How to Improve Default WordPress Comments with wpDiscuz

In most WordPress themes comments and the comment form section are quite boring. Improving the interface can increase your user engagement. In this article, we will show you how to improve default WordPress comments with wpDiscuz.

Why Use wpDiscuz?

Often users feel that the default WordPress comment system looks outdated which is true. For example, users cannot vote on comments, share them, or subscribe to comment replies.

Comment form layout is also the most ignored part in most WordPress themes. Tiny user interface enhancements can actually make a huge impact on how people comment on your site. A plain looking web form is not appealing and encouraging.

This is why users move away to third party commenting systems like Disqus. We tried Disqus on WPBeginner, but we switched away because it decreased engagement and total comments – see Disqus review.

WPDiscuz provides an alternate to Disqus, JetPack, and the default WordPress comments. WPDicuz allows you to have all the most desired features while still using the native WordPress comment system.

How to Setup wpDiscuz

First thing you need to do is install and activate the wpDiscuz plugin. Upon activation, simply click on wpDiscuz icon in WordPress admin bar to configure the plugin settings.

The default plugin settings should work for most websites. There are options to turn on/off each feature of the plugin.

The plugin can show newer comments just as they appear. However, this setting is turned off by default. If you are using a shared WordPress hosting, then you should keep it that way. The plugin can still automatically look and fetch newer comments on regular time intervals.

Once you are done, simply click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Changing Plugin Messages

WpDiscuz also allows you to change the text displayed for the comments interface. Simply click on WpDiscuz » Phrases to edit these phrases.

This feature is particularly useful if you want to change any default text displayed by the plugin. You can also use it to translate the comment form interface into another language.

wpDiscuz vs De:comments

wpDiscuz is not the only comment enhancement plugin for WordPress. A powerful premium candidate in this arena is De:comments. See our tutorial on how to improve WordPress comments with De:comments to learn more about it.

Both wpDiscuz and De:comments do a great job at enhancing the commenting experience on a WordPress site. However, we felt that De:comments is faster so we decided to test both plugins with same comments and theme. Here are the results of our tests:

Comment Plugin	Page Load time	Requests	Page size
De:comments	3.23s	31	1.2 MB
wpDiscuz	5.55s	47	1.2 MB

As you can see De:comments is much faster than wpDiscuz and since speed is an important SEO factor, you cannot ignore this.

One advantage of using wpDiscuz is that it is free. De:comments on the other hand is a premium plugin, and a single site license costs $50 with one year of updates and support.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you add a better commenting experience to your WordPress site. You may also want to check out our list of 12 vital tips to combat comment spam in WordPress.

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