Comments are important, and arguably more valuable than what I write in posts. So, today I did a makeover of the comments section. It was on the same scale of a TLC special or Extreme Makeover, but not quite as big as the Home Edition. I’m no Ty Peddington (who will do anything on tv if you haven’t noticed, even endorse a manlunch with Rachel Ray). He pulls it all off without laughing and actually does nothing and somehow convinces someone to pay him for it. I’m just not that multi-talented.

I realized this after looking through millions of comment plugins and widgets today. I ended up choosing Disqus. First, I’m no programmer, even though I do try and waste a lot of time fiddling around with <’s and >’s with some href and whatnot. It’s time for me to admit that I can’t do everything, which I realized was my original goal in life, so I made a couple new ones today to motivate myself back from the depths of disillusioned failure. All is not lost:

• Attend a TED Conference and later, speak at one some day.
• Experiment with Travel Blogging.
• Go to a Muslim country and meet a Sufi.

All is not lost.

Disqus has its downsides, and it takes half credit for my comments somehow. Someone must explain the link politics on that one because I don’t fully understand, but when I moderate through them, they get credit for people linking through me and it lowers my Google page rank. I think? So, I tried to get a bunch of widgets and plugins to do what I want, but it was a mess. In the end, Disqus’s positives outweighed the negatives for me (or at least until I can get a coding magician to help me out).

Disqus allows you to login with Facebook, Friendfeed, or Open ID. Also, it had a top commenters widget (which I wanted to give you an incentive to leave comments aka my life blood and motivation). I did figure out how to add “Tweet this” and include Tweet backs to each post. Also, comments from Friendfeed will show up there. So, let me know what you think and if it works for you (since that’s the whole point).

Lifehacker has a great guide to comments. It’s at least worth reading, and bookmarking for later.