Saturday Release

While many Americans are watching their favorite college football teams we at Intense Debate are making a release. So, what’s inside?

A new installer for generic websites (and other platforms we don’t offer specific support for yet). This enables people without a blog (or on a platform other than those explicitly supported) to place a piece of code onto their web pages and take advantage of the best comment system in the world. I should also mention it is connected back to our network allowing members to track each other not only across blogs, but also across websites.

We are also releasing our advanced template installer for Typepad. This opens up a whole other market for us and also allows many of our friends to join us.

One of our more important releases this go around is our Blogger importer/exporter. This means the publisher now has the capability through their settings page on their profile to import all previous comments into our system and convert them into Intense Debate comments. With our exporter for Blogger, publishers can now export their comments out of Intense Debate and into their former blog commenting system. To our publishers, ask and you shall receive. These were both highly requested features.

Something you will also notice is our marking of blog admin comments and friend comments. With this, people can quickly peruse a comments section and immediately tell where the comments are for the people they care about.

Another marking you will notice is the blue star next to Josh, Jon, and Isaac’s names. We believe that people will enjoy knowing when we are around and can ask a question if they see fit.

Finally, we have released updaters/re-installers for each platform so that if you switch themes or moved from classic to advanced templates in Typepad, our users have an easy way to do this. This is available in the blog settings page.

If there are any questions, feature requests, or feedback, feel free to contact us in our forums or “contact” page.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in Blogger,features,TypePad

We are iterating fast and furiously over here at Intense Debate. Our latest release includes a healthy list of updates and features.

First, what you will immediately notice is our site remake. This new look is complements of Isaac and features new button as well as other improvements.

For publishers, a primary concern with their comments is data control. We will be taking steps to show that we are genuine in our intentions and allow publishers access to their comment data. The first solution we are providing was released last night and allows publishers to download an xml file with their comment data whenever they feel like it. We want to be a friend to publishers and this solution will keep with that theme.

Last, but certainly not the least, for all you widget lovers we are making another available. It is a top commenters widget that displays the users that make the most comments on your blog. It displays an avatar, screename, reputation, and their rank. Best of all, the widget includes “Chameleon” capability and will adapt to the surrounding blog colors and fonts, just like the other widgets.

As always, feedback is welcome anytime. You can visit our forums and also contact me directly: josh at intensedebate dot com should you have any questions or feedback.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in features

I wanted to take the time to highlight some other new features we just implemented here at ID.

Our foreign fans will be happy to know that we have implemented multilanguage support. This comes after having a large portion of our sign ups come from non-English speaking countries. We have heard you loud and clear and moved this feature up on the priority list to meet the incoming demand.

The forums at Intense Debate have also changed. We have morphed our comment system into a forum so that it will carry all of the same functionality as our blog comment system and won’t require a separate login as Phpbb does. Plus, the annoying spam issue should be completely rectified. We also believe the forums will be far more helpful because of increased participation.

We have also heard from people wanting some flare for their feed. We are happy to oblige. Now publishers can enable a comments link in their feed that will display the number of comments for your blog posts.

Once again, if you have some feedback for us, please let us know and we may be able to include your suggestion in a future release.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in features

Greetings ID’ers,

Today we are releasing several new features. We are happy to say that our users have had a great amount of influence in this current release.

One of the most exciting features we are releasing is our new theme. Many of our users offered feedback on how to improve upon our theme moving forward and the “Chameleon” is the result. We call our new theme the “Chameleon” because of it’s ability to adapt to the predominant colors of the blog or website surrounding it. This helps color coordination and is all done “automagically” without the publisher having to get involved. Best of all, our publishers can go back and forth between the themes whenever they like.

Still, there are publishers who want even more control and we are happy to oblige. We have built in the ability for designers to upload a CSS stylesheet and override our styling. This allows for publishers to customize how their comment systems look and make their comment systems unique.

Like customization? Good, we now are offering publishers the ability to change how their comments link displays. Right now, my comments link states “Comments (2)” but with this new ability, I can change it to “Bad Ass Comments (2)”…

We also noticed our anonymous commenters needing some love. We have now made it optional for anonymous posters to link to their url.

There is more, but it will have to wait for another post. As always, we love feedback and feature requests!

Posted by Isaac Keyet in features

Our Summer at TechStars has come to a close. To simply say that it was everything we could have asked for and more would be an understatement. The people we have been exposed to, the relationships made, the polishing of our companies, and all the other great things that have happened while we are here in Boulder have exceeded our expectations.

TechStars went out with a bang. We had a great investor day followed by a great evening with friends at The Kitchen. The funny thing is that most of the teams are staying here in Boulder and using it as their base of operations. On that note, we have something to add.

We can also announce that our North American Headquarters will be made here in Boulder. It is just the right move for us. The majority of our mentors are here, there is a great startup environment in Colorado, and we feel like the community has embraced us since we came here. We are also making an expansion into Europe as Isaac will be heading up our European Outpost for the near term. He will come back to us some day.

The end is only the beginning for us. In the coming weeks, we will share more great news with you.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in News