Replace Disqus with a self-hosted/open alternative

[novoid]

Disqus is currently used in the templates to enable comments from readers.

Unfortunately, this is an external dependency to a closed service which is not a good thing to have.

One alternative would be https://posativ.org/isso/ which is using a SQLite backend.

• [ ] evaluate integration effort
• [ ] evaluate hosting possibilities for karl-voit.at

[novoid]

An open standard for this is: https://indieweb.org/webmention via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9FSPcmybT8&feature=youtu.be

[novoid]

This is a blog post of somebody who is using webmentions: https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/05/04/comments-using-webmentions/

[novoid]

Comments via Mastodon: https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2021/01/07/comments-via-mastodon/

[novoid]

Motivation to migrate away from Disqus: https://supunkavinda.blog/disqus

Comments via Github issues and https://github.com/utterance/utterances

• https://lazywinadmin.com/2019/04/moving_blog_comments.html
• https://asp.net-hacker.rocks/2018/11/19/github-comments.html

an intermediate step to migrate off of Disqus altogether but keep static copies of existing comment content: https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-import-disqus (JavaScript)

[novoid]

Maybe a good read: https://kevq.uk/my-thoughts-on-micro-blog/

IndieWeb is not easy to implement, few people understand how to do it, some people even remove IndieWeb-support again: https://kevq.uk/removing-support-for-the-indieweb/

[novoid]

Bridgy seems to be an option although it needs some sort of active content: https://brid.gy/about#blogs

It's part of IndieWeb and uses the webmention protocol.

[xeruf]

I think integrating with ActivityPub (#71) would be the way to go, that way the integration is two-sided:

• comments on the ActivityPub post are visible in the blog
• comments made on the blog are visible in ActivityPub (or you are redirected to the ActivityPub post to comment, which would be the easy lazy option ^^)

Then you also don't need separate authentication, people can simply use their existing Fediverse account! Oh I would love this :)

[novoid]

I think integrating with ActivityPub (#71) would be the way to go, that way the integration is two-sided: [...]

Please read my comments on #71 which describe my ideas on the ActivityPub implementation by me.

However, I do see that ActivityPub would be a potential candidate to solve the disqus problem although I'd leave the static site generator idea.

[novoid]

Also see https://emacsconf.org/2022/talks/indieweb/ + this talk video for webmentions

[novoid]

https://giscus.app/

A comments system powered by GitHub Discussions. Let visitors leave comments and reactions on your website via GitHub! Heavily inspired by utterances.

[Open source](https://github.com/giscus/giscus). 🌏
No tracking, no ads, always free. 📡 🚫
No database needed. All data is stored in GitHub Discussions. :octocat:
Supports [custom themes](https://github.com/giscus/giscus/blob/main/ADVANCED-USAGE.md#data-theme)! 🌗
Supports [multiple languages](https://github.com/giscus/giscus/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#adding-localizations). 🌐
[Extensively configurable](https://github.com/giscus/giscus/blob/main/ADVANCED-USAGE.md). 🔧
Automatically fetches new comments and edits from GitHub. 🔃
[Can be self-hosted](https://github.com/giscus/giscus/blob/main/SELF-HOSTING.md)! 🤳

Note giscus is still under active development. GitHub is also still actively developing Discussions and its API. Thus, some features of giscus may break or change over time.

[xeruf]

But makes you dependent on GitHub. I'd rather work with something like https://forgejo.org to have a fully self-hosted environment with the data under our control.

[novoid]

This sounds really promising: https://hunden.linuxkompis.se/2023/11/18/my-blog-now-supports-plain-text-comments.html

https://github.com/aioobe/dead-simple-jekyll-comments + emails that get processed to text comments