Our Plugins API is seeing a lot of activity now, and we’re pleased to announce the release of the new Blog Tweets plugin.  Developed by Vivek Puri, the Blog Tweets plugin uses LinksAlpha to aggregate Tweets linking to your blog post in your IntenseDebate comments section.  Blog Tweets will show up to 20 Tweets in your comments section – pretty cool!

Aggregating Tweets linking to your blog can help provide a more holistic view of the conversation going on about your posts.  This has been a popular feature request, and we’re really excited about Vivek’s work.

About the plugin:

When you activate the plugin, LinksAlpha.com indexes your blog feed and scours Twitter for related Tweets that link back to your post. This includes Tweets that link to your post using URL shortening services like bit.ly.

There is a 5-10 minute period for your post to be indexed by LinksAlpha, which means there will be a slight delay for Tweets to start showing up in your comments section.

Also, when the plugin hits the Twitter API it is likely that Twitter will only return results for recent posts, so Tweets about your older posts won’t necessarily show up.

All Tweets are displayed just below the comment section under the header, “Social Trackbacks,” so Tweets won’t interrupt the comment stream.

Like all IntenseDebate plugins, adding advanced features to your comment section is a piece of cake: just visit your Plugins Page at http://intensedebate.com/plugins, and select “Activate” next to the plugin. That’s all! There’s no additional code for you to manually install, so there’s no need to get your hands dirty messing around with your template.

Please keep in mind that activating plugins for your IntenseDebate comments means that additional code will be loading in your comments section, which may impact load times (especially if you’re running loads of our cool plugins 😉 ).

Interested in flexing your own coding muscles and developing a super-slick plugin? Check out our Plugin Resources and documentation. You can also check out our Plugins blog post for more information.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

This is super-cool!  We’re excited to introduce a new IntenseDebate plugin developed by Sam Walters: Comment Translate.  Built using Google Translate, Comment Translate gives your readers the option to translate all comments and trackbacks on your post into their language of choice.

Languages available for comment translation:

Sam’s plugin couldn’t have come at a better time as we continue to expand our localization project to make IntenseDebate more accessible for everyone. Thanks to our fantastic group of volunteers, the IntenseDebate comment section is now available in 20 languages with more on the way!

To activate the Translate Comments plugin, visit your Plugins Page in your IntenseDebate account at http://intensedebate.com/plugins. Locate the Translate Comments plugin and select “Activate”. That’s it! It’s just that one simple click and your comments can now be translated to 51 languages!

Interested in flexing your own coding muscles and developing a super-slick plugin? Check out our Plugin Resources and documentation. You can also check out our Plugins blog post for more information.

Hat’s off to Sam for his contribution!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

Andy Bailey, the code ninja behind CommentLuv, has been working to get CommentLuv integrated with IntenseDebate, and we’re pumped to let you know that the shiny new ID CommentLuv plugin is ready for primetime! CommentLuv has been always been a widely requested feature, and with good reason – it’s the perfect fit for IntenseDebate, and will go a long way in helping strengthen your community. You can check out Andy’s post here.

So what’s CommentLuv?

CommentLuv rewards your readers and helps you discover new and interesting posts by automatically adding a titled link to the comment authors last blog post when they comment.

Just like all of our plugins, activating is one simple click of the mouse and you’re done. When you’re logged in, go to http://intensedebate.com/plugins, find the CommentLuv plugin, and hit “Activate”. That’s it! Make sure you check out our other plugins like PollDaddy Polls, After the Deadline spelling and grammar checker, and loads more.

Using the CommentLuv plugin is a piece of cake. Just select the CommentLuv checkbox, enter your site URL, and select the post that you’d like to link to. Type your comment, hit submit, and voilà – you’re done! We’ve activated the plugin on our blog, so give a try below.

Interested in flexing your own coding muscles and developing a super-slick plugin? Check out our Plugin Resources and documentation. You can also check out our Plugins blog post for more information.

Hats off to Andy for his work to bring CommentLuv to IntenseDebate!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re excited to introduce two new IntenseDebate Plugins: AddThis and Facebook Share buttons for your posts!

Facebook Share Button
The Facebook Share button provides your readers with an easy way to share your blog post with all of their Facebook friends. Now you can install the Facebook Share Button with one click through your IntenseDebate Plugins page. Hats off to Dog Lover for developing this plugin! Make sure you check out Dog Lover’s other plugin, TweetMeme Retweet Button.

AddThis Share Button
AddThis is a bookmarking and sharing service. Enabling the AddThis button gives your readers the ability to share your blog post with their friends through a variety of online services (in addition to Facebook). Many thanks to tylerabell for his contribution!

We love offering new ways to enrich your blog and comment section with additional third party services with just a simple mouse click. Just like our other IntenseDebate Plugins, like PollDaddy Polls, Seesmic Video comments, Smiley, and YouTube (among others), there’s no need to mess around with any code in your template. We do it for you. All you have to do is activate it!

Learn more about our Plugins and Plugins API.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

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