Great to see that all the blogs on blogs.independent.co.uk are now powered by WordPress:
[mshot http://blogs.independent.co.uk/ 600]
In a blog post from Online Editor Martin King, the reasons for the switch from Livejournal included the following:
* to continue pushing forward a site that is ever more social-media-friendly, incorporating our recently improved and well-received comments functionality;
* to enable our posters to add quicker views and analysis more easily.
The last point will be especially beneficial to The Independent’s overseas correspondents, with their busy and occasionally perilous lives. As long as they can send an email, that can be posted immediately, including any image.
Mark wraps up his post with a very insightful point, saying “We are demonstrating that globally standard programs can free mainstream journalism from the complex bespoke set-ups of the past.”
[ Visit http://blogs.independent.co.uk/ ]
Wait, they were using *LiveJournal*? Am I reading this right? I could understand Movable Type or TypePad…
The Independent has only done half the job; they recently changed to Disqus to handle comments. The blog pages run at least seven pieces of JavaScript and Disqus recommends allowing cookies globally. The lack of comments on Indy articles since the changeover proves my point.
PS Your own blog suffers from the same problem. Endless amounts of JavaScript allowed to run before it works correctly. Surely WordPress can use its native commenting system?
Hi Flotsam – We’ ve actually seen a sharp increase in comments since moving to Disqus. Take your point about the time it takes to load the javascript though… Jack Riley (Digital Media Editor, The Independent)
We use IntenseDebate (our own distributed comments system) on the Publisher Blog. IntenseDebate provides a lot of enhanced features that aren’t available in the native WordPress comments like commenter user accounts, Facebook Connect and Twitter Sign-in, ability to tweet your comments, add PollDaddy polls and After the Deadline spell checker, and loads more (see http://intensedebate.com/features and http://intensedebate.com/plugins.
IntenseDebate is written in JavaScript but has been optimized to reduce load time. Just in case there is a load delay, IntenseDebate will revert to the native WordPress comment system. ID syncs all comments to and from WordPress so you won’t miss a beat.
Let me know if you have any questions about ID. I'm happy to help.
WordPress for their blogs and Reddit software for a recommendation engine they run ( http://reddit.independent.co.uk/ ). All very Opensource of them.
Their blogs currently are stuck in 'mobile view'. Might want to get that sorted, guys.
The Disqus comment handling for The Independent is a disaster. It sits on my screen when I try to post a comment obscuring the password box so that I can't fill it in and displaying its ever revolving circle for 20 minutes or more. Twice it has erased my message whilst giving me permission to post it. What a shambles!