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Show HN: Commento: Lightweight, open source, tracking-free alternative to Disqus
- metalmanac 10y agoYou should have put up a demo site where users can try out the comment engine. Requiring the installation on a user's laptop/desktop is just too much friction, not to mention mobile users who don't have the luxury of running go scripts.
- adtac 10y agoWhoa, this blew up! Here's a working demo that I just hacked together: https://adtac.github.io/commento/comment.html https://adtac.github.io/commento/comment.html Edit: sorry, I had to purge the comment list because of an update. From now on, your comment will only be alive for 30 minutes. It'll be deleted after that. This is, of course, only for the demo.
- gizzlon 10y agoNice, that demo loaded pretty fast even with a lot of comments :)
- adtac 10y agoAnd I'm only using now.sh's free tier for the backend.
- reddit_clone 10y agoI was going to comment on the slightly laggy edit box. This might explain that? I am on FireFox 53.0 on a decent Windows 10 laptop.
- adtac 10y agoThat is because there are over 7000 comments right now. Clearing it. Try again, it should be snappy.
- kerneldeveloper 10y agoHow do I get notified when someone else replies my comment?
- grzm 10y agoYou can use 'dangrossman's hnreplies: http://www.hnreplies.com http://www.hnreplies.com
- prophesi 10y agoThis looks nice! I'd also perhaps add very crude deleting functionality; perhaps a way to delete comments via CLI by a unique identifier that is shown on the top right of every comment. Just so that spam posts can be dealt with, without needing a full-blown account system.
- brango 10y agoI'd been thinking about doing something like this with AWS API Gateway, Lambda and DynamoDB. Chalice (https://github.com/awslabs/chalice https://github.com/awslabs/chalice) should make it relatively simple to make and deploy...
- mzzter 10y agoHalf the value of Disqus is that it hosts the server API for you. Any viable alternative to disqus or other commenting engine needs to provide hosting too. Otherwise, it's not useful out of the box for static websites and blogs using shared hosting. The challenge is integrating comments without the ability to control the dynamic server backend.
- jgaa 10y agoThe other half value of Disqus is to provide comments to static sites. Back in the days, most sites used dynamic content, and had comments as part of the CMS system they used. Today, lots of sites have no back-end database, and unfortunately, lots of such sites use Disqus simply for convenience. Convenience that hurt the sites, and their visitors (slow load time, unacceptable tracking & spying). Any alternative should be welcomed. If the sites that use Disqus today were willing to pay for an alternative, I would personally offer hosting of such, with fast load times and no tracking. However, I don't believe such willingness exists, and people are getting conditioned to accept sluggish load times and tracking. Too bad. Self hosted Open Source solutions are the second best alternative - management gets the illusion that the thing is free, and you actually get fast load times and no tracking.
- mxuribe 10y agoWith so much going on about instant articles (or whatever FB calls them), and some institutions pausing, and thinking if its worth handing over their content (often for free) to these external entities - whose goals may/may not be in alignment, I make a prediction: * In 5 years time, large organizations (e.g. NY Times) will look far more into self-hosted, often open sourced alternatives. Maybe now, they post to twitter, soon they'll refer users to their own mastodon instance. Now, orgs host comments on disqus, in the future self-hosted platforms like Commento will be used. In some ways, it will go back to the independent way in which things operated back in the late 90s/early 2000s; though hopefully better in other ways. That's my prediction.
- jgaa 10y ago
- aw3c2 10y agoPlease use a locally hosted js in your example code. rawgit does not even have a privacy policy.
- jacobmischka 10y agoThere's a PR open for it: https://github.com/adtac/commento/pull/3 https://github.com/adtac/commento/pull/3
- _cereal 10y agoNice, but how it deals with multiple concurrent writes? I see you are using transactions but, as far as I know, sqlite3 supports database-level locking, so one writing instance, unless using ATTACH and separating tables into multiple files, to enable a sort of table-level locking. Are you considering to add support to other databases?
- adtac 10y ago>but how it deals with multiple concurrent writes? I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with how go-sqlite3 handles that. I just started learning golang a month ago, so it's all quite new to me. Maybe someone else will have a better answer. >Are you considering to add support to other databases? At the moment, no. Comments aren't exactly big data ;) Just curious - which databases would you like to see and why (what do they offer over sqlite)?
- Sanddancer 10y agoI'd say put in an ODBC driver. It gets you support for a lot of databases right out the gate, especially if you keep things to a relatively simple subset. That way, someone already running a postgresql or mysql database can plug things in and not need to track another place data is stored.
- tyingq 10y agoSingle insert per transaction is slow with sqlite, but slow is sort of relative. It would be probably be 10 to 80 inserts per second or so, a little faster if you turn off synchronous writes in sqlite. I would guess most use cases for this relatively simple comment software wouldn't be expecting that many comments anyway. An agnostic data layer should probably go on your list, but I imagine other stuff would be higher on the list...like a captcha. Spam will likely be the top issue long before performance.
- brilliantcode 10y agoI'm curious how why you need to initialize a local server? Does that run inside the browser?
- adtac 10y agoThe `init_commento("http://0.0.0.0:8080")` http://0.0.0.0:8080")` in the README is an example. You can host your own instance of Commento and just point to that.
- mxuribe 10y agoAdd in indieweb functionality to the codebase, such as microformats stuff, and I think this could really catch on. See https://indieweb.org/comments#How_to_markup https://indieweb.org/comments#How_to_markup
- bshimmin 10y agoI have literally never heard of IndieWeb. Is this something important I should have heard of?
- losteric 10y agoI've been hearing murmurs about it for a while now, I think it's a great idea but thus far it's lacked sufficient business buy-in to gain traction.
- reitanqild 10y agoJust read and it IMO doesn't seem to need business buy-in, just people who want to have their own domain, write stuff and post it.
- zeveb 10y agoI've mentioned it a few times; I think it's pretty important because it has a bunch of ideas which are our last best hope to prevent the centralisation of the Internet. Some of their proposals, taken together, could enable people to emulate what Facebook offers, from their own servers. I'm not 100% onboard with all their ideas, and a few just seem wrong, but all in all I think that they're exciting and important.
- adtac 10y agoThanks, I'll look into it.
- timbowhite 10y agoWhat's the best way to import existing comment data from Disqus into Commento?
- adtac 10y agoThere's no way atm. Can we export all Disqus comments into JSON? If so, I can probably write a script to convert that into a sequence of SQL statements and generate a `sqlite3.db` file. And if you place that in the root directory, all your comments will appear properly.
- lol768 10y agoDoes it include a CAPTCHA? Comment sections seem very susceptible to spam from experience.
- adtac 10y agoIt doesn't at the moment. But someone filed and issue for this and someone else has already begun work on this! I <3 open source.
- TheAceOfHearts 10y agoI used Disqus previously, but eventually dropped it because I didn't really have a need for comments and all they entailed. Having a comment system means having to ultimately setup a way to combat bots and spammers, and probably having to do some moderation (depending on the subject). Linking to whatever discussion happens on Hacker News and Reddit is usually good enough. I think that's what pingbacks were supposed to be for?
- Xoros 10y agoHow do you prevent comments flood ? Imagine someone write a script calling your server with valid headers, what will happens ? Serious question I asked myself a month ago on a similar project I tried to put on.
- adtac 10y agoAt the moment, there's no way. However, Captcha has been suggested. Annoying, but it'll work.
- j_s 10y agoRelated discussion: Replacing Disqus with GitHub Comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041 Recommended alternatives to Commento (Golang): · https://posativ.org/isso/ https://posativ.org/isso/ (Python) · https://github.com/jimpick/lambda-comments https://github.com/jimpick/lambda-comments (Node.js, AWS) Github-based alternatives: · https://staticman.net https://staticman.net for Github comments · Github Issues for comments ( http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ ) > https://github.com/shurcooL/issuesapp https://github.com/shurcooL/issuesapp > http://ebarnouflant.com/posts/4-turn-your-github-issues-into-blog-posts http://ebarnouflant.com/posts/4-turn-your-github-issues-into... · Github Wiki for blogging: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/GitHub%27s-wiki-makes-a-pretty-decent-blogging-platform https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/GitHub%27s-wiki-mak... · remove comments and use Pull Requests and Issues for substantive discussion Other options: · Reddit, Facebook, Discourse for comments · Privacy via Disqus comments on demand when pressing a button · Google Wave via Sandstorm
- tyingq 10y agoFirebase is probably an interesting option as it would likely fit in the free tier, and JavaScript friendly, so easy on-page integration. And you get Google, Twitter, GitHub, etc sign on for free.
- stevekemp 10y agoAlso my toy-project: https://github.com/skx/e-comments/ https://github.com/skx/e-comments/ Demo: https://tweaked.io/guide/demo/ https://tweaked.io/guide/demo/
- JangoSteve 10y agoThis looks really nice and clean. I'd been using Juvia a lot over the year's, built by the people at Phusion. It's worked really well, but seems to be unmaintained now. The killer feature needed in any project like this is spam filtering, which Juvia accomplished by just integrating with Akismet, which works mostly, but not completely.
- stewsnooze 10y agoThe Solid framework, supported by Tim Berners-Lee, is looking for an app like this to be built to add to its list of Wishlist apps. https://github.com/solid/solid-apps#general-wishlist https://github.com/solid/solid-apps#general-wishlist
- na85 10y ago>supported by Tim Berners-Lee An endorsement from Mr Berners-Lee means little, having caved on the DRM issue.
- bramakris 10y agoVery nice! Small suggestion for nested comments: If you indent just the left side and not on the right side, there would be a lot more space for these comments, while still retaining the look of a thread hierarchy.
- adtac 10y agoThanks, opened https://github.com/adtac/commento/issues/21 https://github.com/adtac/commento/issues/21
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoI disabled comments on my blog a while ago. Private comments? Email me. Public comments? Write a blog post in response, I'll link to it at the bottom of my article. Improves the quality of the dialogue significantly.
- pryelluw 10y agoMe too. If I write something that might gain lots of interest in my blog[1], I also post it on dev.to[2] and promote it there. That place has comments and a healthy community. [1] http://pablojuan.com http://pablojuan.com (https underway) [2] https://dev.to https://dev.to
- dawnerd 10y agotwitter is also another nice option.
- foxhop 10y agoI'm bootstrapping an alternative to Disqus called Remarkbox (https://www.remarkbox.com https://www.remarkbox.com) Are you planning on also offering a paid hosted version?
- adtac 10y agoI haven't really thought about that. I dunno, would people pay for this? What's a right monthly price for something like that? $3/month? $5/month? Edit: I know that if I create a SaaS out of this, you'll have me as a direct competition. But can I know more about how you got yours running, what the range the net revenue is in (like, is it over $100/month? Over $1000?)?
- foxhop 10y agoAt this point I'm not making anything and I have poking at the idea on the side for 3 years. I'm currently collecting interest by allowing people to register for the beta.
- 0x6c6f6c 10y agoI wouldn't say a flat-rate is exactly correct. Some sites receive tens of thousands of comments on a single article. Others, 5 or 10. The overhead on the service is more likely a better determinant, such as bandwidth and performance requirements for hosting. If SiteA uses 95% of your traffic and SiteB uses 5%, and your overall costs are 200 FakeUnits, you ought to be charging in respect to usage. Starting it at a price that wouldn't impact you negatively would be a good idea, and making it scalable would be even best. I'm moreover just throwing out ideas and thoughts though, I'm no VC or business expert myself, just someone who hosts servers for fun. Disqus is also paid or supported by ads: https://disqus.com/pricing/ https://disqus.com/pricing/
- kevingrahl 10y agoI'm getting a 404 on https://cdn.rawgit.com/adtac/commento/0.0.2/vendor/commento.min.css https://cdn.rawgit.com/adtac/commento/0.0.2/vendor/commento....
- adtac 10y agoFixed. Thanks!