In the interest of full-disclosure with the Intense Debate community, I’d like acknowledge that there have been a couple of bugs in the system. Rest assured, we’ve pushed fixes for the major ones and will have fixes for any lingering ones shortly. We appreciate your patience as we take care of these. We request that you please hold-off on submitting reports for the next few hours as we continue to knock-off the lingering bugs. However, if you are still experiencing any issues at the end of the day, please submit your reports to support@intensedebate.com. Please make your reports as detailed as possible and include any screenshots you have. This will expedite the troubleshooting process.

Thanks for your patience. Intense Debate will be good as new. I’ll keep you updated as we continue to kick some bug ass.

You may have already noticed, but just in case I thought I’d point it out. Last weekend we gave our servers a massive upgrade allowing us to continue to handle the enormous growth Intense Debate has been experiencing. This overhaul has made Intense Debate faster than ever! So if you notice that extra little step in your stride, feather in your hat or what have you, it’s probably because of our new servers!

In addition we’ve also added new editing power to Intense Debate comments. This has been one of the most requested features and we’re pretty excited to deliver it. If your fingers slip or you have a change of heart, there’s no need to fret, you can edit your comments right there immediately!

Sunday, April 20th (tonight), from 12AM-4AM MST Intense Debate will be down for scheduled maintenance. We’re putting up helpful messages on the main Intense Debate site to avoid any confusion. All your data is preserved, Intense Debate is just making a pit stop.

Thanks for your patience,
Tom, Jon, Isaac & the rest of the Intense Debate team

As a part of our most recent release, we tweaked and improved our main site. You’ll now find that it’s much easier to get around and more enjoyable overall.

We’ve also created an Add-ons page, which contains all of the Intense Debate widgets (Blog Stats, Recent Comments, My Recent comments and Top commenters) as well as instructions for Feedflare integration and a list of all your comment feeds! It’s now easier than ever to subscribe to your friends feeds, aggregate your own feed or one of your Intense Debate-enabled blogs. You also have an aggregated feed for all your blogs, and feeds that keep you up to date with comments awaiting moderation. All served on a silver plate.

How do you like the improvements? Please comment below, we have installed a great commenting system that makes it really easy.

This has been one of the most frequently requested features, and for good reason. Now you have the option to delete comments that you’ve made on other blogs. So if you find a typo or have a change of heart, don’t worry about it – nothing is written in stone!

There’s good news for blog owners too. You no longer have to go to your account at IntenseDebate.com in order to delete comments made on your blog. You can now delete comments directly from your blog!

Here’s how you do it: To delete a comment made on a blog, click the “Delete” button found in the lower right corner of the comment box. That’s all there is to it!

The 1:s and 0:s of Intense Debate are getting an upgrade. Sunday, April 20th, from 12AM-4AM MST we’ll be down for scheduled maintenance. We’ll throw up helpful messages to avoid any confusion on the blogs we’re on, as well as on the main Intense Debate site.

We’re proud to announce the newest addition to the Intense Debate team, Michael Koenig. Michael joins us as our “Customer Experience Advocate”. Many of you might have already had communications with him as he’s been handling support for a few weeks now. He’s also added some zest to our blog and added a twitter account for Intense Debate (twitter.com/intensedebate). If you have any feature requests, bug reports, or anything else, feel free to contact him at michael at intensedebate dot com.

Here’s a quick bio from our about us page:

Originally from Michigan, with a BA in Philosophy from The University of Colorado at Boulder, Michael brings a certain je ne sais quoi to Intense Debate. Part Business Development, part Customer Support, part philosopher, and part musician, Michael is Intense Debate’s keystone generalist and has proven vital in the company’s growth and development.

Glad to have you Michael! Keep up the excellent work.

We’re constantly working on improving the speed and usability of Intense Debate, and just thought we’d post something about our most recent achievements.

Firefox 3 Support!

We’re extremely stoked about this! We now support Firefox 3, so if ID was keeping you from giving Firefox 3 a try, you’ve now got no excuse!

Intense Debate Comment Restoration

There’s a new feature in the Intense Debate comments that you’ll hopefully never use. If, for some reason, you browse away before posting your comment, or you login as you’re posting, you won’t lose your comment. Just open the page again, and you’ll find your comment right where you left it.

Widget Update

Some of you didn’t like the way the Intense Debate logo was implemented in the last revision of our widgets (by widgets we mean the Recent Comments, the Blog Stats widget, etc). We’ve now changed this to a non-intrusive text link.

Bugfixes and updates

• We’re happy to report that Intense Debate now works perfectly in the NetNewsWire RSS reader.
• Logging in, displaying the user menu, and voting have all been optimized and are now much faster.
• The error messages within the Intense Debate comments have been looked over, and we’ve updated a big chunk of them to make them more clear.
• And more…

People-Powered Customer Service

Service and support by Satisfaction

If you have any suggestions for us, things you think could change or if you have new ideas, please contact us ASAP! You can always reach us on the Getsatisfaction forums.

As a part of our feature release week, we’ve also added some new features to our comment sorting functionality. In addition to what was previously offered (sorting comments by date, user rating, & last activity), Intense Debate users can now choose the default setting for sorting comments on their blog. This option is now available on the blog settings page. By default, Intense Debate comments are now sorted by date, which is the sorting most native commenting systems use.

So go ahead, indulge your inner control freak….setup your blog to sort comments by user rating as the default. Or really go crazy and have your comments sorted by last activity as the default. Your readers will still have the option to view it the way they want, but let them know that this is how your blog is really supposed to be enjoyed!

We’re very pleased to make this new feature available. You asked for it, so you’ve got it! Now you can designate multiple admins for any single blog with Intense Debate. We’re making easier than ever to manage your blog’s comments with this new admin feature. Intense Debate just became the perfect commenting platform for your company’s blog (internal or external). With multiple admin capabilities, you can make moderating comments on your company’s blog easier than ever.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t just a great feature for companies. This is an amazing feature for anyone who needs to give another person admin access to their blog’s comments.

Think about it…managing your mom’s blog has never been easier! Helping your folks setup their answering machine and DVD player will still be a pain, but at least you’ve got blog comments covered. In fact, you owe it to yourself to set them up with Intense Debate. I mean, take a load off. You’ve got enough on your plate. Mind as well make something simple.

Blogging mom not a problem? Got an IT guy who ensures that your blog is running smoothly? Yeah? Well Intense Debate is perfect for you. Now you can give him his own login to help manage Intense Debate on your blog.

Don’t have a blogging mom or an IT guy? Multiple admins is still something for you. Do you have that special someone that has been pushing you to take things to the next level, but you’re just not ready for marriage and certainly not ready to move in together? Problem solved!

Give them the gift of making them an admin of your Intense Debate account. It’s perfect really – you’re showing them that you trust them without giving up your account info. It’s the gift that says, “I trust you and want to bring you into my life, but I’m at a point where I still need some personal space.” It’s the perfect way to say, “I’m willing to baby step it to the next level. Keep your chin up. Who knows? Marriage may be right around corner!” And remember, Intense Debate makes it easier than ever to remove an admin, just in case things don’t work out (I mean let’s face it, sometimes even the best laid plans don’t pan out).

Setting Up Multiple Admins
Here’s how you setup additional admins for your blog using your Intense Debate account. Once you login to IntenseDebate.com, select the tab that shares the same name as your blog. This tab will be to the right of the “All Blogs” tab. Once you’ve selected the tab named after your blog, you will notice the following new tabs: “Overview, Moderation, Comment History, Settings, Tools, Comment Theme, Widgets.” Select the “Settings” tab. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and on the right side of the page you’ll find “Add another blog admin.” Just enter in the email address of the person you want to add as an admin, select the “Promote User” tab to the right and you’re all set.

As always, we’d love some feedback. Leave us a comment below and let us know what you think!