Daily Kos' move to WordPress is well underway.
Hi all! Daily Kos is in the middle of the biggest transformation we’ve taken on in more than 20 years, and I want to keep you fully in the loop as we build it. This is your community, and you deserve to see how it’s coming together behind the scenes.
The move to WordPress is well underway. If you want the background, I’ve written about why we’re doing it, and you’ve already met your Community Advisory Panel—which has been deeply involved every step of the way.
Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas
We’re on track for a March launch, and if everything continues as planned, you’ll get your first hands-on look in January, when the public beta opens. I can’t wait for you to take it for a spin!
One of the biggest decisions recently was choosing a new commenting platform. WordPress’ native system just can’t support the volume and complexity of what you all do here every day. That sent us into a serious search for something powerful enough to handle Daily Kos-scale conversation. Only three companies were viable candidates.
One was easy to dismiss: too expensive, and reliant on a one-size-fits-all AI moderation engine that set our teeth on edge. That wasn’t ever going to be acceptable. No part of this community’s moderation is getting handed off to a robot—especially not in the current political climate, where it’s obvious how easily that kind of system could be abused.
That left two strong contenders, each with real strengths and drawbacks. We pulled in the Community Advisory Panel early, gave them full access, and even brought the two finalists in to pitch directly to them. It was a tough call. The panel wasn’t unanimous. But after a lot of evaluation and discussion, we chose Viafoura.
It’s the most fully rounded option for what we need right now, and I think a lot of you will love what it brings.
Comments
Viafoura’s commenting system is fast and reliable, and already serving huge publications like People and The Telegraph. It keeps all the basics you expect, and adds a new “featured comments” area where authors and moderators can pull standout contributions into a dedicated tab. Viafoura also has an AI model designed to surface constructive comments. We’ll experiment with it, but nothing replaces human judgment, and manual picks always take priority.
Here is another look at this feature, this one from Viafoura’s own internal pitch documents:
(“HQB” is what Viafoura calls its AI-selected comments. It stands for “High Quality” something.)
One thing I’m hoping for—and we’ll know more during implementation—is that community authors will also be able to pin comments in their own stories and diaries. That’s not guaranteed yet, but you know I’m pushing for it. And of course, this new “featured” tab won’t replace or interfere with our long-running community Top Comments. That series is sacred. We can name this tab anything we want.
Viafoura also delivers tools that open up new kinds of engagement we haven’t really been able to offer before.
Q&A
We’ll be able to host live structured Q&As—think Reddit AMAs (Ask Me Anythings), if you’ve seen those. They’re essentially real-time interviews where a guest answers questions submitted by the community, often producing some of the most informative and engaging conversations on the internet. With Viafoura’s version built directly into the site, we’ll finally be able to run those kinds of interactive sessions here with experts, candidates, staff, and community members.
Live chat
The live chat feature has huge potential. Think of it as a fast-moving, real-time conversation thread that updates instantly as people post. Debate nights, election nights, major breaking news—all of it becomes fodder for live community discussion without the clunkiness we’ve been living with. There are also ways the community itself might use running chats, and I’m already imagining what a Pootie chat stream would look like!
Behind the scenes, Viafoura’s moderation tools are light-years ahead of what we have now. They won’t be visible to you, but the difference will absolutely be noticeable. The team will be able to manage trolls, spammers, and bad-faith actors more quickly and effectively, which means a cleaner, smoother commenting experience for everyone.
Of course, there are compromises. The advisory panel wasn’t split for nothing.
The biggest early obstacle was that Viafoura didn’t support embedded images in comments. That was a dealbreaker for us, but they agreed to move it to the top of their development queue. We expect that functionality to be ready by launch, though it won’t appear during the beta period. Images won’t tie into our site’s media library, so you’ll upload from your device each time, more like traditional social media.
A harder short-term limitation is that Viafoura doesn’t yet allow embeds of any kind in comments—not images, not videos, not social media posts. That is changing. As part of our negotiations, they committed to tackling embeddable content immediately after finishing image uploads. Their current timeline puts this gap somewhere between zero and six weeks after launch. Not ideal, but it’s a temporary limitation. And importantly, this limitation applies only to comments. WordPress stories/diaries will support full embeds from Day 1.
While all this is happening, we’re also using the migration as a chance to clean up our site navigation. We’re not doing a full redesign at the same time—that’s a recipe for cost overruns and chaos—but we are stripping away 24 years of clutter.
Right now the site header is overloaded with hashtags, menus, icons, and a search bar that barely functions. The new version simplifies everything down to the essentials:
Ignore the purple Ks; they’re just mockup artifacts. This isn’t the final version, and the menu items may shift, but the direction is clear. Log in, and the simplified look remains:
We’re also removing the big top-of-page ad, which goes a long way toward giving the site a cleaner, more modern feel.
At launch, the search bar will only index stories. Because the comment system is separate, comment search won’t be ready immediately, but we’re exploring ways to add it after the migration.
There’s a lot happening behind the scenes, and it’s all moving quickly. I’m excited for you to see the beta in January. This migration isn’t just a technical upgrade—it’s a chance to set Daily Kos up for the next 20 years, with tools that support the community you’ve built and the conversations that make this place what it is.
If you’re on the Community Advisory Panel, thank you for your guidance. And if you’re not, know that you are absolutely part of this process. Every decision we make here is about creating a better Daily Kos for all of us.
