Importing Comments into Disqus

April 10, 2011 Veritas Web edit

After seeing Disqus in action on Keith Elder’s blog, I decided to incorporate it in my Veritas Blog Engine redesign.  Setting up Disqus is pretty easy.  If you’re using a more standard blog engine (Wordpress, Blogger, etc) than they have plugins and very easy to use integration methods.  If you’re writing your own site, you just need to drop some javascript onto your page and replace a few values.  Specifically, you have to put in your account name, the blog entry url, and the unique page title (or disqus identifier).  There are a couple caveats to using Disqus.  Prior to using it, a viewer could comment on any entry shown on the home page without having to go to the entry’s unique page (so the comments for multiple entries were viewable on the same page).  Unfortunately, Disqus can’t handle this.  You can only show the “disqus comments” for one entry at a time.  So now, viewers have to click and go to the unique page to add comments (or even just view the comments).  I think that with the ease of use of Disqus for administering comments as well as users logging in with their info to add comments makes this trade off worth it.  Importing is another issue though.

When I first started looking at Disqus, I saw that you could import comments and figured that as long as I could import, I could figure things out and make it work.  This did prove to be true, however, there were a few hoops to jump through.  If you checkout Disqus and want to import from WordPress or Blogger, then they have an easy to use format for importing your comments.  If, however, you’re using your own format, they do provide a generic format (WXR) to import your comments.  You can read about and checkout this format here.  The format is documented, though not as well as it could be.  Both the Content:Encoded and the comment_content are shown using CDATA for the content.  Presumably so you don’t have to bother encoding the html of your blog entry and the comment.  In the course of running into issues I ended up just encoding my html and not using CDATA at all. 

Another issue I ran into while getting my xml ready was the link to the blog entries.  I had a few links that had apostrophes in them.  While this seemed to work fine in several browsers, it ended up being very problematic after I imported my comments (this was my own fault and not Disqus’).  Just make sure your urls are properly encoded (i.e. replace your apostrophes with %27).

The last issue I ran into, I will blame on Disqus.  Their import example has the following in the xml: 

   1:  <!-- sso only; see docs -->
   2:  <dsq:remote>
   3:    <!-- unique internal identifier; username, user id, etc. -->
   4:    <dsq:id>user id</dsq:id>
   5:    <!-- avatar -->
   6:    <dsq:avatar>http://url.to/avatar.png</dsq:avatar>
   7:  </dsq:remote>

Now I don’t know if there are some docs (as in “see docs”) that I didn’t see but I assumed (incorrectly) that I should send over my ID for the commenter.  That was a bad assumption.  This section caused my comments and threads to not be imported at all.  Furthermore, the import process doesn’t really give you any information about why your xml does or does not work.  I did send a couple tweets back and forth with Disqus, though I don’t think they actually looked at the xml I was trying to import (and presumably they would have seen the DSQ Remote section and told me to drop it right away).  Once I dropped that section from all of my item elements, the import worked great (besides the URL encoding issue I mentioned above).    Below you can see an example of the xml I ended up importing.  There is one Item element in this xml where my full import had one item for each comment.

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   2:      <rss version="2.0"  xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"  xmlns:dsq="http://www.disqus.com/"  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"  xmlns:wp="http://wordpress.org/export/1.0/">  
   3:          <channel>    
   4:              <item>
   5:                  <title>re: Detroit Restaurant Week: My First Android App</title>
   6:                  <link>http://chrisrisner.com/Detroit-Restaurant-Week--My-First-Android-App</link>
   7:                  <content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;&lt;My Encoded Html&lt;p&gt;</content:encoded>
   8:                  <dsq:thread_identifier>Detroit-Restaurant-Week--My-First-Android-App</dsq:thread_identifier>
   9:              <wp:post_date_gmt>2011-03-20 23:32:00</wp:post_date_gmt>
  10:              <wp:comment_status>open</wp:comment_status>
  11:              <wp:comment>
  12:                  <wp:comment_id>188</wp:comment_id>
  13:                  <wp:comment_author>MyName</wp:comment_author>
  14:                  <wp:comment_author_email>[email protected]</wp:comment_author_email>
  15:                  <wp:comment_author_url>http://www.chrisrisner.com</wp:comment_author_url>
  16:                  <wp:comment_author_IP>24.145.221.93</wp:comment_author_IP>
  17:                  <wp:comment_date_gmt>2011-03-27 18:00:35</wp:comment_date_gmt>
  18:                  <wp:comment_content>Now to port it to WinPhone7!</wp:comment_content>
  19:                  <wp:comment_approved>1</wp:comment_approved>
  20:                  <wp:comment_parent>0</wp:comment_parent>
  21:              </wp:comment>
  22:          </item>  
  23:      </channel>
  24:  </rss>

UPDATE: Dex informed me (below in comments) that if you go to http://import.disqus.com and click on the "All Imports" tab, you can see the status of your import as well as if an error occurred and on which line it occurred. Thanks Dex!

Chris Risner

44 Comments

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Reply to chaoduyu520

Luke Foust

Wow, this really helped me out. Thank you for documenting the problems you ran into and how you solved them. As you know, when something goes wrong with the Disqus import you have no way of knowing what went wrong and how to fix it. The documentation and support are not very useful for this.

I don't think this information is available anywhere else on the internet! I wish I would have found this earlier.

Reply to Luke Foust

celinahex

having trouble with this now. why would i want to include my entire blog posts content in this xml file? I've left it out but included the tags in my xml and thought it would work; something isn't wokring though. 
<content:encoded>

Reply to celinahex

Chris

Hello Celinahex,

It's been quite a while since I wrote this so I can't specifically recall why the content was included (or if it was actually necessary).  That being said, if you've tried to do the import and it's not working, I would try with the content encoded as well.  Outside of that, it would be difficult to tell what the issue might be without looking at the full xml you're trying to import.

Chris

Dex

Hi ChrisThanks for this EXCELLENT post. Importing custom comments is poorly documented in Disqus and their support is also not useful, but I guess I am trialling the free version of Disqus.I have tried a few imports and got zero comments imported. Could not guess why. Agree with your observations above. 
What I eventually discovered on Google is http://import.disqus.com . If you log in to your Disqus account, then go to  http://import.disqus.com  and select your forum, you can see two tabs, one of which is 'All Imports'. If you click on that, you will see the error message and line of your XML that broke.Hope this helps someone else.

Reply to Dex

Chris

Wow, thanks Dex!  I'm going to put an update on the post so that anyone reading it has the info.  Thanks a ton passing this on!

Guillaume Erard

Thanks for this article. I am now in the painful process of manually importing comments from jcomments and I wonder about comment id. Should I make one up for each comment? What if it overlaps with an existing one? I would leave it ut but when there are replies to comments, you need the parent comment id. Any advice would be most welcome! Thanks

Reply to Guillaume Erard

Chris

Hi Guillaume,
If I recall correctly, I just put in the comment ID I had in my original database. If that's the case, you should be able to put in any IDs you want. I would go through the (also painful) process of making up IDs and then figuring out where to put the appropriate parent ID. I imagine jcomments has some method of tracking what's attached as a reply so I'd think you could script it to add IDs for each one and a parent where appropriate. Hope that helps.
Chris

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Shruti Patel

Hey ! I just installed Disqus on my http://www.resultplanet.in site; but i'm fairly disappointed to see that Disqus doesn't recognize my old comments : all my older comments are marked as posted by a guest. Did I miss a step ? Is there a way to have my old comments linked to my Disqus profile ? (my Disqus user mail is the exact same as my wordpress admin-user email, I would have thought it would have been automaticly recognized).

Reply to Shruti Patel

Samuel Woodbury

Thanks for this content. I am now in the agonizing procedure of personally publishing feedback from jcomments and I wonder about opinion id. Should I create one up for each comment? What if it overlaps with an current one? I would keep it ut but when there are responses to feedback, you need the mother or father opinion id. Any guidance would be most welcome! Thanks

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Reply to Samuel Woodbury

Keith Jones

Mathew 24 Christ returns with the clouds of heaven for the
desolation of the Earth following a lunar & solar eclipse (sun darkened,
moon turned to blood), says prepare:

42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.43 But
know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief
would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to
be broken up.

Attack
Warning!

According to biblical accounts the desolation of the Earth
is triggered by a provocative nuclear detonation (abomination of desolation)
without the usual build up to war, scriptures have first strike from the East.

Power failure:
A distant detonation blows circuitry

Mobile & Land line down: switched off to conserve power

Heat: a visible
detonation quickly causes 3rd degree burns up to 12km away

Shield: Concrete,
dirt, charcoal.

Preparation: Bulk
store cheap cereals e.g flour, rice, oats, store dried slicing sausage &
water somewhere shielded, NO TINS OR METALIC PACKAGING.

FLOODING: SHELTER AT HIEGHT

Isaiah 28:2 Behold,
the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a
destroying storm, as aflood of mighty waters
overflowing, shall cast down to the earthwith the hand.

Isaiah 28:17Judgment
also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail
shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and thewaters shall overflow the hiding place.

Isaiah 28:18And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and
your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall
be trodden down by it.

Isaiah 28:19From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to
understand the report.

Habakkuk 3:10The
mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by:
thedeep uttered his voice, and lifted
up his hands on high.

Nahum 1:8But with an
overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the
place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

Amos 5:8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and
Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day
dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea,
and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:

Amos 9:5 And the Lord GOD of hosts is he that toucheth the land,
and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut
off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall
destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the
end of the war desolations are determined.

Daniel 11:22 Andwith the arms
of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also
the prince of the covenant.

Jeremiah 47:2 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and shall be an
overflowing flood, and shall overflow the land, and all that is therein; the city, and them that dwell
therein: then the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall
howl.

Ezekiel 26:19 For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a
desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; whenI shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters
shall cover thee;

The appearance of a stratospheric missile within blast
radius (Topol 800kt, 6.5km, 5psi (buildings destroyed)). 3rd degree
burns up to 12km. Sighting gives seconds to obscure with a suitable barrier.
Has a circular trail, missile itself not visible.

Reply to Keith Jones

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