I’ve recently been asked if there is an easy way for readers to subscribe to all comments via RSS. There is although it was surprisingly tricky to find out as there is no obvious way to achieve this. By default, the Disqus commenting system allows readers to subscribe to individual comments by email or by RSS. In bog standard WordPress, you can use a plugin that provides this facility but Disqus overrides ALL WordPress comment settings.
Why do it? The theory runs that if you are interested in a particular topic then you’ll likely want to choose to follow the conversation around that item. Some people want to follow all comments. Using this method aids in their understanding of something upon which they might not have a view but may come back to later once they’ve seen more of what people are saying. How to get there? This is what I did:
1. Find the unique Disqus commenting system ID . This will be in Disqus Basic Settings per the image below:
2. Find the URL for the comment system. This is in the format: http://[your Disqus commenting ID].disqus.com/latest.rss. In my case it is: http://accman.disqus.com/latest.rss
3. Copy the URL by entering the URL into your browser and then selecting it and then hitting Ctrl-C. Don’t worry what the page looks like because at this point the feed data has not been styled.
4. Now go to Feedburner and burn this URL as a new feed by pasting the URL into the required area. It should look something like this.
You can change the feed title and the feed address at any time. In my case I want a unique identifier people can easily understand
5. At this point you can play around with Feedburner settings to optimize and publicize.
6. Finally, let people know what you’re doing. You find the code under the Publicize tab in the Feefburner service. Choose whichever style of feed icon you want and select the HTML code. In my case I have included the Feedburner code for the RSS feed as an extra widget at the bottom left hand side of the first of the two sidebars. You can put it anywhere you choose.
7. Done !!
The whole process takes less than 5 minutes. Hope that helps.
From a professional standpoint, providing clients with plenty of fresh content is always a good idea but then not all clients will be interested in all material or only have time to go back to things on a weekend or evening. Having a way to subscribe to all comments is a good way to help them see where perhaps tangental information and conversations could be of value to them.
