DISQUS Comments for Joomla, by JoomlaWorks, makes it easy to add comments to any Joomla article or category articles.

Joomla is a great CMS, perhaps the most sophisticated one available today, but it has one major flaw: no native commenting system. As a result, we are left looking for a good comment solution for Joomla, especially Joomla 2.5. Enter DISQUS, the free, comments-as-a-service comment software that can be integrated into almost any website.

Adding DISQUS to Joomla is a two step process. First, go to disqus.com, create an account, and add the website on which you want to add DISQUS (Note: You can add as many websites as you want. This makes it easy to moderate comments from multiple sites). Once you create a website account on DISQUS, download and install the DISQUS plugin from JoomlaWorks.

After you install the Joomla DISQUS plugin, go to Entensions > Plugin Manager and open the DISQUS plugin. Enable the plugin, enter your domain shortname in the Your DISQUS subdomain field, select the categories or menu pages on which you want DISQUS comments, and click Save. Once you configure the DISQUS plugin, you should see comments in the appropriate articles.

To moderate comments, you’ll have to log into disqus.com.

Bottom Line

The DISQUS plugin is a quick and easy way to get comments into a Joomla 1.5 or 2.5 website. The downside is that you have to go to disqus.com to moderate comments.

Furthermore, DISQUS claims that their software will not significantly slow down your page load speed, and I did not see any evidence that indicated it slows down the page, but I would have to observe it over time to know for sure. Of course, ANY button code you add from Facebook, Twitter, or ShareThis, for example, could also slow down your page load speed.

DISQUS is one solution for comments in Joomla and it works well, but I’d really like to see comments added to the Joomla core features. After all, if WordPress, which is just a blog on steroids, can pretend it’s a CMS, Joomla should be able to pretend it’s a blog.