We’re extremely excited to introduce you to the future of commenting – today we launch IntenseDebate Plugins!  We’re opening our doors and making our code available so you can build your own plugins!

We’re kicking it off in style by launching a few plugins of our own to demonstrate the possibilities:

PollDaddy: We love our fellow Automattic company and you should too!  Enable our PollDaddy plugin and your readers will be able to create polls right in the comment section.  Many thanks to Eoin and Lenny (the real PollDaddy’s) for their help!

Seesmic: We’re excited to be working with the Seesmic crew to provide video comments.  Enable our Seesmic plugin and give your readers the ability to record and post video comments.

YouTube: This one was developed by our very own code maestro Jon Fox (the man behind IntenseDebate).  Enabling our YouTube plugin provides your commenters with the option to insert their favorite YouTube vids.

Smileys: Hats off to Isaac and Austin on this one.  It’s all about self-expression.  Add in a 😉 and let everyone know that you’re just being sarcastic and not mean!

So all of you developers and IntenseDebate enthusiasts our there, we welcome you to flex your coding muscles to help shape
IntenseDebate to be the comment system that meets all of your needs.  For more information about writing a plugin see our Plugin Resources.

So what does this mean?
There is a brand spanking new Plugins tab in your IntenseDebate dashboard that lists the current plugins available.  To activate a plugin just select “Activate” next to the plugin when you are logged into your account.  Check out the comment section on your blog and you’ll find a plugin icon at the top right of the comment box.  To use the plugin just select the icon and you’ll be ready to roll.

For more information check out our Plugins video and enjoy the soothing voice of our esteemed colleague, Michael Pick.  We’d love it if you helped spread the word, so please grab the embed code and publish a post about our sweet new plugins!

Kudos to Jon, Isaac, Austin, MT, Michael Pick, Eoin, Lenny, and the Seesmic team for all of the help!

Get Started With IntenseDebate!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We know we’ve been a little quiet lately – we’ve been hard at work in the lab.  We’ve given the IntenseDebate back-end a huge overhaul, making IntenseDebate more scalable and stable than ever.  Now we’ve set our sights on optimizing your commenting experience – exciting improvements are on the way!

We’re kicking it off with swanky new public profile pages to put the focus on your comments and make it easier to interact with them!  Ooh, and we’re bringing Polaroid pictures back.  😉

So what’s new?

• Comment Search: Find specific comments that you’ve made.
• Full Comment History: Keep track of every single comment you’ve made.
• Overview: Get a quick overview of a fellow commenter with some stats and other profile goodness.
• Description + Latest Tweet: Before you had to choose one…now you can have both.
• Avatar Quilt: See who I’m following.
• Connect Across the Web: Check out my other online properties.

Check out your profile and select “View your profile as others see it”.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

With the launch of the Brightcove Alliance, IntenseDebate comments can now be added to any Brightcove video player. That’s right, we’re bringing the debate to video content across the Web.

Brightcove is an online video platform that is used by media companies, businesses and organizations worldwide to publish and distribute video on the Web. Integrating IntenseDebate with the Brightcove video platform provides audiences with a unique opportunity to voice their opinions and engage in conversation around your media.

We are proud to offer innovative options for integrating IntenseDebate comments with other Web services to enhance your blog or website. As part of the Brightcove Alliance, IntenseDebate joins Brightcove in a commitment to revolutionizing the way your audience interacts with your content.

About the Brightcove Alliance


The Brightcove Alliance is a global ecosystem of leading technology and distribution partners who have integrated with the Brightcove online video platform, as well as solution providers building customer websites and video applications using Brightcove. Through the Brightcove Alliance, organizations worldwide have access to a broad range of expert partners, pre-integrated technologies and services to support online video initiatives of any size and scope in every market.

For more information about integrating IntenseDebate with your Brightcove video platform please get in contact with us!

For more information about Brightcove please visit take a look here get in contact with their sales department.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features,News

All right, here’s the skinny. We’re getting ready to release our new Google Reader and Bloglines plugins for Firefox 2 & 3 and we’re looking for beta testers.

This isn’t your normal run of the mill RSS reader integration. Our Google Reader and Bloglines plugins allow you to not only access IntenseDebate comments, but also respond to them directly from your reader! Amazing right?!?! I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been playing around with our Google Reader plugin on Firefox 3 for the past week and it is so choice.

If you’re interested in testing out our betas please drop me a line at support@intensedebate.com and we’ll get you all set up.

Start getting excited!
Michael & the fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re pleased to answer your calls and release two new admin features this week. Big ups to our dev team for keeping the good stuff coming and for keepin’ it real.

Close Comments On Posts
Let’s face it sometimes debates just get too intense. Honestly, it’s a health risk – blood pressures start rising, heart rates elevate…look we don’t need anyone keeling over from a heart attack. We don’t want to have to put a disclaimer on IntenseDebate that you should have Bayer Aspirin on hand when using our product. We’re concerned about your health. IntenseDebate cares.

So we thought it would be a good idea to take some preventative measures and give blog publishers the ability to close comments on posts. This feature can be accessed in your IntenseDebate comments on your blog post under the “Admin Options” tab.

Commenter Account Stipulations
In staying with the theme of keepin’ it real, blog publishers can now set commenter account stipulations. That’s just fancy talk for saying that you can opt to require all of your commenters to create IntenseDebate accounts in order to comment on your posts. Now you can choose whether or not you want to allow anonymous comments on your posts. If you’ve had issues with spammers or repeat anonymous comment offenders, you can require them to create an account and keep the debate real. This feature is available in your blog settings page at IntenseDebate.com (login, select the tab named after your blog, followed by the “Settings” sub-tab).

As always, we’d love your feedback.

Word out,
The Fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig in features