Intense Debate v2.0.17 here and much still to do

Intense Debate are pushing out v2.0.17 of their WordPress plugin today. Here’s the quick summary:
  1. Improved registration
  2. Fixed WordPress 2.7 display bugs
  3. Better syncing between ID and WordPress
  4. Improved XHTML validation

I like Intense Debate for the same reasons as I like Disqus (which I use on this blog). Intense Debate, I think, allows for more customisation. I tried to get Disqus on a ‘hobby project’ blog but it was too wide for the WordPress theme I was using – so was Intense Debate. ID invites me to play around with the CSS and so I was able to fix it.

What bothers me the most about Intense Debate and which this update kinda suggests it will fix is the syncing of comments between it and WordPress.

These two screen grabs show how the WordPress dashboard is clearly out of sync with a post. One post has more comments than the dashboard alone is aware of.





It’s not really the dashboard that bothers me. I’d like to have a recent comments widget and the ones that ID provide are naff. So here’s my wishlist:
  1. Even better syncing between ID and WordPress
  2. Wavatar, MyBlogLog, MonsterID, etc, support
  3. Better mobile/iphone admin access
I predict we’re going to see a lot of Disqus and Intense Debate in the blog chat in 2009.

Oh; I must not forget the disclaimer. Despite a healthy PHP programming background I’m new to WordPress. My hobby project WordPress blog is my first WP test and is about a month old. There may be a cunning way to use the cool recent post widgets and Intense Debate together that I’ve missed.

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