Lazy loading and Mailchimp Integration?

Hi there! Glad you’re interested in Muut!

The Muut JS gets loaded with the page, but it is only 46.4 KB and will also automatically be cached by most browsers—is that the loading your concerned about? Or is it the actual displaying of the content? That does already happen after the page loads, so the page will by no means be held up by it. In which case, it’s probably even better for you to not have it specifically deferred any longer—otherwise the odds of it not fully having loaded by the time the user gets to it would be even higher! ?? Let me know though if I’m confused about what you’re meaning. In theory though, with a bit of extra code, you could absolutely specify a specific instance in time (or a specific trigger) to load the content; it would just have the side effect of the users seeing it later and wouldn’t affect the page load time at all, so probably not necessary or well-advised.

It doesn’t sync with native comments, although you do have the ability to do a JSON export of the Muut content, so if you’re code savvy, you could probably develop an import script to import the Muut content to WordPress without too much difficulty.

Our subscription Large Plan features the ability to integrate users of your forum with Mailchimp; you can read more about that in our blog post about the Large Plan here. One option though (and this flows into your next question) would be to use Federated Identities, if your website already is using WordPress user accounts, so that if they are logged into your site, they can post; they never have to sign up with Muut, or have a secondary log in. That would also have the side effect of using *your* user database rather than ours, so you wouldn’t have to modify your Mailchimp setup at all—you already have their data. That is possible with the Small plan. Here’s a link to the page that outlines our premium subscription features and plans; mind you the free plan still has unlimited users, unlimited posts, unlimited uploads, styleability, SEO etc. Most of our communities are on the free plan—including our own forum on our website. I’m obviously not trying to convince you not to subscribe—there is some great functionality available with our plans—there just sometimes is some confusion that we don’t offer a free plan. Ours is, in fact, quite competitive with other systems’ enterprise solutions. ??

We don’t allow anonymous or “guest commenting”, but in terms of what you’re saying, the user would still have to enter a display name and e-mail address? If that is the case, Muut signup is almost as easy (and certainly as fast)—simply one more field to enter: password. When you click to login using Muut accounts, the popup allows you to join by entering username, e-mail address, and password. You submit, the popup disappears, and you can comment. In fact, if you already typed the comment, it will still be there and you are fully logged in. Zero extra steps, zero extra page loads; we’re with you: we want the barrier of entry to be as low as possible. Point being, our signup process is as simple as a “Guest Post”. ??

Let me know if you have any other questions! I’d also encourage you to check out our Manifesto, which outlines why we do what we do. It talks about our core values and informs all our design decisions.

Happy Muuting!

Hey Paul,

Thank you for your well thought out comment addressing my concerns (as well as all the other concerns in this support forum, you guys are really active!).

I love the vision behind Muut, it reminds me of Discourse which I’m also a fan of though they are still limited by their non-user friendly software and lack of in-depth integration with such a popular platform as wordpress.

Gathering from what you’ve explained and what I see in the plan options, I’ll have to get at least a small plan to cover my needs of using my domain and having the content indexed for my website to enhance my SEO.

I think it’s a good idea you charge money for your plans as opposed to rely on advertisements as Disqus is doing now with tracking regardless of the privacy violation involved.

Though I still have to think about outsourcing my comments entirely with no default syncing option as well as how suited a forum community will be to my audience.

It’s sad to see so many forum communities dying down in activity due to social media when I spent so much time in them only 10 years ago so I’ll have to figure out if it justifies the expense and user shock of ‘change’.

Thank you once more for your response.

Hey, my pleasure!

Glad you like our vision—we’re always stoked when people really are on board with it. We really do want to increase the quality and “realness” of online conversation—so many of our communities really are testaments to that. Some of the things you mention that we do different (or “changes”) definitely seem like hurdles at first, thinking about them. Obviously Muut isn’t perfect for every situation, but I can say that with almost no exceptions, once people start using Muut in their communities, people really start seeing (and feeling) the value in those design decisions. Our views on permanence, for example, are often one of the big “different” things; pretty quickly though, the quality and energy of the conversations really starts to show through, and people realize how great that actually is. ??

Regardless of what you folks end up going with though, best of luck, and if not now, keep checking in with us! Our news page always has our latest blog posts and release information, and of course our own forum is a great resource for questions, ideas, and even helpful code blocks for extra customization. We’re always pushing forward with new and exciting things.

Cheers! ??