DiscussIT – Tools for the moderation, curation and analysis of user generated content

We have deployed version 1.4 of the DiscussIt WordPress plugin. This works with the native comments system in WordPress to provide support for the DiscussIt Live Moderator clients.

This version of the plugin does away with the overly complex method for linking your wordpress site with the correct DiscussIt site profile. To link the two now you just need to paste an API key from the new site wizard into the WordPress plugins settings page.

After that all new comments will appear within the Live Moderator clients and will stay in sync with your WordPress database.

Detailed instructions for the install can be found here.

IMPORTANT – Users upgrading from v0.5 or lower will lose any current comment threads – please contact info@dis.cuss.it if you want your current threads to be migrated over to the new plugin.

The DiscussIt Plugin for Joomla! has reached version 0.6 (beta). You can download the Joomla! 1.5 compatible version here; for Joomla 1.6 download here.

Please download the latest version here.

Installation instructions can be found here.

Changes:

• Improved URL routing
• Now uses article ID rather than referring URL for greater integration with Joomla!
• SEO visibility is turned off by default*
• Added optional link-back to DiscussIt
• Added simple options for editing styles (in addition to the style editor on discussit.com)

*we recommend turning caching on in Joomla! global settings if using this feature to avoid potential performance issues.

Please note: A new version has been released.

For installation instructions see the knowledge base article here.

Using our JavaScript widget it’s easy to add live-moderated comments to your Joomla! articles. These comments are visible to search engines to improve SEO performance.

Installation is straight-forward – simply go to your Joomla! administration extensions ‘Install/Uninstall’ page, click the browse button button and select the package .zip file and click ‘Upload File & Install. Now all you need to do is click on  ‘Content-Discussit’ in the Joomla! plugin manager and enter your discussit.com API key and click ‘Save’.

This product is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project. It is not supported or warranted by the Joomla Project or Open Source Matters.

The all new DiscussIt Moderator

We have just released a new version of our desktop moderation client. Whilst we got some praise for the original version, we received a lot of requests for additional features, which lead to a complete redesign of the tool.

The new moderator makes it easier to keep track of new comments whilst keeping tight control over individual message threads. Updates to the comments are still made using the same hover and click system as in the first version of the moderator, as we still think this is a quick and easy solution.

We have added some basic statistics and we will be adding more in the near future. Currently you can see the ratio of approved and withdrawn messages, the different authentication methods and the number of email notifications being sent out along with the corresponding number of clicks.

The mentions tab contains a list of comments we have found on other sites that mention your sites domain. We will be expanding this to include custom phrases shortly.

Finally we have added a logs tab, here you will find a log of all transactions involving your comments, even those done by co-moderators using different clients. In time we will use this information to provide summary and trend reports.

Don’t forget that the DiscussIt system is free to use on single site, single moderator setups so please download the moderator and give it a go if you have not already done so.

We finally have our WordPress Plugin for DiscussIt ready and installed in the plugin directory.

Installing the plugin is a snap, and once it’s in place, Live moderation of comments is super easy using our moderator client application.

For instructions on how to install see the FAQ page.

Dis.cuss.it API Test Harness

A little while ago I mentioned work was under way to produce a test harness for our API. Today I’d like to unveil the harness, hop along to https://account.discussit.com/harness to see it in action. The harness is designed to show and document the methods exposed by our API.

The API uses oAuth for authentication so before you get stuck into writing lines of code get yourself an application key from here.

The DiscussIt comment/review widgets and DiscussIt Live Moderator were written using our API. We’d love to see what you can build so get in touch with your ideas or creations.

DiscussIt Live Moderator v1

Say hello to the DiscussIt Live Moderator. This FREE application allows you to watch your comment streams and receive desktop notifications for new messages as they are posted.

New comments can be ‘Approved’, ‘Withdrawn’, marked as spam, replied to or even re-tweeted directly from the application. The Live Moderator can support multiple blogs allowing you to aggregate all your comments for easier moderation. To open a comment in thread view simply double click on it and a new column will open up highlighting the new message within the thread.

Currently we just support WordPress and our own DiscussIt engine (which don’t forget can be used on pretty much any web page, or built into your application via the API), but we are working on Blogger support as I type. If you use another blogging or comments platform that you would like to see supported by the Live Moderator, let us know and we will look into it.

The application is an Adobe Air application and therefore runs on PC/Mac or Linux.

Beavering away

It’s been a while since our last post so I thought I’d share our latest workings. The majority of our time has been spent working on the Dis.cuss.it API, this will make customizing widgets and moderating comments a breeze.

API

oAuth equipped and rich in features, our API has had an overhawl. It’s a step closer to being publicly released. We’ve written a few test applications using the API and I’m pleased with it’s speed and ease of use.

API Test Harness

To go alongside the API we have been working on a test harness that provides documentation and enables you to test the API from within the browser.

The Internet Surname Database

We have been running the DiscussIt threaded comments widget on the SurnameDB site since the end of January. The site gets a good amount of traffic and therefore makes an ideal partner site for us, so I thought I’d give some details on how it’s going and what we have learned so far.

The SurnameDb had a comments system before it was replaced by DiscussIt, this system was built into the application and required a visitor to create an account before they could post. We decided to implement the DiscussIt widget using the ‘post moderation’ option so that visitors could just type in their message and enter their name to post.

By removing the registration barrier we imediately saw a ten fold increase in the number of messages posted. On the whole we have found that post moderation works well for the SurnameDB site, most days see just one or two messages being withdrawn as inappropriate. Although occasionally a thread is taken over by school children for a bit of online fun (presumably SurnameDB is used to solve that home work question of what does your surname mean), but these have been easy enough to nip in the bud using the moderation tools.

Recent Posts

A lot of the comments posted on SurnameDB provide good additional information and insight on the origins of the names. By using some server side code we have been able to expose this information to the search engines. SurnameDB relies heavily on the search engines to provide traffic, so this additional content is providing very valuable search engine juice.

Because the widget is set to allow anonymous posts we are seeing only about 2% of commenter’s logging in. This is disappointing, since we would like to see the profile data filling out for the commentators there by creating more trust between visitors and a better sense of community. However we hope that we can improve this by providing better profile views and other login benefits, within the widget.

We will continue to work with SurnameDB to improve the commenting community and the traffic generated by the DiscussIt widget. If you would like to see what we could do to help your site please get in touch.

Engage with you visitors using DiscussIt

We’ve finally drawn a line in the sand and released DiscussIt under a beta flag. We are still beavering away on the code, adding lots of new features, and additional widgets, but these will be released in a later version.

We are working with a couple of web design companies to add the DiscussIt widget to exisiting sites. The plan is to post messages on this blog as and when these sites go live with the discussion widget.

If your interested in using DiscussIt on a site, please feel free to setup and account and have a play. Also drop us a line here and we will do our best to help you get the most out of it