Self-hosted blog comments for static sites?
Can anyone recommend an easy-to-self-host blog comment library for static sites? (I.e. I'm not looking for "Just switch to Ghost" or anything requiring a migration :))
Requirements:
- Database is OK
- Allows moderation
- Doesn't require you to be a GitHub user
- Ideally sends an email if your comment gets a reply
- Supports multi-level nesting
- Ideally has a nice way to import existing comments from Disqus
Anyone have recommendations? I really don't want to build this. Really.
ah, moving away from disqus? got it.
my question is... has comments been a significant part of your growth / community strategy? i've counseled many orgs / individuals to turn off comments... especially if it's not working.
Yeah, I have a few scenarios. One is a travel/photography blog, now that comments are gone I get more people DM'ing me on Instagram but I think those comments can be really useful for readers. People like leaving additional tips for other readers and are usually constructive.
The other, I'm not sure. My SaaS product is in the affiliate marketing space, and most individual blogs in the "make money online / blogging" niche tend to have comments on. Partly I think it's because many of those sites are kinda stuck in the late 2000's, but also because the space is full of scammers, and having comments is kind of like social proof for your articles?
The latter is a hypothesis, though.
cool. just asking the "stupid" questions.
Nah. it's totally valid, i removed them from my tech blog for the exact reason you mentioned :)
lmk how i can help!
Interesting. Why would you turn off comments ?
It's always a huge letdown when I realize comments are off. Many times I learn from comments more than the article.
long-story, but, i've been writing publicly for 19+ years and i have a lot of trolls.
This article has a good list of options: https://www.getshifter.io/blog/static-site-comments/
Thanks for this!
Why are you moving away from Disqus? I've been thinking of adding comments to a blog I manage and was planning on using Disqus, so I'm curious what you didn't like about it.
Hey David! Two reasons: 1) Main reason, it's an absolute disaster for pagespeed. Very heavy and slow JavaScript. 2) No matter how much I disabled weird ads and links to external websites, they keep showing them but sneakily only if you're in incognito, or they get re-enabled somehow...
If it didn't have those two issues I'd be happy to keep using it.
Got it, makes a lot of sense. I've thought about building something myself as well. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to put something basic together. From your requirements above, I think the most difficult thing would be importing existing Disqus comments.
Not for comments, but in a similar context, PopQuote is a product I am working on to enable community-driven collaboration on static sites. I would love your feedback or input on the product if possible :)
https://popquote.io/
I've had this same exact need for a while. Thinking about maybe building my own.
Did you check
commento.io? I like this because it is privacy-centric. You can import from disqus, as it says in the website. I have not used it myself it though.Cheers!
I did, though in typical developer style I wanted to self-host something instead of having yet another SaaS bill for $5/mo. I was kind of intimidated doing a whole Docker setup just for blog comments :D
You don't have to use docker (it would be easier but you don't have to) The db scripts and makefile are there.
Ah nice, I will take a closer look.
I know of some that I think meet those requirements except they aren't self-hosted.
I did find https://schnack.cool/ that might fit, but I've never used it, so not a recommendation.
Thanks, checking it out :)