Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Disqus Update – Why I’m Back

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June 2017 Update: Anyone who had followed this blog for a while and pays attention to the comment system will see that I have been rather indecisive with regard to which system to use. I have tried nearly all of them. When I was focused on page load speed, I went with the native WordPress comment system. When I was focused on improving interaction, I gravitated back to Disqus. For the time being I’m back with Disqus.
Disqus

You may notice that the Disqus comment system is back on this blog. The bottom line is that Disqus just works and I will spend less effort around moderating spam comments. If there is a slight penalty in page load speed, then I will live with it. I tried the native WordPress comment system and was flooded with spam. I added Spam Free WordPress and got no spam but then it was more difficult for humans to comment. I tried IntenseDebate and it seemed to struggle to integrate with other WordPress tools and I would be notified of comments that I could not find within IntenseDebate. So after wandering around in the comment system wilderness, I’m back with Disqus. Any Comments?

Why I switched from Bufferapp to Timely for Tweet buffering

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Update – 2/21/2013

With the demise of Timely, I am now using Hootsuite for my update scheduling. Hootsuite now has an “auto scheduling” function which is very handy. There are two downsides to Hootsuite. First, using the auto feature, there is no way to control the time of the tweets or the number of tweets scheduled per day. The second downside is that there is no option to using bit.ly as the URL shortener. The only choice is to use the owl.ly functionality built into Hootsuite. Neither of these two issues are deal breakers for me.

Original Post

Timely Tweet Buffering

I had been using Bufferapp for Tweet buffering for a long while. Recently I discovered a similar service called Timely. Both of these apps provide a buffer for spacing out Tweets. When I am looking at RSS feeds or catching up on email I often find links that I’d like to share. The beauty of Buffer or Timely is that instead of bombarding my followers with a bunch of tweets all in a row, I can put them into a buffer that sends them out at a specified interval.

Both of these services have a premium edition where additional features are available for a monthly fee. My comparison is for the free services only. If you are willing to pay for the premium services, you can make your own comparison. If you do, feel free to post your conclusions or observations in a comment below.

Here are the four reasons why I made the switch:

  • Timely allows unlimited Tweets in the buffer whereas Bufferapp limits the buffer to 10 Tweets.
  • Timely allows for multiple accounts and interfaces with Facebook well.
  • Timely gives you the option of posting to any or all of the accounts at the same time.
  • Timely sends me a concise weekly email summary of my activity and the performance of the tweets.

Both of these services have widgets that make it easy to use the service from within the browser of your choice. I use Chrome as my primary browser and the widgets for both services work equally well with Chrome.

To be fair, I should point out the one advantage of Bufferapp. That is that the service allows you to schedule the times of the Tweets whereas Timely only allows me to specify the number of Tweets per day.

Also with Bufferapp, if you refer friends to the service you can earn additional capacity in the Tweet buffer. But this is nullified by the fact that Timely does not have a limit.

Both services work well but because of the three items mentioned above I have a slight preference at this time for Timely.

What do you think? Are there any other buffering services I should try?

 

4 Reasons Why I Dropped Disqus Comment System From My Blog

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DisqusAfter about 3 minutes of internet research on the subject, I decided to no longer use the Disqus comment system on this blog. I had no serious problems with Disqus. The service was free and it worked well. Yet, I found some reasons to turn off Disqus and I think they are strong enough to warrant keeping it turned off. In fact, I have deleted the plugin and do not plan on re-installing it.

Here are the reasons why I think uninstalling Disqus was a good move:

  1. It drastically improved my page load speed. I’m not a technical wizard, but I guess it is because using the comments system inside WordPress allows the comment system to be cached along with the post. (Any tech guru’s who have a better explanation can chime in with a comment as to why it got faster)
  2. The native Worpress comment system works better with the the WPTouch plugin. When using a touch screen device, the count is superimposed on the little calendar page icon within the WPTouch theme. This helps me keep track of comments and respond or spam them accordingly. Disqus would email me, but the functionality built into WPTouch makes it much easier to track on my mobile device using the native WordPress comment system.
  3. The WordPress Checker Extension in Chrome works better with WordPress than with Disqus. Since Chrome is my primary browser, this helps me keep better track of comments.
  4. The WordPress comment functionality seems to work adequately and I don’t think I’m missing any benefits.

Feel free to comment about how to make the comment experience better for readers. I’d love to hear any ideas.

A Real Sense of Community

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CommunityA few days ago I read a story about a man with 100,000 Twitter followers who took his own life. I know nothing about his history or the reasons behind the suicide. But I am struck by sadness that none of the 100,000 “friends” was close enough to prevent this tragedy.

I often hear that social media is intended to build a sense of community. I suppose it does to a limited extent. I read certain blogs and have some knowledge of the writers. We can comment on each other’s blogs. In a very limited fashion, we could call that community.

Yet isn’t a real community supposed to prevent tragedies like suicide? Shouldn’t a following of 100,000 people have at least a few that would be close enough to know when something is terribly wrong?

Because of my interest in blogging and the church, I find articles which present social media as a platform for church growth. But as this tragedy illustrates, social media connection may not equate to real growth.

The church is a community and fellowship of the redeemed. We are a bunch of imperfect people who are brought into relationship with each other because of our individual relationships with Jesus Christ. We bring dysfunction and ignorance and God uses the community to work these problems out of us.

Social media can be a tool to build community, but let’s not think that a large on-line following is a real community. We still need to worship together, break bread together, study together, perhaps even argue with each other if we want to be a real community. Real community can be a messy business because there are times when each of us is a mess.

The church should be a place where flawed people feel accepted and air their struggles. Each member should feel valued and have a sense that the community suffers when one member is suffering. We should know each other well enough to know when something is wrong.

This type of community may not prevent tragedies like the suicide mentioned above, but it should minimize their occurrence. Real community provides real help to those who seek it.

Let’s focus on being a real community and not be satisfied with a sham based on follower counts.

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