Today we enter an open beta where any publisher with a Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, or website can add an Intense Debate comment system to their site. Over the past few months we have made many site upgrades and bug fixes to get to where we are today and, while not perfect, we felt pushing a launch now would put Intense Debate in a great position moving forward.

While we open our site, we also make new features available that make Intense Debate truly special. We have heard from our critics that to be a true friend to the publisher and user we must use OpenID. We agree. Intense Debate will now make an OpenID sign up available to users. OpenID will make it easier for users to sign up for our service and also makes us not “another login.”

We have also made a great upgrade for our publishers in how our comments display. Now someone can click on their comment link and see the comments drop down from the actual post. This keeps the reader from having to go to a separate page to view and make comments. For readers who want to read the comments in a new window, we are now making this functionality available as well. Many users on video sites enjoy this so we felt compelled to build it.  You can adjust this feature from the blog settings page in your Intense Debate admin panel.

With all the new features you might overlook our new design elements. The new homepage is almost entirely redesigned with a new header that runs throughout the site and an intro video to spotlight our most important features. The new design makes better use of space and will help with usability.

We have also added some options for those with Typepad or Blogger blogs. We now offer an install on all of your posts or just those with no comments. Previously, we only offered an install on posts with no comments.

Sometimes it isn’t easy to know all that we offer. As mentioned before, we now have an intro video. To be even more clear, we have created a features page with some lengthier descriptions. Check it out!

And as if all this wasn’t enough, we’ve also included a completely new user dashboard.  Find out all kinds of great statistics about you and your friends.  See the latest comments from you, your friends, or all of Intense Debate.  Also get the latest news and updates on what’s happening with Intense Debate.  We put everything you need in one convenient location.

Along with the new features several bugs have been fixed. The most notable pertains to our login system which has been completely rebuilt to make it more scalable and solve some firewall issues.

We continue to search out feedback. Please feel free to drop us a line anytime at contactus@intensedebate.com

Posted by Isaac Keyet in Blogger,News,TypePad,WordPress Plugin

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