in praise of Disqus

Disqus recently released a update which includes the ability to export comments on a WordPress blog so I have just exported all historic comments left on this blog (when it was running WordPress) into Disqus.

This operation was slightly complicated because this blog now uses Habari but the necessary steps were:

1. Download and install the new Disqus 2.0 plugin for Wordpress.
2. Delete all obvious spam so the export only processes genuine comments and runs faster.
3. Switch the archived WordPress copy of the blog back to the original location.
4. Export all comments from WordPress into Disqus.
5. Claim comments left by myself using an alternative email address before I had even heard about Disqus.
6. Wrap the WordPress blog in cling-film, label and place back into cryogenic storage.
7. Reinstate the Habari blog.

However, because I am pretty stupid and overly hasty, inevitably I omitted step 3. This meant that while all comments appeared on the Disqus site, the permalinks to the individual blog articles were incorrect and referenced '/wordpress/' instead of '/blog/'.

As it wasn't obvious how to rectify this issue or perform a selective bulk delete so I could repeat the process, I sent an email to Disqus support explaining the problem and asking for help.

24 minutes later, Jason from Disqus emailed me saying he'd fixed all the URL's.

What a fantastic service. What a fantastic product. What fanastic people.

So now I can put the kettle on and reaquaint myself with 886 comments (including some old friends) that have now been restored to their rightful place.

The only gap that remains is that a relatively small number of comments left on my blog after the Habari migration and prior to the adoption of Disqus are not currently visible. Hopefully, when the Disqus API is fully released, even this may be possible.