As some of you might have noticed today, we have implemented a new commenting system. This is the first major item on our list of improvements for 2011 and one that we spent a lot of time analyzing. The Disqus platform will allow us to achieve one of our ultimate goals: building a strong and accountable community around BMWBLOG.

The new commenting system offers some features that are a crossover between a “regular” commenting setup, a forum and a social network. Our new comments system, provides readers with a large number of advantages:

  • Ability to edit your comments
  • Ability to sort comments by Newest First, Oldest First, Best Rating and Popular Now
  • Ability to share your comments on Twitter and  Facebook
  • Ability to login with your Disqus account, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and Yahoo.
  • Ability to subscribe to individual comment threads by email or by RSS. If you subscribe to a thread by email, you can reply to comments in that thread via email.
  • Ability to attach an image or a video to your comment simply by including its URL within your comment.
  • Ability to like comments and also like or dislike the article
  • Ability to flag comments that will go to moderators for review

Let’s have a closer look at some of these features.

To comment on BMWBLOG, you can do so in several ways. If you already have a Facebook, Twitter, OpenID or Yahoo account, you can login using any one of those by clicking on the appropriate linked button for each above the comment box. If you would like to build a profile and a social presence on the site, we recommend creating a Disqus profile. All you need is a valid email address. Having a profile on the site, you will be able to customize in many ways, including adding your Name, Website, Location, Short Bio, Avatar, Facebook account, Twitter name. Furthermore, you can customize your notification settings, you can have the system email you every time there is a new comment in the article you recently left your opinion or you can be notified when someone specifically replies to one of your comments.

Another real value that a profile brings is the ability to track and edit your comments across all websites that use Disqus.

If your comments are proven to be useful, insightful or simply great, other readers will give you “Likes”. Those get counted and your profile will display the number of “Likes” received, a sign of your authority and integrity. By clicking on the Avatar picture, the profile information is displayed, along with all the comments you’ve ever left on the site. We call this transparency.

By clicking on the Community box, you will be able to see the Most Active and Most Liked members, another great way to acknowledge our loyal readers.

From an operational and usability standpoint, we improved the speed of the website by eliminating the refresh of a page each time you leave a comment.

In conclusion, DISQUS encourages conversation and in our opinion, will allow all of us to connect easier and build relationships amongst ourselves. We hope you’ll like it and embrace it.

Stay tuned in the following weeks for further enhancements to your experience on BMWBLOG!