Adding Comments (Disqus) to Your Courses

Teachery admittedly doesn’t have a community feature that can match up to Facebook Groups, Slack, etc. Our main priority is to provide you with a simple, easy, seamless framework for delivering courses or digital downloads. That said, we are considering something for the longer term.

In the meantime, we do allow you to connect a Disqus account or embed other third-party tools that will enable commenting within lessons.

Regardless of which tool you use, you have the ability to enable/disable the comment area within each lesson of your course, giving you more flexibility and limiting comments to only the lessons you choose.

How to Add Disqus to your Teachery Course

We enable you to easily connect your (free or paid) Disqus and Teachery accounts. You'll just need to grab your Disqus shortname and pop it into Teachery.

Your Disqus shortname is different to your Disqus username. Note:
→ https://shortname.disqus.com
→ http://disqus.com/by/username

It’s come to our attention that the free Disqus plan is now ad-supported; which means ads may appear in your comment areas.  If you’re seeking an alternative free tool, below we list several other tools you can experiment with.

Watch this video on how to sign up for a free Disqus account and grab your Disqus shortname.

The signup process for the free plan has changed. Below their paid plan options on the Pricing page, you will see a section titled “Interested in the Free Version of Disqus comments?”. Click the Get Started button below that. From that point on, you should be able to complete the steps as shown in this video (from about the ~00:34 mark).

Here’s the written version of what you can watch in the video above:

• In Teachery, edit any course you’ve already created.

• In the left sidebar, click a lesson in which you’d like to enable commenting.

• Click the Add Comments button at the bottom of the lesson.

• Teachery will prompt you to add your Disqus shortname.

  • IF you already know your shortname, pop it in and hit Save.

  • IF you don’t recall your shortname, go back to Disqus, and click the Site Admin button in the top right of the navigation bar. On the next page, open the Your Sites dropdown in the top left of the navigation bar. There you will spot your shortname(s) or be able to create an all-new one.

• You’re all set!

Did you enter your Disqus Shortname incorrectly and need to change it?

No worries! While editing your course click the Course Settings options from the left sidebar and then click Manage Options. Scroll down and you'll find the "Enable Comments" field to edit your Disqus Shortname.

Make sure to scroll to the bottom of the Manage Options page and hit the Save Options button and you'll be all set .

IMPORTANT: Change Advanced Settings in Disqus

There have been a few isolated issues where random links are being added to comments and this is easy to fix. Here are the steps to take:

1. In Disqus go to Admin > Settings > Advanced

2. Affiliate Links > UNCHECK this setting if it is checked

3. Trusted Domains > Add teachery.co and any custom domain(s) you're using for your course(s) 

Alternatives to Disqus

We used to recommend Commentbox.io as a free alternative to Disqus but we can no longer suggest it as the tool is no longer supported.

Webynize and Common Ninja are straightforward tools that offer embeddable widgets. Again, they offer free accounts but with limits (Webynize appears to currently offer the best value).

How to embed third-party comment widgets

We can't ensure support for any custom code you add. We'll do our best to help, but know that custom code can cause issues if not added properly. Proceed at your own risk. Please be sure to preview your lesson page to ensure the widget is appearing and working. Any stylistic changes you want to make to a widget should be done within the third-party tool’s platform (as much as they allow) or with your own custom CSS.

1. Create an account with your chosen third-party tool and complete their simple setup walkthrough.

2. Create your comment widget and copy the iframe embed code provided.

3. Back in Teachery, click Add a Content Block at the bottom of your course lesson and select the Add Embed Code option.

4. Paste the copied embed code into the content block, and save.

5. You’re all set! Preview your lesson page to ensure the widget appears and works.

Comments will not automatically be embedded into every lesson of your course. You will need to create a dedicated Content Block at the bottom of each lesson.

Is there a specific commenting or community tool that you have your eye on or that’s worked well for you in the past? Let us know via the support chat!