Yesterday’s episode with Disqus had raised some serious questions in my head regarding allowing a third party to manage comments of my visitors. I issued a private apology to Daniel Ha for “jumping the gun” over the Google Analytics. I was wrong implying that Disqus was doing something shady. Many of the similar services use Google Analytics. So whenever a widget from Disqus is served on your blog, you might see in your status bar the url from Google Analytics blinking, even though you might not have Google Analytics code installed on your website. So don’t get spooked as I did yesterday, Disqus is not spying on you.

Yesterday’s episode however showed me that my decision to let Disqus manage my comments had some serious shortcomings.

By letting a third party manage the unique content of your blog, one very important thing happens. You no longer have the absolute and exclusive control of that content. If you are fine with it, you should probably look into services like Disqus- they do have some killer features that I will definitely miss.

I also would like apologize to every person who commented on my blog during the time Disqus managed the comments. Since I have turned the Disqus plugin off, it may appear that your comments are gone. But they are not, they just not on this blog. You still can find them on Disqus: http://sageblogger.disqus.com/ . The export/import feature on Disqus desires much improvement to successfully transfer all the comments back to this blog. I do not intend to close my account with Disqus, so your comments should be save there. I will be trying to move them to my blog, even if it means I need to do it manually.

Update: After struggling with my decision over allowing Disqus to moderate the comments on this blog, I have decided to give the one more try. There have been significant improvements to their WordPress plugin that now enters the comments not only into Disqus database but in the WordPress database of each participating website.

I have to say that I would never imagined the day I would leave Disqus. I absolutely love every feature they provide. For me Disqus had taken much hassle out of moderating comments across multiple blogs.

However two things took place today which of course ended up my love affair with Disqus. These things may not be significant and have nothing to do with quality of the service Disqus provides. I only remember once Disqus being down- much desired for my own websites. So here is what disappointed me about Disqus:

• As I was working on one of my new websites I noticed that my Fire Fox status bar was showing “www.google-analytics.com”. If it was on any other website I would let it fly by and would never made a big deal out of it. But I noticed that my Fire Fox status bar was showing “www.google-analytics.com”. If it was on any other website I would let it fly by and would never made a big deal out of it. I use Google Analytics on practically every website of mine. But I found it strange to “blip” in my status bar on a blog that I have not installed the code yet. It also turns out Disqus was and still is the only plugin on that blog.I have to pint out that in spite of my attempts to get some clarification, Disqus had not commented on the issue.
• After above described events took place, I decided to export all the comments from my Disqus account and import them back to my blog. I expected that in the process comments will be associated with appropriate blog posts. Instead I ended up with 100+ “new posts”.

Alright, I may not be the geekiest guy out there but I am no fool either. So I say buh-bye Disqus!