Today we’re happy to announce another release, although this one probably won’t be as noticeable as some in the past.  Last night we released a completely rewritten loading system for our comments.  We’ve also completely redone our caching procedures, upgraded our infrastructure, and even optimized our server configurations a bit.  So what does all this mean?  Well, it’s all geared toward making the comments load faster than ever before.  You should start seeing noticeable improvements in our comment system’s load time.

Also, something that is a little more obvious is the addition of the sorting options to the comment system.  You can now sort by date (like a more traditional comment system would), comment rating (what it’s always done up till now), and most recent activity, which orders them by putting the most recent comments at the top, making it easier than ever to keep track of how the conversation is progressing and organize the comments how you want them.

We’ve got a lot of changes in progress right now and lots of exciting things happening in the next few weeks…we’ll let you know as it unfolds.

Posted by Jon Fox in features

Today we are announcing that Josh is leaving Intense Debate for personal reasons.  We all feel this is what’s best for both Intense Debate and Josh. We certainly wish him well in his future pursuits.

Losing a team member in a small startup like ours is obviously never easy, but we remain committed to providing the best tool for online conversation to all of our users.

We’ve got some really exciting stuff in the pipeline, so keep checking back for the latest news.

Posted by Jon Fox in News

We’ve got several new things we’ve rolled out today.  Probably the first thing you’ll notice is this blog’s redesign.  This new look matches the rest of our site better and puts a new shine on this blog.

Another recent update is to the forums.  We’ve done several changes to help speed up the load time as well as offer new options for sorting to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.  You can expect to see these sorting options rolled out to blogs shortly.

And finally, a few things you may or may not notice are several bug fixes that have been released.  The issues with comments that couldn’t be found to be deleted as well as some issues with multiple posts should be resolved among others.

As always, feel free to give us your feedback in the forums or by email (contactus@intensedebate.com).

Posted by Jon Fox in News

There’s been a lot of stuff going on around here recently. We wanted to make a couple quick announcements to keep you informed.

The most noticeable is the new front page. We continue to strive to make it simpler and easier for our new users to give Intense Debate a try. We now offer a single line of javascript, available right from the front page, that allows anyone to drop Intense Debate Comments into any blog or website. This gives a quick, easy way to test drive Intense Debate for yourself.

Another thing to note is the announcement of our new product team. We’ve been hearing your feedback and we really took it to heart. We compiled a list of bloggers to give us direct feedback on new designs, features, and ideas. Please check out the product team page to see the full list. A big thanks goes to all of our product team for their help and commitment to making Intense Debate better. We’ll take all the help we can get in making Intense Debate the best commenting solution available!

And lastly, something you might or might not have directly noticed is that we’re in midst of many changes to help improve the performance of our product. We’ve already made several updates, and there are several more on the way, all geared toward making a faster, more efficient product for our users.

As always, feel free to give us feedback and help shape the product. You can contact us by posting in our forums or emailing us directly at contactus@intensedebate.com. We’ve got several exciting things in the queue, so be sure to check back frequently.

Posted by Jon Fox in News

We had a great first week at TechStars. We kept thinking to ourselves that three months ago this was a pipe dream.

We are meeting all sorts of great people and getting feedback on our offering.

Some highlights include Jon talking to Darren Crystal (Co-Founder of Photobucket) for almost 15 minutes without knowing who he was(/humor). Another highlight was meeting with Todd Vernon, our lead mentor and CEO of Lijit.com.

The bottom line is Boulder is a great town and all the mentors are extremely open to meet and talk with us. The other companies are great too! Overall, it is an awesome ecosystem to be a part of.

Posted by Jon Fox in News