I have been using SezWho universal profile service on my WordPress blog for a while now and I love the options they provide. Well, as everything else develops – these guys just came out with KILLER enhancements. I know that with announcement of Automattic acquiring Intense Debate it might be a choice you need to make yourself later but I love the options SezWho provides!
Lets first figure out What Is It SezWho Provides that makes it valuable option to you, as a blogger?
What is SezWho
SezWho is a universal profile service for the social web that improves community engagement and enables content discovery to be added to blogs, forums, message boards and other social sites. SezWho works with most social media platforms without taking over the content on the site.
Yeah, I quoted their explanation of the service because it does the job quite nicely! But I’m about to discuss the brand new version of the SezWho plugin for WordPress that Not Only ENHANCED my blog but also helped me decrease Page Load Speed by about 10%!
If you need to read the full details I recommend you visit their site and take the product tour but here are the things I want to note:
- ALL comments remain local to your blog – UNLIKE ALL other services that grab your comment and store it on THEIR services.
- Threaded Comments with several templates to choose from. Allows you to choose the look and feel most fitting for your blog!
- Local CSS and Java loading – greatly decreases page load speed! Instead of pulling the the remote server. On my blog with aver 40 plugins loaded using this option and disabling Brian’s Threaded Comments brought my page load speed from average 1.2sec to 0.8sec. Might not seem like much but it is HUGE!
- New ratings options – Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down. I love it and looks like so do the people who already used the options since I installed the new version of plugin.
- Superb Support! While testing I have discovered a small bug that is present in IE only. I posted about it on their blog and minutes later I got response from the Jitendra himself. These guys are awesome!
I know this might be a tough choice for many but I can only recommend one thing – test it. Configuration and install of the plugin is extremely simple and intuitive. Try different option – I guarantee you will love it!
i would be ever so grateful to the first person who can “simply” describe this whole comment debate whatever…..are we no longer going to have comments under posts on our own blogs???
Dennis Edells last blog post..My First Contest! Time To Put Your Thinking Caps On…
Oh and I will be looking into sez-who, it seems more and more popular around the ‘sphere
Dennis Edells last blog post..My First Contest! Time To Put Your Thinking Caps On…
Alex, sorry, but isn’t it just another plugin cluttering already busy WP installation? I am not sure what this plugin brings to the table. Consolidation of your comments on other blogs or social networks? or …?
Max@Viliat-Blogs last blog post..Increase Blog Profits 200% by Linking Keywords To Affiliate Programs
Hey Max,
SezWho provides a universal profile service to track all your conversation and present the information to others in the context of the new conversation.
As a result we increase the engagement in the community and make the conversations better.
Check it out and let me know if you have any issues/feedback at jitendra@sezwho
Thanks, Jitendra
PS: Alex, thanks for the great post 🙂
It would be great if you did a detailed post on SezWho…. I’ve never heard of it, but it looks interesting. Otherwise, great post.
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Well, it looks very interesting indeed, but personally i really think from the point of visitor that is not important and i really don’t have interests to look over other profiles and what have they already posted. Sometimes simplicity is best to remain, and over complicating some things can lead to nowhere. But, sezwho has some really nice features and i am sure for someone it will be very useful.
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@Max – SezWho (new version) has replaced on my blog Brian’s Threaded Comments and actually helped me improve page load speed by doing it. So it actually helped me to reduce number of plugins as before I had both SezWho and BTC.
@Keff, I have provided some points – I encourage you have a closer look at it. they provide nice details on their own site and owners are active and very responsive on the blog.
@Jessy Lu, whether you like it or not but social web is what is to come to the internet and it develops more and more. You can embrace the technology and take advantage of the best of it – or be left behind. Early adopters tend to benefit the most
I am not a huge fan of this plugin myself as the majority of users don’t actually use Sezwho, so it becomes an extra eye sore for others.
James,
Sorry to hear that.
I would recommend that you try out the new beta with the comment templates…my guess is that your usage levels would go up quite a bit.
Thanks, Jitendra
I used to have old version but it hogged my servers bandwidth like crazy, luckily the new version don’t have that problem
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Sezwho is about the best of these in terms of SEO, accessibility etc. I still wish they’d do something about the links appearing and doing nothing if javascript is off … I’m hoping that threaded comments in WP2.7 removes the need for some of these plugins, although that won’t do the cross site reputation thing, though, that sezwho does.
malcolm coless last blog post..Advanced comment systems are bad for SEO: IntenseDebate, Sezwho and Disqus
I must admit that I read about SezWho for a very first time on your blog. Some of the features you outlined look quite good. For now however I am sticking to Disqus mainly because of their large user-base and the innovation they implement to their service.
SezWho is dead, sorry, this is old post and I will not recommend to even attempt using them!
Ah thanks for the warning. It comes to choosing a reputable service than who will be around for a while