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I’m loving WordPress lately, not only the new 2.7 version (Read my latest post about it) look and feel but also Automattic released a new product and plugin that is making my life as a blogger way much easier. Automattic acquired intensedebate back in September and made available a plugin on November 2008 to manage comments on WordPress blogs using intensedebate interface.

I was never into adding any type of comment management system on my blog, and I researched a couple of them. It always seem to me that giving to someone else the control of my blog’s comments was not a good idea, I was afraid of spam, link baits and other problems that bloggers have. Since I trust Automattic with my WordPress software I was at peace with myself at letting intensedebate manage my blog’s comments.

The result is outstanding, I haven’t yet had any problems with my commenting system. The option to participate by commenting on an article or to reply to comments from other users makes me feel that intensedebate is the product to have if you are a blogger using WordPress.

I like this product so much that I started thinking about the fact that Automattic should integrate intensedebate as a default comment management system on WordPress. If Automattic integrates this plugin as a standard into WordPress without any hiccups, I think that we are going to see a good welcome from every blogger.

For now intensedebate works separately from Automattic’s Wordpress, to activate the plugin in your site, you have to download the plugin, create an account at intensedebate.com and you are good to go. Upon activation, the plugin will ask for your intensedebate credentials and you are ready to go.

Intensedebate is not the only commenting management software available for WordPress, if you want to compare services head over to Seesmic, or Disqus. Is important to note that in WordPress 2.7 the commenting system has been updated, now you can comment in a thread fashion, you may want to stick with the WordPress default option.

Before adventuring to any of the options that I mentioned before make sure you back up your WordPress install, I actually forward myself a daily backup of my WordPress install. I don’t want to be exaggerated but the truth is that I modify my WordPress pages too often to ignore a good daily back up.