Epoch – A native Disqus alternative with a focus on speed and privacy

Epoch is a new plugin from the creators of Postmatic. The goal: To provide a realtime commenting/chat experience using fully native comments while being compatible with page caching, cdns, mobile, other comment plugins, and seo best practices. A tall order? For sure. Try it out.

Epoch provides an amazing commenting experience to your users while improving site performance at the same time.

Key Features

• WordPress native comments
• Realtime with minimal server load
• Fully ajax commenting for both sending and receiving comments
• Integrates with any theme while still blending in with your brand
• Front end moderation with realtime updates. It’s insanely fast.

Epoch solves three big native commenting problems

User Experience

Comment forms and display are often neglected by theme developers. We’ve been there ourselves. The functions and templates involved in WordPress commenting are complicated, frustrating, and no fun to work with. Every day we see fantastic themes with ridiculously poor commenting experiences. So that’s the first thing Epoch fixes.

Speed and context

No more submitting comments and watching the page reload. All Epoch comments are submitted via ajax and post instantly in their proper place within the conversation.

And, as it should be, new comments from other users show up like magic automatically. It doesn’t matter if they are posted from the web, or from email via Postmatic. The conversation is instantly updated.

Cacheing, page load, and CDNs

Epoch is hands down the fastest commenting system available for WordPress, all the while supporting page cacheing and CDNs. Epoch comments lazy load into a placeholder container only when needed. This means your post will load instantly, your comments will load instantly, and your server won’t blink. Comments are magically injected into your page so your full SEO mojo stays in tact.

Success through compatibility

Epoch is built for compatibility. It uses fully native WordPress commenting, plays nicely with most all other commenting plugins, and employs WordPress coding standards. Use it with your favorite social login, voting, moderation, and other commenting plugins.

Epoch is fully integrated with Postmatic

When running Epoch along with Postmatic the magic really happens. The comment stream is updated in realtime with comments being posted from web as well as email. Subscribing to new comments is quick and simple while users are intelligently invited to become site subscribers as well. All without ugly checkboxes and obtrusive forms.

Want to jump into the ring and help with development?

This is just 1.0. We’re hoping the WordPress community will lend strength, ideas, and code to this project. That’s why we’ve kept it open-source. You can find Epoch on Github and jump right in. We can’t wait to see where commenting goes next.

Combine Epoch with [Postmatic](http://gopostmatic.com) for the ultimate engagment package

Postmatic is a free plugin which lets users subscribe to comments but also reply right from their inbox by hitting reply. Postmatic and Epoch integrate perfectly to let you take the conversation on the road and keep the conversation going months after you hit publish.