I’ve noticed that I’ve implemented both without really thinking of what works best for my website. Since there’s going to be a huge revamp up by next year, I suppose it’s fair to blog about it now and gain some views on this. I’ll try talking about the differences of each before coming to my own conclusion on what might work for me.
A comments system is already integrated into the MovableType(MT) publishing engine. However, since I started blogging back in LICT which was probably around year 2002, I remember there wasn’t a single comment. Might’ve been the content was purely boring and might’ve been the website didn’t have enough traffic. Then when I redesigned it, I also implemented a shoutbox which was made by my friend Snecx. Soon I started getting feedback from people or even spammers and haters or trolls as some might refer.
So, why are visitors leaving feedback on the shoutbox and rarely using the comment system of the blog? Let’s analyze everything we can about the shoutbox.
Firstly, it’s always on the index page or page that you’ve assigned it. Because it’s always there, the form fields are also up front for you to respond right away. The other advantage of using ShoutMix is also the ability of being able to skin your own design for the shoutbox. You might need CSS know-how to do it but it’s well worth it once you’ve achieved the results you wanted. :) The shoutbox also is made more lively with the addition of smileys though some might complain the smileys are more of an irritancy. I’ve always loved smileys because the cute icons bring extra life to your content. The other thing I like about my shoutbox is that Snecx has implemented an auto-converter of emails/urls to links.
That’s most of the strengths I’ve analyzed held by the shoutbox but let’s try looking at what negatives does it bring to me? It’s a box that always has to be there unless I incorporate a show/hide function to it. If you’re running a focused content blog(*hint*), attention should be more driven to your content and therefore, more interaction should be garnered to your posts. This leads me to the next point, a shoutbox only holds up a maximum length of characters and is restrained to height since it’s a box. To have a lengthy comment, you’d need to post twice or thrice. This agenda also explains by itself in a scenario when someone wants to read all the comments on that single post.
And so it’s time to look at the pathetic comment system. Or is it more valuable? Whenever posting a comment from the website, the visitor is required to click on the Comments link. Then later they must at least fill up the name and email fields before being able to post their comments. I’ve authorized comments to be moderated before becoming live. Combining this with MT-Blacklist, it has helped me stop spam almost 99.9% effectively. Having the moderation controls also allows me to edit/delete posts if necessary or if requested by the authors. The best part of the comments system is that all relevant comments are collected to a certain post.
Without actually having a long discussion of its weaknesses, we could already compare its lacking points against the shoutbox. The comment system requires an extra click of a mouse, comments takes time to be posted due to moderation purposes, it doesn’t have any smileys, comments look boring because it isn’t ‘skinned’ and extra links aren’t clickable because HTML isn’t enabled in the posts.
I’m assuming that most of you that have read to this point(thank you..) are now judging having a shoutbox is way better and cooler than the MT comment system. Well, I don’t think so because the weaknesses seem pretty minor and can be equaled if given enough time to work on it. How am I going to to work on them?
To incorporate smileys into my posts or comments, all I need is to implement an MT hack that allows the usage of it. I could stop moderating comments, believe my commenters are mature enough and allow the posts to be live as soon as the author clicks Post. I could spend time learning more about the MT comment system and skin the comments nicely as done by some. I could also enable HTML and control the tags allowed.
I’d love to pull the comment form directly up front but I’ve gotta research more into that. However, how do I get my visitors to subconciously click once extra to comment on the post? Well, I could think of displaying only an excerpt of the post and have them follow it through. The follow through would bring them to the rest of the post and also to the comment form page. It’s not exactly brilliant because some might click through and some might not. However, I believe the excerpt responds as a review to the continuous post ahead so if readers want to know more, then they would click on. :)
So what’s my conclusion?
A shoutbox to me would be great for quick feedback and a place for casual posting between commenters. The comment system would be purpose intended for constructive comments of a post with little instances of smileys to brighten up the ambience of it. :)