Some time back, I had a thought about integrating Disqus with Confluence. It's a small matter really, just involving a little JavaScript, so rather than bothering to create a full blown plugin, I wrote a little user macro.

Add the {disqus} user macro to a page and it will replace the Confluence comments section (if enabled) with the standard Disqus functionality.

This example uses {disqus:shortname=your-disqus-identifier}:

## Macro title: Disqus

## Macro has a body: N

## Body processing: Selected body processing option

## Output: Selected output option

##

## Developed by: David Simpson

## Date created: 13/06/2011

## Installed by: David Simpson

## This is an example macro

## @param shortname:title=Short Name|type=string|required=true|desc=The Disqus shortname associated to your account
<script type="text/javascript">
AJS.toInit(function(){
    if (AJS.$('#comments-section')){
        // replace the comments section
        AJS.$('#comments-section').after('<div id="disqus_thread"></div>').remove();
        var disqus_shortname = '$paramshortname'; //'local-confluence';

        var disqus_identifier = 'content_id_$content.getIdAsString()';
        (function() {

            var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;

            dsq.src = location.protocol +'//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';

            (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);

        })();

    }

});

</script>

This results in:

Looking good for a single page, but what if you want to do this site-wide?

Again, that's pretty easy. In Confluence Admin | Look and Feel | Custom HTML | At the end of the BODY, paste:

<script type="text/javascript">
AJS.toInit(function(){
    if (AJS.$('#comments-section')){
        // replace the comments section
        AJS.$('#comments-section').after('<div id="disqus_thread"></div>').remove();
        var disqus_shortname = 'local-confluence'; // ##################### change this to your own

        var disqus_identifier = 'content_id_' + AJS.params.pageId;

        //var disqus_url = location.href
        (function() {

            var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;

            dsq.src = location.protocol +'//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';

            (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);

        })();

    }

});

</script>

Again, this code only replaces the comments section if the comments have been enabled for the space -- removing commenting functionality in the standard way removes the Disqus comments.

It works nicely on HTTP and HTTPS as we use location.protocol to match the protocols between Confluence and Disqus.