Disqus Vs. Wordpress Vs Facebook VS Comment Plug Ins

[NoahsDad]

I'd like to see if the community could offer some feedback on how to 'step up' the comments on our blog.  I've been looking over various options, and of course you can find as many pros as you can cons for each of these.

In addition to our website, we have a very active, and engaged Facebook page, so my first thought is to install Facebook comments on our blog.  However I believe you loose the SEO benefit form the comments (I'm not sure how much SEO benefit you get form the comments anyways if the post content is optimized), people can't comment unless they have, and want to use, their Facebook account (although I've seen some work arounds that allow people to use either or), people don't get notified when there is a reply to their comment, I don't 'own' any of the comments, Facebook does...so if I ever decide to change comment systems, I loose all the comments, and I loose the ability to send a 'welcome email' to first time commenters (which has been very effective for newsletter sign ups.)  Facebook sends a large number of traffic to my site, and since there are so many people on our Facebook page, I feel this may be a good option.  One other concern I have by allowing people to use either Facebook comments or Wordpress comments is the use of my top commenter plug in.  This plug in has been very useful in increasing our blog comment engagement.  We are even going to be rewarding our top commenter each month. I'm assuming if you use Facebook comments by itself, or the combo Facebook / wordpress solution I've found online, I wouldn't be able to use a top commenter plugin, since this is pulling the data from Wordpress, correct?

One thing I don't understand is I've seen a plug in (I think it's Facebook simple connect) that allows comments to 'sync' between those comments that appear on the blog, and those that appear on wordpress. I'm not sure how this works.  Does Facebook recognize a certain url being posted on the Facebook page, and associates that with the same url on the blog, and simply syncs the two? In other words can people comment on the blog (via Facebook comment) and comment on the Facebook page, and simply continue to conversation from either location? This would be a pretty neat feature, but I'm not sure if that's how it works. Also, if I use Facebook comments solely, does anyone know what happens to all of the previous comments left on the blog? Do they all go away? In other words, does it make it seem like I have zero comments on any posts? This wouldn't be good.

I know a lot of people use and like the Disqus comment system, but I've read lots of horror stories about loosing comments, blogs being slowed down tremendously, etc.  I like how disquis allows you to 'like' someones post. I feel like this would help increase community engagement, but not sure how much. (We already get a fair number of comments as it, I'm just trying to make the experience better.)  I'd like for people to be able to post pictures / images in the comments, and I think disqus allows for there (though there may be plug ins that allow this on the native wordpress comments.)

Finally I'm wondering if there are some good comment plug ins that would allow me to stay using wordpress native comments, but step up the comments. For instance, using pictures in comments, being abel to rank comments (sort of like the thumbs up / down here on SEOmoz) and any other cool plug ins that help promote engagement.

I hope you guys can offer some insight as to the best direction to go with the comments.

Thanks in advance!

[Red_Mud_Rookie]

Whoa! That was a mouthful!

I have recently switched to Disqus because of the additional functionality like embedding media which I think enhances the "conversation capabilities".

The ability to login from any one of the main social media platforms makes it easy and therefore encourages people to get involved.

I am not keen on Facebook alone because you don't want to be dependent on a single platform and as for the Wordpress comments, nothing particularly wrong with it, but it is quite limited if you compare to Disqus.