Talk is cheap: on-platform user comments without need for costly development
A while back we were looking to enable user comments on pages of the BIS website by building bespoke functionality into our main platform. The intention, pretty much, was to replicate the lovely comment and moderation engine you get from WordPress within our own CMS, and be able to toggle it on and off for each page.
So why not just use WordPress? you might well ask.
Well we do, as you know – frequently and with style – and will carry on doing so when it suits. But while WordPress-powered microsites are often just the ticket for ad hoc digital engagement, there are also times when it feels like the effort involved in building, populating, hosting, testing, launching, promoting, moderating, maintaining, evaluating, troubleshooting, archiving, redirecting and ultimately decommissioning a campaign microsite might be overkill.
Plus we’re running a shared service here. We’ve got to assume many of our fellow users won’t be geared up to deploy temporary engagement sites and will need this sort of kit available on the main platform – indeed, may already have it on the platforms we’re seeking to replace.
So we wrote our spec and got our quote. It came back at a level we expected it might – a good chunk of developer hours would be needed to bolt this on top of the CMS, test it fully and deploy it in a controlled release. And we were all poised to go ahead.
But then I saw this blog post by Stephen Hale, which ends with a parenthetic aside about the FCO piloting Disqus, Echo and Facebook Connect to replace the esoteric commenting on their blog platform …And then the penny dropped.
We already have within our CMS the (far rarer than it should be) flexibility to insert third party code, and we use it all the time for YouTube, Scribd and other embeddable media. But that’s content, and for some reason we hadn’t made the leap of using the same capability to embed third party functionality too.
So at the first opportunity we gave it a try. Paul, Jen and Ros recently plugged Echo into the BIS site to encourage open debate on this consultation on the default retirement age, along with a Surveymonkey response form and embedded Scribd doc.
We reckon this holy trinity makes for a well balanced and features-rich alternative to the WordPress treatment and for a lot less effort – freeing us to focus on promotion, moderation, and encouraging follow-up by the policy team.
And we’re happy with the results. We’ve had good number of comments with a high level of engagement- in line with what we might expect from a full blown commentable document, if not higher.
For just £6/month, we’ve achieved something we we might have spent double digit thousands on, and which – even if we had done – would have come up short compared to these more mature third party services. Like Jimmy says, Echo and Disqus bring extra benefits like easy login using social networking profiles.
So what have we learned?
- People blogging about what they are up to is dead handy. Stephen and Jimmy writing their posts, me reading them, has saved you thousands of pounds. Direct cause and effect.
- Having the flexibility to embed stuff is awesome. Insist on it next time you buy a CMS. Hats off to the guys at Eduserv for really coming through for us on this one. We couldn’t put pages together like this and this and this without it.
- The growing availability of embeddable stuff is way cool. I’m excited about what else we might be able to achieve without dev work – like page ratings using Bazaarvoice and forums using Talki.
- We all need to think differently now. Few things we might want our website to do are going to be unique to us. Gov webbies, and suppliers of government web services, need to adapt and thoroughly check out 3rd party plugins before embarking on any kind of jiggery-bespokery. Why pay for our own learning curve when others have already been through it?
All recommendations for other embeddable stuff welcome.
(WordPress aficionados be reassured: BIS remains a huge fan of the commentable document approach and will continue to use it for our bigger consultations and strategies. We’re also playing host to the Wordcamp for Whitehall event next month – hope to see you there.)
Image credit: Steve Rhodes
Related posts (auto generated)
If you enjoyed this post, why not leave a comment or subscribe to my RSS feed to get future posts delivered to your feed reader?
Comments
Great post as always, nicely bringing together some strands that have been “bubbling under” for a few months now but which I haven’t seen brought together and advocated nearly as well and comprehensively.
I was struck by the move of the Telegraph and Independent to turn over their website comment systems to Disqus earlier this year. The Telegraph one (in their blogs section) is particularly stylish, but the Independent is probably more noteworthy since I doubt they have a spare penny to spend on their website and yet introducing Disqus proves that they can do a full, professional commenting system on near-zero budget.
I think I’d lean towards Disqus because of its ubiquity – a extra plus point you don’t mention above is that sites can get a “single sign on” capability across all the Disqus-using sites. How long has single sign on been a Holy Grail across public sector websites for such features, but been too expensive or plain technically impossible?
I guess the only downside is that the service could go down, and that you – that is, the site owner – would have no control and no comeback. It’s happened a lot to the Telegraph since they switched over, I’ve noticed. It’s not a core service of course, but it can impact user perception of the site (rather than the Disqus/Echo/etc service) when and if it happens.
@neillyneil as you say though, s’things are obvious with hindsight. all sounds very neat though, might work for us too
RT @neillyneil: I done a blog: Talk is cheap: on-platform user comments without need for costly development – http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2...
This is really nice work, hat tip to all concerned. It’s great to see integrated comments on the BIS site and users getting stuck in.
I think Echo needs to do a bit of work on the login and share fields – they threw me a bit – but that’s no fault of yours.
While we’re talking about embedding content, I stumbled on http://www.oembed.com/ the other day which may be of use.
RT @neillyneil: I done a blog: Talk is cheap: on-platform user comments without need for costly development – http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2...
RT @neillyneil: I done a blog: Talk is cheap: on-platform user comments without need for costly development – http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2...
Jiggery-bespokery might be my favorite new word, ever. Now to find a way to drop it into casual conversation…
I’ve got significant reservations about things like Disqus, Echo, etc. I dislike javascript-required solutions like this on principle; if it isn’t against the letter of the accessibility guidelines, I’d argue it’s certainly against the spirit.
And I’m a little uncomfortable about people’s data being outsourced to third parties, overseas ones at that.
It should be perfectly possible to build a (javascript-based) commenting engine for embedding on non-interactive pages, but powered by a WordPress installation controlled by you, or someone you trust. It’s the kind of project which would only have very limited appeal in terms of numbers of sites implementing it, but high potential value. The sort of thing a skunkworks could build..?
[...] thought I should quickly acknowledge a few responses I’ve had to my previous post on using 3rd party plugins like Disqus and Echo, pointing out some of the potential [...]
[...] Talk is cheap: on-platform user comments without need for costly development A while back we were looking to enable user comments on pages of the BIS website by building bespoke functionality into our main platform. The intention, pretty much, was to replicate the lovely comment and moderation engine you get from WordPress within our own CMS, and be able to toggle it on and off for each page. [...]
[...] us bring more engaging and dynamic content into our site from YouTube and its ilk, it opens up a whole world of possibilities to use third party plugins, create widgets from RSS and Javascript, and generally do more with [...]
[...] couple of months ago I posted in praise of cheap-as-chips comment engines Echo and Disqus – then followed up pointing out [...]
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
@neillyneil very intriguing…… I think you might have come up with something there!