Getting disqus_identifier from disqus admin panel

Question

I've got a bunch of comments from an old system that I've successfully imported into disqus. Now I need to hook them up into the new system. Doing so should just be as simple as setting the disqus_identifier correctly.

It's frustrating because the comments are visible in the disqus admin panel, but I can't find a way to get the disqus_identifier for a given comment in the disqus admin panel. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

In general identifiers get attached to threads one of three ways:

1. By having the 'disqus_identifier' javascript variable set upon the thread's first load
2. By setting the thread identifier in an import
3. By merging two threads together using the Disqus migration tools

In your situation #3 is your best option. It's important to remember that while using identifiers, the URL is also a unique identifier (each unique thread only has one). So you'll want to find the URLs of those missing comments and migrate them. For the most granular control you'll want to use the URL Mapper documented here: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/912757-url-mapper

The tool allows you to download a CSV of all your existing thread URLs. In that CSV you'll need to identify which URLs are associated with the missing comments. To see what URL a missing comment is associated with, go your moderation panel, hover over the link to the thread and take note of the URL (but ignore the '#comment-12345678' anchor). Usually there's a pattern to threads that are disconnected, so that should help you find them in the CSV.

Then in the next column, you'll need to put the URL of the thread that is currently associated with the corresponding article page. Just make sure that the URL you put is the exact one associated with your site. If you're not sure you can find this out in the moderation panel by going to newly created comments and hovering over their threads to get the URL (using the same technique for finding the old threads).

If you're so inclined, you can also put the API to work for you. You can get listing of all thread data on your site (urls, identifiers, comments in json format) just by registering an API key and using the console: http://disqus.com/api/

Generally you'll want to use the forums/listThreads endpoint for this purpose.

Answer 2

UI fail if you ask me. I resorted to bypassing the whole admin web interface via:

Export the comments and download the XML file. Then search the file for the threads of interest and note the target URL (or Identifier).