We’re making a few changes to how our WordPress.com automatic login feature works on the backend and we have temporarily disabled it.  Users are still able to log in to IntenseDebate manually using their WordPress.com account both at IntenseDebate.com and in the comment sections on your site.  Auto-login will be returning very soon and will work the same as it did before once it’s back.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

We’ve been working non-stop to address these issues. Our highest priority is improving the performance and long term scalability of IntenseDebate for you.

Now we could leave it at that, be completely opaque about what changes we’re doing and just hope that you’ll trust that we’re working hard on the problem, but you all deserve more and need to trust that our service can perform for you.  So here’s a behind-the-scenes peek for those of you interested in how we’re tackling this problem.

The first major change we’ve been working on is sharding some of our larger and most frequently used tables into a more efficient and scalable database schema.  For those of you not familiar with sharding it means storing all your data in several smaller tables instead of one large monolithic table.  This allows us to get your data much more quickly and makes for a much more horizontally scalable system. (We can continue to add more tables to keep them small as our total data storage increases.)  This is complete for our most heavily used data, comments, and will continue where appropriate.

The second change is creating more summary tables to simplify the retrieval of common data.  Even after sharding some of the data is still too slow to compute on-the-fly.  Summary tables cache frequently used computations which will allow us to get this information almost instantly.

Last, but not least, we’re optimizing our logging and background processing.  We do quite a bit of logging to ensure things are running  smoothly and to help debug quickly when things don’t.  In particular the syncing process to and from WordPress blogs has a lot of activity we store for troubleshooting.  We’ve done some work to make this logging faster and less system heavy, as well as some fine tuning of what and when we log in order to help ensure that these troubleshooting tools don’t have a negative impact on the performance of the core service.

I want to reiterate we’re acutely aware of performance over the last few weeks and there is no excuse for poor service or performance.  We’ve fixed the most pressing issues, but we’re taking a number of proactive steps to ensure that we can maintain the level of service that you deserve from us.  Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

The most notable change is in the initial registration.  We’ve completely rebuilt the interface for initial registration of your blog with IntenseDebate to help make the process even easier and better explain what is happening during this one-time registration to clear up some confusion that was circling around the previous versions.  Below are a couple of screenshots of the new registration:

We’ve also addressed some display bugs when using our plugin with the latest 2.7 release of WordPress.

Additionally, we continue to improve the syncing between IntenseDebate and WordPress. We’ve now added a method to help us detect if your blog ends up out of sync with IntenseDebate and automatically correct the issue.

And last but not least we’ve heard your cries for XHTML validation and made some improvements to the code to address this, as well as alleviating some plugin conflicts with a handful of other plugins that conflicted with the previous version of our plugin.

If you’re an existing plugin user you can update from your Plugins page in your blog’s WordPress admin panel.  If not (or if you prefer to upgrade yourself) you can download the plugin here.  As always, give us your feedback!  We’d love to hear what you think and any suggestions you might have for making the integration with WordPress even better.

So what does this mean for you, our valued users? A couple of things:
1.) We will be temporarily going back into an invite only system. This won’t affect our current users, but new installs will require an invite code. This is just to give us a little time to ramp up the hardware and get our ducks in a row as we join the Automattic team.

2.) You’ll be seeing IntenseDebate a lot more often. We’re really excited about the distribution possibilities this opens up, so expect to see our comment system and use your IntenseDebate profile on a lot more blogs.

3.) You can look forward to tighter integration with some of the other Automattic joints including Akismet and Gravatar.

But don’t worry!
You will still be able to use IntenseDebate on Typepad, Tumblr, Blogger, Movable Type, and other platforms with more to come! We will continue to improve our comment system and your commenters’ experience. IntenseDebate will continue to enhance and encourage conversation on your blog and build your reader community.

It’s business as usual except we will be ramping up in size and features, and integrating more closely with other Automattic properties to provide an even better commenting experience. The IntenseDebate name and logo isn’t going anywhere – it’s just going to get way more Intense! It’s been a long road to get here, but we’re just getting started…

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 looking to add one or two people in the very important role of Intense Debate support staff (part-time). It doesn’t matter where you live—you can work from home. You need:

• An enthusiasm for blogs, comments, and Intense Debate
• Great (and speedy) written English skills
• At least 15 hours a week of focused availability
• To be a highly proficient user of the web, a heavy blog reader, a blog author, a software aficionado, and a quick learner

The job consists, basically, of answering emails from people who write in who are having trouble with Intense Debate and helping them out as quickly as possible.

Pay will be hourly. Inquire for more details.

Send your resume and Intense Debate user name to jobs AT intensedebate.com

Clicking the link opens up comments inline like the following:

This allows you to comment on the articles with any others that have the extension installed. You can also get a feed of all of the comments on any post here.

You can download the add-on from his site (as well as download the Greasemonkey script version). Tell us what you think of it.

Also, if you’ve done something interesting with Intense Debate please let us know.

Technology Evangelist (full time)

We’re seeking a real web maniac who enjoys reaching out to publishers and engaging them in conversations about how to make our product better for them.
The ideal candidate will be a strong communicator, web savvy, and be capable of handling basic technical support for our important customers.

Software Engineer (full time)

We are looking for an outstandingly talented developer with an in-depth knowledge of PHP and Javascript. You must be fast, flexible, and very self-motivated, and have a passion for startups! Familiarity with blogs/blogging and MySQL databases are pluses.

Bookkeeper / Accountant (part time)

See the full description here.

If you’re interested in any of these roles please email us at jobs@intensedebate.com.  Also be sure to keep an eye on our new jobs page to see these and future postings.

Come join our team, and be a part of this exciting adventure, as we build the best comment system on the web!

Tom has more than 20 years’ experience in finance and high tech. Prior to joining IntenseDebate, Tom served as CEO at ClickCaster, where he helped reposition the company and guide it to profitability. Previously, Tom founded and was President and CEO of Net Infrastructure Corporation for 6 years. Tom holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree from the University of Washington, and a Master of Science degree in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University.

Glad to have you as part of the team Tom.  We’ve got a lot of exciting things to announce in the coming weeks, so be sure to subscribe to this blog if you haven’t already.