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

IntenseDebate would like to congratulate Paul Kedrosky on receiving the Silver Medal for the best financial blog from Pensions & Investments. If you’re not familiar with Paul’s blog, Infectious Greed, be sure to check it out and subscribe. Check out the full story here.

Congrats Paul!

-The Fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig

We’re proud to announce the newest addition to the IntenseDebate crew, Austin Hallock. Austin joins us as a self-taught programmer from Arvada, Colorado. At just 16 years-of-age, Austin has already been involved in several web ventures. So far we’ve all been blown away by his hard work and motivation, and somehow he’s actually ahead of schedule! In fact, some upcoming features are the product of Austin’s coding muscle.

Yeah, he’s a bit of a rockstar prodigy. He just might be the LeBron James of developers…

Glad to have you Austin! Keep on kickin’ ass and takin’ names.

Posted by Michael Koenig

One of our most requested features has been FriendFeed integration with IntenseDebate. We’re really pleased to announce that the team over at FriendFeed hooked us up and integrated IntenseDebate. If you’re into FriendFeed and want to pull your IntenseDebate comments into your feed, feel free to add your IntenseDebate account to your list of services and your comments will be aggregated. We look at this as the next step in bringing your comments into the light (check out our past progress here & here)!

Many thanks to the team at FriendFeed for aggregating IntenseDebate comments!

Posted by Michael Koenig

First off, we want to thank you all for the insightful feedback you contributed on “Who Owns Your Comments?” We want to keep you all in the loop on where we’re at with this. We’re currently compiling all of your contributions and beginning to draft a bill of rights in coordination with other comment platforms. We’ll have something concrete for you shortly.

We’ve also gotten a lot of feedback about our friend system on IntenseDebate. After some deliberation we’ve made the switch from a friends to followers system. Now instead of adding a friend and having to wait for them to approve your request, you will simply be following them.

We look at this as an exciting transition and change of focus of how our community will interact. Instead of a two-way system (where mutual friendship was required), it’s now a one-way system where you can choose to follow someone without them having to follow you in return. If you’re not familiar with this community feature, following someone allows you to get a feed about their latest comments and highlights their activity. As always we’d love to hear your thoughts about this transition.

Thanks again,
The IntenseDebate fellas

Posted by Michael Koenig

Last week we released our Twitter integration - an option in your IntenseDebate profile that sends a notification via Twitter when you post a new comment using IntenseDebate.

You all sent us some great feedback and we’ve rolled out a couple of enhancements. The main attraction this week is the comment-by-comment tweet option. Instead of having tweets posted for all of your comments, you can choose to tweet on a comment-by-comment basis. This option is available in your IntenseDebate user profile. Just enter in your Twitter credentials and select “Tweet about new comments.” When you post a new comment you’ll have the option to tweet about that comment. Also, now when a notification is sent the tweet source will read “from IntenseDebate” (screenshot below). The feature itself is cool, but it’s the little things that really sweeten the deal.

We’re pretty stoked about this new feature. It’s another step in bringing the comments you make into the light. Your Twitter followers are interested in what you have to say on Twitter, and we’re willing to bet that they’re interested in what else you have to say. Take yesterday for example, we published a post about who owns your comments and we got some great responses to it. We watched as some of our regular users posted comments and then listened as all of the phones in the office received SMS notifications. Needless to say, there were a lot of new faces voicing their opinions in what turned out to be a hell of an intense debate.

Keeping your Twitter followers up to date on what you’re commenting on is just one of the perks. IntenseDebate Twitter notifications also help drive additional traffic to blog posts (both old and new). Jon Fox, our rock star developer, published a post in March about receiving Feedburner and Twitter stats by email, and had pretty much forgotten it existed…until 2 days ago. Somehow David Cohen (founder of TechStars and the man who brought IntenseDebate to life) came across Jon’s post and commented on it. A new comment tweet was sent to David’s Twitter followers, and Jon’s long forgotten post got some fresh life, new comments, and an increase in traffic. Not too shabby.

What I’m getting at is this: IntenseDebate Twitter integration rocks. Stop reading this and go check it out.

Jon has already forgotten about his post. Such is the life of a rock star (developer)…

Posted by Michael Koenig

It’s an ongoing conversation within the IntenseDebate community: who owns your comments, blog publishers or commenters? Before we continue, we’d like to acknowledge Hank Williams’ post and Daniel Ha’s post addressing this issue. As this topic extends beyond IntenseDebate, we’ve reached out to the team at Disqus to work on creating a common groundwork for comment ownership across platforms.

Who do you think should own your comments?

Currently the debate is taking place on several IntenseDebate fronts (Get Satisfaction, blogs, emails) and it’s getting time to start making some decisions. Everything we do at IntenseDebate has you in mind, including this decision. We need your input. Of course, we realize that we’re not going to come to a unanimous decision here - “you can’t please all the people all the time” - but the goal is to get close and find a comfortable solution. So let us know your thoughts.

To get the ball rolling we want to propose three options:
1.) Blog Publisher Ownership - Comments made on a blog belong to the blog owner, giving them the ability to edit the comments as they see fit (deleting and editing comments). Blog owners have had this ability with Wordpress and other platforms. The only change is that comments are now tied to the commenter in IntenseDebate (which is why there is even a debate here).

2.) Commenter Ownership - Comments cannot be edited by blog publishers. Comments can still be deleted by blog publishers - blog owners must be able to remove spam and inflammatory comments. Commenters can still access their full comment history in their IntenseDebate profiles. Commenters can take their comments with them into platforms other than the blog commented on.

3.) Shared Ownership - This is where it gets complicated and we try to reach a compromise. We’re proposing that blog publishers should have the ability to edit and delete comments as long as the original comment is accessible both on the edited comment and in the commenter’s comment history. If the blog owner edits the comment, then the commenter will receive a notification and have the ability to delete the comment. The commenter will be able to access their full comment history.

We’re sure there are specific stipulations that we’re leaving out that should be included, but we’re trying to keep this post to a reasonable length. Ideally we’d like your opinion on which option you find the most appealing. Then we can start hashing out the specifics. Please vote in the poll below and of course, comment away!

Posted by Michael Koenig