disqus commenting system. In the WordPress admin area, go to the Disqus plugin’s settings page, scroll down, and navigate to the ‘Syncing’ tab.

Navigating to the Syncing tab in the Disqus WordPress plugin

Then, scroll down and select ‘Import Comments.’

You will see which of your comments have been successfully imported in the table at the bottom.

Importing comments in Disqus

One thing to note is that if you have custom post types, then you may notice that your older comments are not appearing after switching to Disqus. To resolve this, you will need to deactivate Disqus on custom post types.

For hands-on guidance, check out our article on how to disable Disqus on custom post types.

Moderating and Configuring Disqus Comments

If you want to moderate comments using Disqus, you can click the ‘Moderate’ button on the Disqus plugin page.

Clicking the Moderate button in the WordPress Disqus plugin page

This will bring you to the moderation page on the Disqus website.

If you’re familiar with the WordPress comments page, then navigating the Disqus one won’t be a problem. Here, you can approve, delete, or mark comments as spam.

The Disqus comment moderation page

For tips and tricks on WordPress comment moderation, you can check out the following articles:

Troubleshooting Disqus Comment Display Issue

On some WordPress themes, the Disqus comment area may appear wider than the rest of the post area. To fix this, you will need to add some custom CSS to your theme or child theme’s stylesheet.

While you can add custom CSS through the theme file editor, we don’t recommend it. Tracking changes becomes tricky, making it unclear which code is from the theme and which is custom.

Instead, we suggest using WPCode, which is the easiest code snippets plugin. It lets you safely add and manage custom code on your WordPress site. If the code doesn’t work, then you can easily remove the snippet within the plugin.

The code you will need to add is below:

#disqus_thread {
	margin: 0 auto;
	max-width: 650px;
}

This CSS sets the max width of the comment area to 650px and centers it on the screen. Your theme may have a different width, so you will have to adjust it to meet your needs.

For a step-by-step tutorial, you can read our guide on how to easily add custom CSS to your WordPress site.

Here’s what it should look like on WPCode:

Adding custom CSS to adjust the Disqus comment section width on WordPress

And that’s all for adding Disqus to WordPress!

We hope this article has helped you learn how to add the Disqus comment system in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to feature or bury comments in WordPress and our expert picks for the best WordPress plugins to grow your website.

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Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how WPBeginner is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us. Here's our editorial process.

Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

94 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
    Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
    You can get more details about the contest from here.
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  2. Danielle says

    How would I go about making sure that my Disqus comments from my old Blogger site appear on my new WordPress site? I just used your setup service to transfer my content from Blogger to WordPress last month.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      If your Disqus coments are not available then you would go into Disqus and export the old comments to import them to the new site.

      Admin

  3. David says

    This information has helped me integrate disqus comment system to my personal website. Thank you so much.

  4. Irene Hynes says

    Hi There,

    Hip Hip Hooray! I was always told that slightly slow in the head, a slow learner. Not anymore! It’s like you have my back. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learnt here and how easily! Thank you for blessing me with this effortlessly ingestible digestible content.

    I was wondering if it was possible assign to a variable type of Array of Strings a value from the REFramework Config file.
    Thank you very much and will look for more postings from you.

    Kind Regards,
    Irene Hynes

  5. Mike says

    Hey Guys!

    I am going to have my site
    I intend to optimized my site and incresed the speed of loading page. which plugin do you suggest?
    Thanks in advance
    Mike

  6. Jagadish Prasad B says

    Hello, I am Jagadish. I added Disqus comment system on my website, but it’s not working. What happen is by mistake I deleted the site from Disqus, before that it’s worked properly. After deletion, I re-added it into Disqus but it’s not working, I tried so many times. Please help me.

  7. Agus Tamanuri says

    Thanks
    Because this article is help me .. and one more :)

    I will make this blog name into the shirt. Is it allowed?

  8. Rachael Portier says

    Every time I log into Disqus through WordPress it keeps telling me “Unable to connect to the Disqus API servers”. I’m sure my email and password are correct though. Please help!

  9. Scott Johnson says

    Good article, but I am wondering why this current post is not setup with the Disqus plugin? Change of heart?

  10. Dwayne says

    Thanks for this post. Just implemented it though i’m yet get the confirmation email from them after creating the account more than 12 hrs ago. Oddly i got an email after setting it up on my wordpress site but yet to get the confirmation email.

  11. GroomingMail says

    Hey, quick question. I have just installed Disqus and previously had a spam filter (WP-SpamShield) can i now remove the filter as Disqus has its own spam filter or should i keep the WP-SpamShield plugin?

    Thanks,

  12. Theo Ramlall says

    As always, another well written article from wpbeginner.com
    I started of seeking help with my problem, which was the size of the over lapping comment bar but grateful your CS hack above did fix it. However I would be overjoyed in having a comment system exactly like this….if you could provide some know-how..?

    Best Regards
    Theo

  13. Aishwarya says

    Hey,

    By default, Disqus appears on your posts, not pages. In case you are looking to add Disqus to a particular page on your wordpress website, you can try this simple hack I used.

    Just plugin the universal code at the end of your page in WordPress’s text editor. It works well for me,

  14. Aaron Jane says

    Hello,
    I’m getting lot of spams on my site with the default comment system, though I have akismet installed. Thought about using Disqus, but I see that Disqus is no longer used by wpbeginner. Can you share why you moved away from disqus ?

    Thanks Aaron.

  15. Theo says

    Thanks a whole lot for this post. I’ve decided to start using disqus for some of the same reasons you mentioned here. This was helpful!

  16. Mohammed Haseeb says

    Okay. I know Disqus is good but I have a question. Is there a way to remove hyperlinks from profile names of people commenting on my blog posts. Here is the link to my blog

  17. Bora M. Deniz says

    Hi, very simple expression and useful article. I’m between jetpack plugin and disqus system .Which one is the more useful for visitors and further SEO of website ?

  18. Andreia Franco says

    I have disqus on my blog for a couple of months, since then I just have received lots of spams and disqus doesn’t work at all. I see disqus on other wordpress blogs and it seem to work very well. I do not know what to do with mine. I always go back to moderate and try to activate it but it doesn’t work, still. Do you have any suggestions?

  19. couture31 says

    SOOO glad to have you all as a resource! I have transitioned to a self-hosted WP site and I visit your site daily for tips! Thanks for your help and patience…the step by step directions are awesome!! So grateful!

  20. WPBeginner Staff says

    Edit the post and make sure comments are enabled for that post. Also go to Settings > Discussion and make sure that the box next to ‘Automatically close comments on articles older __ days’ is unchecked.

  21. UgochukwuEmmanuelAgbams says

    Thanks for this tutorial. I have earlier registered on disqus, installed and activated the plugin, but ny problem now is, at the footer of my blog post after disqus, I have a report that says, ‘comments are closed’, and another issue is, disqus does not sync with my loged in users. What should I do about this?

  22. Neal Umphred says

    My experience trying to get Disqus onto my site does not resemble anything like what you have written above. It’s an hour later and I can’t get anything happening . . .

    • Teresa Robeson says

      I sympathize because it is the same for me. There is no “plugins” link on my admin page, nor is there any option for adding Disqus (or anything else) under the Comments link. Maybe it’s because I’ve only got a free WP site, but I didn’t have this much trouble installing Disqus on my Blogger site. There are days I really hate WordPress.

      I hope you got it figured out since you posted 2 weeks ago. :)

  23. Dennis says

    I personally have used jetpack comments for comment on site to handle spam. Most persons I have noticed are usually uncommon with the disqus concepts and dislike the sign up process, very few notice the ‘guest’ option. But I’m looking into using Vanilla comments by integrating vanilla forums into my wordpress website and keep the comment actions completely under my control simples like a good option to me so far from testing.

  24. Aaron Aarons says

    I don’t have my own blog but I regularly post comments to blogs that use Disqus. Quite frankly, there is so much I dislike about Disqus that I would never use it, without major future improvements, in a blog I had any control over.

    1) Comments either don’t show up at all in Google searches on phrases within them, or they show up as part of the page of the particular commenter’s Disqus comments, rather than as part of the page they comment on.

    2) If I save a web page that has Disqus comments, the comments are not saved with the page, and the ability to retrieve the comments depends on the future maintenance of such comment threads by Disqus.

    3) I can save a page with comments as a PDF, but then the information about the precise date and time of a comment can no longer be seen even by a mouse-over (nor by looking at the non-existent source), so all one sees is how many days, weeks, months or years before the time the page was saved the comment was posted. This makes it impossible to follow the chronology of a discussion.

    4) In one case, a blogger lost his domain name and had to get a new, different one. Since then, the old pages can be accessed with the new domain name, but the old comments do not show. There is a way to get to the original comment thread, but it’s not accessible to the casual user.

    There are other, less serious, annoyances, that have slipped my mind for the moment.

    If I am wrong about any of the items I had listed as problems above, I’d like to know.

    • Earl Henson says

      I wonder if Google traffic is lower than it would be if comments don’t show in Google? And of course comments would be the same with Disqus but wouldn’t they become higher over time as more people discover this blog? But if NEW users can’t discover this blog because the comments are not Google searchable…..

  25. Codex73 says

    Recently installed “Disqus Comment System” WordPress plugin, it displays correctly and accepts comments. When I reply through the Dashboard, these won’t show on thread. Should replies be handled directly in the Disqus thread instead?

    • Dave says

      Even with Disqus, the comments are fully indexed along with the page. Do a View Source of this page to see for yourself.

      • Rob Orr says

        That’s not necessarily true. It’s possible that Google will index your comments, but I’ve seen many more that are not indexed as opposed to those that are.

  26. Animish says

    Thanks for this useful article. But there is one question stuck in my mind. Does Disqus affect the load time of posts? Because it uses iframe to load comments. Didi you notice any difference?

  27. Jeanz says

    Hello Syed. What you think about this plugin? – WordPress Comments Evolved – that allow to display G+ comments, FB comments, WordPress and Disqus. I can’t find any useful review in google search, thanks

  28. Mehmet Fatih Yorulmaz says

    I have two problems about Disqus (which I already use):

    First, it does not allow me to convert my commenters to subscribers by adding a checkbox to the bottom of the comment box. Normally, I was using Mailchimp Comment Optin plugin for this. Also, it does not work with “Comment Redirect by Yoast” plugin…

    Second problem is, Subscribe button is difficult to notice for inexperienced commenters. In wordpress comment box, the simple checkbox for subscribing to the replies was very easy to notice. Also, guest commenters are by default subscribed to all comments. And they are not given option to subscribe to “only replies”. Last, but not least, the word “subscribe” is very ambigious. What is it? Subscribe to my site, subscribe to my newsletter or subscribe to the comments?…

    Third issue is, language support. My site is in Turkish and I can select Disqus interface to be in Turkish. But, when my not English speaking visitor hits “Subscribe”, they are sent an English confirmation email. Or when they wanna edit their subscription preferences, again they are being forwarded to an all Engish page.

    I appreciate your thoughts on these issues…
    Thanks

    • Manuel Echeverry says

      its true but there a some WP pages that claim that have to disable disqus because the visitors dint like it. I personaly use Disqus in my site and have no bat experiences until now, but its something that we have to pay attention

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