You can’t rush perfection. Like wine, code needs to mature to ensure excellence. This has been on the down-low for months. We’ve been taking our time to massage out all of the knots, dot all i’s and cross all the t’s. If you’ve listened closely you might have heard quiet whispers about our new IntenseDebate Wordpress plugin. Over the past couple of months I have been recruiting testers for our private alpha testing. When I first told our good buddy, Chris Farley about our new plugin for his blog ViewfromaFarley, his response was:

I started reading this e-mail and by the time I was finished I was ecstatic. This is everything I’ve been looking for in Intense Debate and more. These features are great for bloggers!

I would be more than happy to be a tester. Strange as it may sound, I’m getting as excited about the new plugin as I am about the new iPhone.

And with good reason… The new IntenseDebate Wordpress plugin is one of a kind, featuring advanced integrations that you won’t find and can’t get anywhere else. I can’t spill the beans on our full feature list yet, but one of the key ingredients is complete data sync like nothing you’ve seen before. That’s all I can say right now, but let your imagination run wild with this - if you can dream it, well, we’ve most likely done it.

Private beta starts Sunday, August 24th with the public release following shortly thereafter. If you would like to get in on the beta, drop me line at support@intensedebate.com. If we’ve already chatted about it there’s no need to email, I’ve got you covered. For all of my alpha testers out there who have yet to receive the plugin, there’s no need to email - I know who you are and you’ll be hearing from me soon.

Peace, I’m outta here!

Posted by Michael Koenig

Last night’s release marks the start of the IntenseDebate revolution. We’ve had our heads down over the past few months working on several projects that are now all coming to fruition. We’re unleashing an unrelenting stream of new game changing features, improvements and developments. Hold on to your hats, it’s about to get crazy.

New Sleek Feel
If you’re a regular visitor of IntenseDebate.com then you’ve probably noticed our new sleek design and layout. Our Swedish designer, Isaac Keyet, has been working tirelessly on our website redesign (install, registration process and all) for around three months now, so you can imagine our excitement to have it up and running! Congrats Isaac on a job well done!

Advanced Spam Ass-Kicking
In addition, we’ve also released our Akismet spam filter integration. It’s a preemptive but necessary measure against one of the evil forces lurking about on the net. Plus we had to do something to put a final end to the days of that pesky jewelry spammer some of you may have encountered.

New Wordpress Plugin Beta Testing
And now the pièce de résistance - later today we will announce upcoming beta testing dates and a full feature list for our new Wordpress plugin! People will bow to it.

Stay tuned for details…

UPDATE:
Sorry all, I spoke too soon. I will not be divulging a full feature set today, just some. Gotta leave some gravy for the big launch day!

Posted by Michael Koenig

We’re constantly searching the globe for talented developers to join our crew here at IntenseDebate. Drum roll please…

Please meet the newest rockstar to join our crew here at IntenseDebate, Mehmet Alkanlar. New to Boulder, Colorado, Mehmet joins us from Izmir, Turkey and has some heavy PHP/MySQL experience under his belt.

Mehmet holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Montana State University. But there’s more to Mehmet than meets the eye. He’s a skydiver, windsurfer, and classical guitarist - that’s a pretty well rounded developer right there.

He’s been here a little over a week and his abilities are already blowing our minds. Currently he’s tackling some back-end projects but you can expect to see him flex his dev muscles with some shiny new features soon enough. Please drop Mehmet a line in the comment section below, and be sure to check out his profile to learn more about him. Oh and swing by his twitter profile - he’s brand new and trying to get the hang of it!

Stoked to have you on the team Mehmet!

Posted by Michael Koenig

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

So Klondike is having this What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar? video contest where the winner gets $100K. Let’s face it, there’s no way you’re going to win that contest. But IntenseDebate is giving you the opportunity to still be a winner!

Introducing IntenseDebate’s What Would You Do For an IntenseDebate T-Shirt Comment Contest where the winner gets $100 NO!, $50 NO!, $25 NO!… to feed their ego and an IntenseDebate t-shirt.

The rules are simple: leave us a comment detailing what you would do for an IntenseDebate t-shirt and if it’s t-shirt worthy then it shall be yours! Seeing as this is the first batch of t’s, we’ve got a limited supply.

You don’t even want to know what these folks had to do to get a shirt…

Posted by Michael Koenig

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

You may have noticed some changes that were rolled out in last night’s release. Three cheers to the team for getting all this out!

HTML Parsing
We’re proud to answer the call and release HTML support in IntenseDebate comments. If you’ve got the urge to add a little self-expression, feel free to add some bold or italic characters. You can also customize your links and add some photos to your comments. You can allow your readers to add images to their comments by enabling this option in your Blog Settings page (login into IntenseDebate.com, select the tab named after your blog followed by the “Settings” sub-tab). The option is located on the right side of the page under the heading “Display Settings.” Image tags are disabled by default. IntenseDebate supports the following HTML tags - <a>, <b>, <i>, <u>, <em>, <p>, <blockquote>, <br>, <strong>, <strike>, <img>.

Popular Blog Posts Widget
We released a new widget that displays the most popular blog posts on your blog (as determined by the number of comments made per post). By displaying this widget on your home page, you’ll be able to breath new life into your past blog posts and drive some fresh traffic their way. This widget is the next step in bringing your content into the light (check out our past progress here & here). This widget can be found on our Add-on’s page along with our other kick-ass widgets (Blog Stats, Recent Comments, My Recent Comments, and Top Commenters).

New Usernames & Profile URL’s
After much deliberation, we’ve decided to take the plunge and update our approach to usernames and profile URL’s. Before we get any further into this, this does not have anything to do with your Display Name - your Display Name has not changed.

Basically we’ve changed your username from an account ID number to a friendlier name. Integrating your IntenseDebate account with other 3rd party services like FriendFeed will be a bit easier now. For those of you that have enabled IntenseDebate’s FriendFeed Comment Retrieval you might recall having to enter your IntenseDebate profile URL that consisted of an ugly user account ID number. Your profile URL is a little prettier and looks a little something like this: http://intensedebate.com/people/michael.

If you are using our IntenseDebate FriendFeed Comment Retrieval, you do not need to update your IntenseDebate profile URL in your FriendFeed account. You’re all set.

Here’s the skinny on the new usernames. Your username has automatically been updated. Please note that any incompatible characters were removed from your username. In addition, numbers from your IntenseDebate account ID may have been added to your username in the event that there were duplicate usernames. Again, this will not affect your IntenseDebate Display Name.

We wanted to let you know about this in case you want to set your username and profile URL to something that fits your style so you can remember it more easily. To update your username please edit your IntenseDebate user profile. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it will be worth it in the long run!

As always, please feel free to drop us a line with any questions or feedback.

Sincerely,
The fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig

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

We’re like an assembly line. Our crew here is cranking out features with the efficiency of a well oiled machine. Props to Austin for cranking out his first feature release after only working at IntenseDebate for one week! I wasn’t kidding…he’s the LeBron James of developers.

Thanks to Austin’s hard work, we’re able to release two more widely requested features. First up is Gravatar support - you asked for it, so you got it. Now you can use your Gravatar with IntenseDebate. To use your Gravatar with IntenseDebate, check out the new option in your IntenseDebate profile (screenshot below). Don’t know what a Gravatar is? Learn more here.

We’ve also released new moderation features for blog admins. Admins are now able to ban a commenter from posting on their blog by IP address or email. This is useful for those pesky spammers and self-promoters that just won’t leave your blog alone. This gives admins the ability to ban anonymous commenters who haven’t created an IntenseDebate account as well. In addition, admins can also flag posts to be held for moderation based on IP and email. These new moderation tools are available in your “Settings” panel located in your IntenseDebate account.

We love your feedback, so keep the ideas coming! Job well done Austin!

Posted by Michael Koenig

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