I had to implement the Disqus Comment System WordPress plugin on a website that will be located behind an outgoing proxy server. By default the Disqus WordPress plugin does not support proxies, so it is unable to run if a proxy is blocking it’s access to the internet.
Since WordPress 2.8, WordPress supports proxy servers using a few defined values, WP_PROXY_HOST and WP_PROXY_PORT. I have now forked the Disqus WordPress plugin on GitHub, and added support that will look to see if these exist, and use them if they do.
To use it, add the following to your wp-config.php file…
define('WP_PROXY_HOST', 'proxy.yourdomain.com');
define('WP_PROXY_PORT', '3128');
Changing the values to match those of your proxy server of course.
Now replace the url.php file in wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system/lib/api/disqus/url.php with the url.php found in my github repository.
Visit your WordPress admin panel and you should now be able to activate and configure the Disqus plugin successfully.
I have issued a pull request for my changes to be pulled back into the main plugin, but it’s up to Disqus is they want to implement this or not.