Have you seen websites that offer voting, badges, social sharing, social logins along with other cool features in their comments area? Want to revamp your WordPress comments to do the same? In this article, we will show you how to improve WordPress comments with De:comments and make them more interactive.
What is De:comments? Why You Need it?
De:comments is a premium WordPress plugin that offers a range of tools to increase engagement on your site. Here are some things that your users can do with de:comments:
- Users can use social login feature and sign in with their existing social accounts.
- Users can vote on comments to like or dislike them.
- Each single comment can be shared on social networks.
- Users can add images, GIFs, videos, Tweets, and status updates in their comments.
- You can encourage returning users with badges that they can earn by participating on your site.
Many of these features can be added by using a combination of other plugins, however that comes with it’s own complexities. De:comments provides the complete package that’s easy to use and simple to setup.
How to Setup De:Comments in WordPress
First you need to get the De:comments plugin. It costs $50 for a single site license with one year of support and updates.
Next, you need to install and activate the De:comments plugin. Upon activation, simply visit Comments » de:comments page to configure the plugin.
In the comments section of De:comments settings, the first option is to show or hide De:comments logo below the comment form. You can check this box to remove de:comments logo and link from your comment form.
The next option is to allow users to quote specific comments in their replies which can be a useful feature for conversations.
After that there is ‘time to edit / delete comments’ options. This is a really useful option as it allows users to edit or even delete their comment with in a given time period. Sometimes people comment in a rush and want to edit or take back what they said. There are other ways to add the same feature in WordPress, see our tutorial on how to allow users to edit their comments in WordPress.
By default WordPress comment form usually appears after the comments at the bottom of a page. De:comments settings allows you to put the comment box at top, just like Disqus and Livefyre.
The next option is really important and requires your special attention. This option allows you to add or remove nofollow from links added by commenters on your WordPress site. By default WordPress adds nofollow to all links in a comment. We strongly recommend you to click on the nofollow button to keep spam comments low.
In the next option, you will be able to select the number of comments to display per page or use infinite scroll for loading comments.
Add Social Logins in WordPress Comments with De:comments
The next section in the De:comments settings is labeled social. Here you will configure the social features of the plugin.
To enable social login, you will need to install and setup WordPress Social Login plugin.
You can select the social networks you want to display in the share dialog. De:comments supports Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Vkontakte, and Odnoklassniki social networks.
Enable Comment Voting in WordPress with De:comments
The voting section in the De:comments allows you to enable a comment voting system. You can set a minimum number of likes required for a comment to be displayed on top. This allows you to display comments with higher votes to appear on top and disliked comments at the bottom.
If you don’t like this, then you can turn off the dislike feature.
Adding Comment Subscriptions in WordPress with De:comments
A great way to keep users coming back is by allowing them to subscribe to comments. De:comments allow users to subscribe to comments for a post or for replies to selected comments.
Adding Badges for WordPress Comments
De:comments allows you to add badges for user achievements. Currently there are three kind of achievements that you can assign a badge. For getting a pre-defined number of likes, getting a pre-defined number of dislikes, and for posting a certain number of comments. Hopefully there will be more achievements added in the future versions of the plugin. For example, users with X number of social shares or users giving away most likes or dislikes and so on.
Customizing Comment Subscription Email Notifications
The last section in the De:comments settings is notifications. This is where you can customize the emails sent out by the plugin for comment subscriptions. The default comment notifications work fine, but feel free to customize it to your liking.
If your users are not receiving comment notifications in their inbox, then check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending emails issue.
That’s all we hope this article helped you improve WordPress comments with De:comments. You may also want to check out our guide on how to export email addresses from WordPress comments.
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Can I use De:comments and Disqus at the same time?
I see you’re using “subscribe to comments”.
Is there anyway to integrate email verification for first time commenters?
De:Comments not working with WPML! And no support for that. $50 down the drain!
Hi Lluís,
I was planning on using both plugins. What doesn’t work there?
Thanks in advance and best regards
Alex
I trust WPBeginner and purchased this Plugin for the Full $50, it is riddled with faults, i spent two full days integrating with my site without joy, the additional complication of WP social just made it impossible. I should have realised that something was wrong when i had to try 10 times to buy the plugin in the first place. I know they offer 20% for affiliates and it must have been a nice little earner for WPBeginner but a little more research is needed. The theory is good, the practice is poor. Oh well $50 down the drain. Support existed of ‘must be your Theme and have Plugin conflict. Boring. off the research Disqus
Hi John,
Sorry to hear that you’re having a bad experience with De:Comments. When we wrote this article, we tested every feature to ensure that it works. If you’re unhappy with the plugin, then you can always ask for a refund.
While we do get an affiliate commission for every one who signs up to De:Comments, we never recommend anything that we haven’t first tried ourselves. We have this policy because few $$$ is not worth losing our customer’s trust.
Is there any free alternative for de:comments ?
I don’t think they’ll ever add a freemium version to this system.
why don’t you use De-comments here?
Odd that it relies on WordPress Social Login (WSL) instead of creating a solution of its own; that seems to weaken the appeal. Will that support subscription fee cover the problems related to that?
Actually WSL is quite a popular plugin which is already used by many bbPress and BuddyPress websites. Since the actual logins rely on social platform’s APIs, even if WSL stopped working there will be plenty of alternate available for that. De:Comments authors may even fork the plugin if they needed.
Thanks for the review, guys!
To get a 20% discount for de:comments use a coupon “april-20”. It’s valid till May 1th
Hello! This seems like an amazing plugin! Would it be possible to get a code for September 2015?
Thanks and warm regards,
Jackie Cruz
Just curious, what comment system is using right now in this wpbeginner?
It looks like native WP coments with strong moderation
Hi Marcelo. Good post !
I was currently thinking about the comments in WordPress and in websites in general. I’ve seen many popular sites having no comments on their initial posts but comments on their facebook posts. This tendency seems to grow and I’m starting to think if comments are welcome anymore in a website. I personally don’t mind using a commenting system or creating a profile, but I’m coming from an old school. Nowadays, people don’t seem to “know” the difference between facebook or any popular social site and the native platform where the post originated and it’s commenting system. I’m then starting to consider removing the comments from my website to only make them available on facebook. Have you an opinion or insight about this ? I’d be glad to hear you.
Interesting. Just one question: how does this plugin compare to Disqus, which is free and provides barely the same functionality? and what about comparing it to Livefyre? A features comparison table would be nice and very welcomed
Best regards
1. If your site has an option to register and login, in Disqus, the users will have to log in separately. Twice, through their own or through social networks. There is an SSO solution, but very small number of users care for complications.
2. After using Disqus for several years, you have accumulated a huge database of metadata and comments to them (likes / dislikes, user rating, badges, media attachments, date of an edit, etc.). One day you decide to switch to another comments system or back to WordPress native comments. Because there is synchronization with your database all your comments will stay with you, but all the metadata will remain in Disqus. You will lose likes/dislikes, pictures, dates and all the edited and deleted data. There will only be text and author information (name / e-mail).
3. In the third-party comments-systems, you can’t change its appearance and localization. You are limited to settings and preset design schemas. You can only use the built-in set of languages. In other words, third-party services — not customizable.
2. Same with this plugin, if you switch to yet another comment system you will lose all the things this plugin added (likes etc) since those are not part of wordpress, the new system will not know where to look for them.
You will not loose this data, because it stores in your DB. And you can always use it