Hi

1) Currently there are over 202,000 comments in Disqus for my site, and approximately that many in my Wordpress database. The numbers don't match exactly, though. When I switch over, is there any best practice to make sure I'm not missing any comments?

You don’t need to import comments to wpDiscuz. It’s enough to import comments to WordPress, wpDiscuz will automatically get WordPress comments. wpDiscuz is a native comment system extension, it’s not a 3rd party service. Once all comments are imported from the Disqus server to your WordPress database wpDiscuz will be able to show them. More info in this article:  https://www.ampercent.com/migrate-disqus-comments-back-wordpress/21729/

2) All my current commenters have Disqus accounts. When I make the switch over, I will enable the Disqus social login. Is there a way for their previous comments to be connected with the user that login will create via WP-Discuz?

wpDiscuz uses all information saved in WordPress. 

3) This is sort of the same question, but is there a way to automatically connect their Disqus avatar to their previous comments? How about if they don't ever log in? Right now, when I disable Disqus, there is nothing but grey anonymous heads next to each comment, and it looks pretty dull.

The same is in this case. As far as WordPress uses the Gravatar as a default avatar system so the wpDiscuz is also using the gravatar. 

Hello Asti!

Thank you very much for your reply. 

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I do understand that WP-Discuz is a front-end for the native Wordpress comment system. Let me rephrase my questions.

Thank you for the link to that article. I had actually seen it before. But as is mentioned in the comments of that article, the information there is a couple years out of date. Disqus uses a different syncing interface now in the Wordpress plugin and, at best, you can only manually sync the last 12 months of comments to the Wordpress database.

The good news is that I've had auto-sync on almost continuously since I launched my site in 2011. That's why I have over 200,000 comments in my Wordpress database. But the numbers don't exactly match. And I don't want to lose any comments if it can be helped.

Since you offer a Disqus migration service on your home page, I was hoping you might know a way to make sure that the comments in the native Wordpress database exactly match the comments that Disqus is currently showing.

1) Do you know a way to make sure that the comments in the native Wordpress database exactly match the comments that Disqus is currently showing?

Also, one of my biggest concerns is disruption for my current commenters.

2) If I switch to the native commenting system and they use the Disqus social login (provided with WP-Discuz), will their current user be connected to the comments they made before when I was using Disqus?

If not, Disqus did used to include the full email address with every comment. 

3) If I switch to the native commenting system, will the native system be smart enough to connect a new user to these previous comments if the email address is the same? (And, thus, use the same username for all the comments. And list all those comments -- from before and after the switch to native commenting -- on the user's profile in Activity with wpDiscuz Comment Author Info, if they choose to show that information.)

A couple years ago, Disqus started obscuring the full email address of the comments they synced with the Wordpress database.

4) Is there a way to manually associate previous comments in the Wordpress database with a new user using the native Wordpress commenting system?

Because currently every Disqus user has a colorful avatar associated with their profile, the comments under each of my pages are colorful and easy to parse. But those avatars are not being saved in the Wordpress database. And so I am afraid that my easy-to-parse comments under each page -- some of which can run into the 1000s of comments -- will become a sea of the same, gray, faceless avatar.

5) I think that the comments that have a full email address associated with them, should pull whatever Gravatar is associated with them automatically -- is that correct?

If so, that would be good. But, as I said, due to the Disqus change, a couple years of comments don't have a full email address associated with them. And that means there will be a couple hundred pages on my Web site with comments that have no way (that I know of) to connect to a Gravatar.

6) For is there a way to assign different colorful avatar images to commenters who don't have a full email address? Something to give some colorful variety on those pages and help people follow threads? Can these different generic colorful avatars be associated specifically with a commenter so we have consistency?

Hopefully, what I'm asking for with the different generic avatars there makes sense. Please let me know if it doesn't.

Basically, in terms of my previous comments, I want to know what I am losing by switching to the native commenting system.

The answer to all of my questions might be "you're out of luck." There might not be a solution to any of these things. And maybe, if I want to switch from Disqus to the native commenting system (with the WP-Discuz front-end), it will just involve me swallowing a bitter pill with a lot of disruption for my current commenters.

But since you do offer this migration service, I was hoping you might have discovered better answers for these things. And that maybe the switch would not be as painful as I fear.

Thank you again for your help. Please let me know.