Hi all,
As some of you may have heard, we’re currently working on a redesign of the Disqus comment section. Starting today, we're officially moving our redesign into limited production and we wanted to take this opportunity to share a little bit about our process and the thinking behind what we're doing.
Over the next month, we’ll work with both commenters and publishers to improve and refine our redesign by obtaining feedback, identifying any bugs, and prioritizing important feature requests.
Why are we redesigning Disqus?
After all, we have millions of loyal users who have been using the current design for years, so what are our objectives... and why are we doing this now?
- To make Disqus more welcoming:
Our commenters and publishers are the fundamental building block of everything we do at Disqus. Our core mission to is help publishers build, engage, and grow their communities by inviting audiences into high-quality discussions. However, the current comment design is a little outdated, bulky, and cluttered... and over the years, you've certainly let us know about it. Taking your feedback and requests into consideration, we set out to update the Disqus comment section to make it more modern, lightweight, and easy to use. The purpose of the comments section is to stimulate conversation, and we’re laser-focused on removing any barriers that exist currently between audiences and engagement. Additionally, we're making it easier for commenters to surface high-quality contributions and navigate easily within longer discussions.
- To integrate Disqus into your site more seamlessly
Web design is evolving all of the time, and our comments section needs to evolve with it. These days, publishers demand a comment solution that sits organically inside their website and reinforces its signature look and feel. Therefore, our new redesign will make it easier for publishers to optimize the appearance of the comment embed so that it fits seamlessly into the page. Via wider flexibility with respect to styling, color palette, and much more, we’re doing our best to provide publishers with a more modern, evolved, and brand-intuitive comments section.
How are we approaching the design?
At Disqus we want everybody to have a say, and that's why we’re bringing commenters and publishers alike into our design process. Let us be clear: this is only the beginning. We’re going to continue to listen to your feedback and iterate accordingly, and we won’t rest until we’re convinced that there’s no more room for improvement (which probably means we’ll never rest, let’s be honest).
That being said, we’re not redesigning the comments section just because we feel like it. We’re doing it to deliver the best possible experience for our commenters and publishers, and so for those areas of our product that are working, we’re not going to fix what isn’t broken. What you’ll see is a combination of those aspects of our embed that currently work well—along with across-the-board improvements that optimize user experience and let commenters and publishers do what they do best.
What’s next?
Right now, we’re inviting a small group of publishers to begin trying out the new design. If you’d like to participate in our test, please send a quick email to publisher-support+feedback@disqus.com with your site URL (please be advised that we do have limited slots available). If you’d like to take a sneak peek at what the new design looks like…. just scroll down! You’ll see the first iteration of the new design in the comments section for this post, and we’d love it if you took a second to check it out, look at what has changed (and what hasn’t), click around, and most importantly, provide your feedback by posting comments (and replies to comments). We promise to read through ALL of your feedback and answer as many of your questions as possible.
Again, this is just the beginning! We’re incredibly excited to bring you into our design process. Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to tinker with our redesign until we feel like it’s ready for general availability. Until then, we look forward to all your comments, feedback, and suggestions.