Yesterday we identified and corrected a temporary bug with our email notification system. The issue prevented new comments from being adding to our email queue, and emails notifications were not sent for around a 12 hour period. We’ve updated our email systems to optimize performance, and to prevent this from occurring again.

Missed email notifications are being sent now and should be caught-up within the next couple of hours. Sorry for the inconvenience – we appreciate your patience.

Posted by Michael Koenig in News

IntenseDebate is feature packed and we’re always adding new bells and whistles. Of course, you know this by now and are likely pretty familiar with our tools. Still there might be some cool features that you never knew existed. We’re guessing that you’re familiar with our email notifications, but there’s one method of subscribing to comments that might be overlooked (I know this because I recently forgot it existed).  This post outlines three methods for commenters to opt to receive email notifications for comments posted.

Subscribe without posting a comment:
This option is located in the RSS menu in the top right of the comment section and is available to everyone: IntenseDebate users, along with commenters posting either as Guests, with Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-In, or OpenID.  You can opt to receive email notifications for a single post or for comments on all posts.

Subscribe when posting a comment:
When you post your comment you can opt to receive email notifications for all comments or just for replies to your own.  This option is available to all commenters (IntenseDebate accounts, Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-In, OpenID, and Guests).

Subscribe automatically (for IntenseDebate users only):
This option is enabled by default for all IntenseDebate users.  You can configure your settings at http://intensedebate.com/edit-user-account.

More tips to come! 😉

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

One of our ongoing projects has been revamping all of the useful pages in your account at IntenseDebate.com.  We’ll be the first to admit it, there’s a ton of awesome features in your profile but they need to be better organized so you can find them all!  We don’t want you to be overwhelmed with too many sudden changes, so we’ve been rolling out small changes over the past several weeks, some of which have likely gone unnoticed, until now…

We have released two major changes. The first is our stylish new home page at IntenseDebate.com. Since you have to be logged out of your IntenseDebate account in order to see the front page (click here to logout), you might not have noticed that one. But, the next change you will undoubtedly notice when you’re logged into your account, and that’s your shiny new Edit Profile page.

So what’s new?
It’s all about the layout. On our old profile pages we just crammed in as much as we could. We would release new features like our Twitter integration (tweet this & latest tweets) or our Gravatar support and we would squeeze it into the old page. Now we’ve organized it a bit more sensibly.  In your Profile Panel you’ll find the following:

• Account Page: here you can manage your basic account settings like your username, email address, OpenID, password, and email notification options.
• User Profile Page: your display name, profile description, and your personal websites (linked to in your profile) are all located here.
• User Picture: manage your Gravatar or IntenseDebate avatar.
• Services: this is where you can manage all of your 3rd party services that you link to in your profile, as well as your Twitter account integration.

We think you’ll agree that this is a major improvement.  Hats off to Isaac and Jon for their work!  Keep an eye for more changes as we continue to make our way across IntenseDebate.com. 🙂

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

FriendFeed Comment Retrieval
Kudos to Jon and Austin on this week’s feature release. We’re really stoked to announce our improved FriendFeed support. At IntenseDebate we strive to keep your content on your blog. As your content gets more and more fragmented across other 3rd party services, our goal is to bring your blog content back to you. With this in mind, we’re really pleased to roll out our latest FriendFeed integration, FriendFeed Comment Retrieval. Now when comments are made in the context of your blog on FriendFeed, IntenseDebate will republish them back on your blog! All you need to do is enter in your FriendFeed URL and select the option in your IntenseDebate profile.

Please keep in mind that this is the first step and there is one immediate limitation – FriendFeed does not support threaded comments which prevents comments made in FriendFeed from being threaded on your blog. Also, comments made in FriendFeed that are posted in IntenseDebate are tied to your FriendFeed account instead of your IntenseDebate account. We’re continuing to make this as seamless as possible and are hoping to have these comments tied to your IntenseDebate account.

Enhanced Gravatar Support
Last week we introduced our Gravatar support and last night we rolled out an improvement that we’re calling Auto-Grab Gravatar support. Now we will automatically upload your Gravatar (if you use the service). Just one less step in pimping your IntenseDebate profile. You can choose to use your Gravatar or upload a different profile pic.

Optional Profanity Filter
We’ve also added an optional profanity filter for blog publishers. Words entered on your profanity list will be replaced with “****.” This option can be enabled in your “Settings” page (select the tab named after your blog followed by the “Settings” sub-tab). Please note that we have not populated the profanity filter – certain words are obvious (shit, fuck, etc.), but we didn’t want to make a decision on the borderline words (ass, asshole, etc.). So we leave it up to you. Love to hear your thoughts about these borderline words, please leave us a fucking comment.

Email Notification Update
An update on our top priority, stabilizing our email notifications. Currently we’ve put a band-aid on it and have we’ve been sending and receiving email notifications consistently. We are switching our outbound mail system to prevent any future email glitches. If you find that you are still not receiving emails, please contact us at support@intensedebate.com. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we get this all sorted out.

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’ve been receiving reports of email notification inconsistencies. We’ve been experiencing this on our end as well. Rest assured that we’re on it. This will be fixed shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,
The Fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig in News