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How to Add Disqus Comment System in WordPress

Last updated on June 29th, 2016 by Editorial Staff

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How to Add Disqus Comment System in WordPress

Disqus pronounced “discuss” is a popular third-party commenting system for WordPress. If you’ve been browsing the web for more than a week, then you’ve probably come across a site that’s using Disqus. A lot of popular sites including CNN, The Next Web, Bloomberg, CNBC, The Atlantic, and now WPBeginner are using Disqus. In this article, we will show you how to add Disqus comment system in WordPress. We will also discuss the reasons why we switched to using Disqus.

Update: We no longer use Disqus on our site. Here are the reasons why we switched away from Disqus.

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Adding Disqus Commenting System in WordPress

Adding Disqus commenting system to WordPress is very easy. First thing you need to do is go to Disqus website and login or signup for a new account. Once you are logged in, click on For Websites link next to the Disqus logo.

Disqus for websites

On the next screen, you need to click on Add Disqus to Your Site button next to your profile pic on the top right corner of the screen.

This will take you to a signup form where you need to provide your website information. Provide the title of your blog or website and then choose a unique URL for your website on the disqus commenting system. This unique URL will be the place where you can access all your comments after you have installed Disqus on your site. Lastly choose a category for your website. Once you are done, hit the Finish Registration button.

Registering your site for Disqus commenting system

After the registration, you will be asked to choose your platform. You need to click on WordPress, and it will show you further instructions to setup Disqus commenting system on your WordPress site. Don’t worry we will walk you through these instructions.

Now that you have registered your site for Disqus commenting system, it is time to connect your WordPress site to the Disqus platform. To do this, you need to install and activate the Disqus Comment System plugin. Upon activation, go to Comments » Settings and sign in with your Disqus account.

Once you are logged in, you will be shown the site you registered for Disqus commenting system. Select the site and click on the next button to finish the set up.

Select your site to install Disqus comments

That’s all. You have successfully added Disqus comment system to your site. You can see it in action by visiting any post on your site, and you will see Disqus comments instead of WordPress comments on your site.

Exporting Older WordPress Comments into Disqus

Since Disqus commenting system takes over the display of comments on your WordPress site, this means that the comments stored on your WordPress site will not be visible to users. To fix this, you will have to export those comments to Disqus commenting system. In WordPress admin area, go to Comments » Disqus and click on the plugin settings tab on the top right corner of the screen.

Disqus Plugin Settings

On the plugin’s settings page, scroll down to Import and Export section and click on Export Comments button. This will initiate the import process and all your old WordPress comments will be exported to Disqus commenting system.

Export WordPress comments to Disqus Commenting System

Moderating Disqus Comments

You can moderate Disqus comments by visiting Comments » Disqus. There you will find a button linking to your comment administration page on Disqus. This is where you can approve, spam, or delete comments.

Disqus comment moderation page

Troubleshooting Disqus Comment Display Issue

On some WordPress themes Disqus comment area may appear wider than rest of the post and page area. To fix this, you need to figure out the width of the content area in your theme and then add this CSS into your theme or child theme‘s stylesheet.

#disqus_thread {
	margin: 0 auto;
	max-width: 604px;
}

This CSS sets max-width of the comment area to 604px and centers it to the screen. Your theme may have different width so you will have to adjust it accordingly to meet your needs.

We hope this article helped you add Disqus comment system in WordPress. If you liked this article, then subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials or join us on Twitter and Google+.