When Facebook first introduced the feature to ‘Like' comments, a lot of people blamed the feature as yet another way to waste time on the social media. However, the comment liking option quickly turned out to be one of the most used and critical features in photos and posts. The ‘Like' option has made its way to the blogosphere too. But comment liking wasn't available officially from the core WordPress developers until now.
Sure, you could install a third-party commenting system like Disqus that allows people to vote up and vote down comments, but WordPress has developed its own comment system which is primarily used on WordPress.com and is available to self-hosted WordPress sites via Jetpack. WordPress has just announced that users on its WordPress.com hosted platform will now enjoy Comment Likes feature that lets users like comments. The feature is pretty much self-explanatory and adds value to a discussion on a blog post.
But the sad part is, the Comment Likes feature is not yet available to Jetpack users on self-hosted WordPress.
Disqus has become a popular choice among WordPress users when it comes to developing a publishing platform, but many people still prefer to use WordPress.com's comment platform, known as Jetpack Comments, because it's easier to set-up and an enormous number of users from WordPress.com can comment without having to sign in or type in their name and email address. This improves user experience on the site and encourages users to write a comment because they don't have to type in those name and email address fields.
Gary from Automattic says that they are investigating a way to bring the Comment Likes feature to Jetpack Comments users on self-hosted WordPress installation, but no promise was made. However, new WordPress features are first rolled out to WordPress.com before giving it out to self-hosted WordPress users, so it's safe to hope that one day the comment liking feature will hit the Jetpack Comments.
What is your favorite commenting system on WordPress? Disqus, Jetpack Comments, or the built-in comment system of WordPress?