12 ms·

Isso – a commenting server similar to Disqus

119 points by lobo_tuerto 9y ago

NiceGuy_Ty 9y ago
> SQLite backend > Because comments are not Big Data. For small scale applications, I 100% agree. Sqlite3 is so easy to back up and configure.
- jteppinette 9y ago
  > If there are many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a network, then use a client/server database engine instead of SQLite. https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
  - lioeters 9y ago
    Judging from a quick glance, this particular library (Isso) does not seem to be the case of "many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a network". There is only one server as a "client" program, sending SQL directly to the database, not over a network. If so, I'd tend to agree that SQLite is suitable for its purpose.
- beagle3 9y ago
  I've hit r/w concurrency limits on relatively light usage; WAL mode solves it very handily (stops reads and writes from competing, makes only writes compete), but it also means that backup becomes just a little less trivial.
- WhyNotHugo 9y ago
  I feel quite the opposite. I can host a small website for free in places like Heroku. I can use Disqus on S3/Cloudfront, and similar alternatives. There's a bunch of ways now to easily run a site in a docker container somewhere and connect to a managed DB. sqlite? That requires me to manage a whole VPS just so I have disk access to it. For my personal site, that's more than I'm willing to get into (also note: managing servers is part of my job description).
ploggingdev 9y ago
The topic of Disqus alternatives comes up every once in a while on HN, so I was thinking about inviting the people working on Disqus alternatives to my chat room and have a conversation about their projects and the comments space in general and write a lightly edited blog post based on the chat. Here are some of the people I plan to talk to: * `foxhop of https://www.remarkbox.com/ https://www.remarkbox.com/ * `adtac of https://github.com/adtac/commento https://github.com/adtac/commento * `KajMagnus of https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ * The person behind Isso * The person behind https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack * Aja of Civil Comments (it shut down recently https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-comments-41859d3a2b1d https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-commen... ) * And of course, my own https://www.hostedcomments.com/ https://www.hostedcomments.com/ We actually had the first discussion in the chat room (though we went off topic very quickly), you can read it here https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?date=2018-01-07 https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?dat... There are a few opinions people have about this space, some feel going ad-supported is the only way, others feel bootstrapped operations are sustainable and there are others who feel there's no money in this space. If you have any questions that you would like me to ask the people mentioned above let me know here or in my chat room https://www.hackerschat.net/ https://www.hackerschat.net/
- alpb 9y ago
  I was going to say the same thing. It looks like this project was posted on HN a while ago, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700065
- darekkay 9y ago
  I find this topic extremely interesting, as I've been searching for a Disqus alternative for a while. Recently I wrote about different comment options on my blog[0] (which I will update after your post, thanks for those links!). I am looking forward to reading the blog post you are planning to do. [0] - https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/ https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/
- franciscop 9y ago
chrissnell 9y ago
I've run a few large vBulletin forums for years. The biggest problem with internet commenting isn't the software, it's the spam. I wish I had a system that I could train with 10 years of user registration and comment moderation history and have it do the tedious, daily pointy-clicky grind for me.
- Harelin 9y ago
  The forum spam problem is easily solved if you ask a question during registration like: "What are the last four letters in the name of this website?" Anything that requires momentary thought from an actual user, and is specific to your website, will throw bots off.
  - nodja 9y ago
    This only mitigates spam if your forum is small enough for spammers to not care. Those questions are a mere extra parameter on the registration post request. Spam software automatically detects those and asks a human to fill it. If the question is static it's even easier than a captcha solver.
    - ryacko 9y ago
      Spam is done by massive botnets that crawl the web at a rate nearly equal to Google's.
      - AFNobody 9y ago
        And they have their equivalents of Amazon's Mechanical TURK to learn how to bypass security questions. https://2captcha.com/public_statistics https://2captcha.com/public_statistics <- this for example You can find humans willing to work for $0.001/captcha.
        littlestymaar 9y ago
        I've also read that some torrent or other illegal download website display captchas that are in fact captchas from other websites, to crowdsource the captcha bypass.
darekkay 9y ago
I've been searching for a Disqus alternative for a while, and Isso is one of the first project I cape upon. However, I had some problems getting it to run and it did not fully convince me. Recently I wrote a blog post[0] summerizing different options to offer comments on my static site. But in the end I dicided to keep Disqus, but only load the script on a "load comments" button click. [0] https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/ https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/
- thekashifmalik 9y ago
  Yay! Glad you stayed. We'd be sad to lose you :( If Disqus built an optional/configurable load-comments-button feature into the product, would you use it?
  - darekkay 9y ago
    Great to see a response from Disqus here :) The big problem most people have with Disqus are privacy and performance issues [0][1]. Of course, a fully free service at this scale often comes at such a price. Hacking a load-comments-button myself was really easy, but I'm sure many more people would use it if you provided it out of the box. [0] - https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comme... [1] - http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/
raister 9y ago
Yet Another Commenting Server - how many of those do we really need?
ryannevius 9y ago
I'm just curious, since it wasn't touched upon in the README or the landing page: what's wrong with Disqus? Alternatively: what problem are these Disqus alternatives trying to solve that Disqus doesn't? As someone who has added Disqus to many projects, I'm genuinely not sure what added value I'd see by using an alternative.
- detaro 9y ago
  9$ a month to turn off ads. Various other things like (supposedly accidentally) injecting affiliate links (http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-disqus-review-increased-comments-by-304/ http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-disqus...). Control about your comment data in case they pull yet another one of these things and you want out. Not wanting to expose your users to yet another tracking company.
- darekkay 9y ago
  Mostly because of privacy and performance issues [0][1]. Additionally, you may not want to force your readers to register to Disqus to leave a comment (you can post as a guest without an account, but this is quite hidden). [0] - https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comme... [1] - http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/
- zhte415 9y ago
  I have never seen better conversation come from Disqus than from originally hosted, or even "let's do this on Twitter?" comments. I have never seen value in such a centralised comment-tracking system.
- foxhop 9y ago
  Hi ryannevius, I list some of the reasons to switch here: https://www.remarkbox.com/finally-a-disqus-alternative.html https://www.remarkbox.com/finally-a-disqus-alternative.html
xez 9y ago
Somehow it seems like none of these so-called Disqus alternatives cover the use case of people with static websites that don't wan't or can't host the comments themselves.

119 points by lobo_tuerto 9y ago

> SQLite backend > Because comments are not Big Data. For small scale applications, I 100% agree. Sqlite3 is so easy to back up and configure.

jteppinette 9y ago
> If there are many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a network, then use a client/server database engine instead of SQLite. https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
- lioeters 9y ago
  Judging from a quick glance, this particular library (Isso) does not seem to be the case of "many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a network". There is only one server as a "client" program, sending SQL directly to the database, not over a network. If so, I'd tend to agree that SQLite is suitable for its purpose.
beagle3 9y ago
I've hit r/w concurrency limits on relatively light usage; WAL mode solves it very handily (stops reads and writes from competing, makes only writes compete), but it also means that backup becomes just a little less trivial.
WhyNotHugo 9y ago
I feel quite the opposite. I can host a small website for free in places like Heroku. I can use Disqus on S3/Cloudfront, and similar alternatives. There's a bunch of ways now to easily run a site in a docker container somewhere and connect to a managed DB. sqlite? That requires me to manage a whole VPS just so I have disk access to it. For my personal site, that's more than I'm willing to get into (also note: managing servers is part of my job description).

ploggingdev 9y ago

The topic of Disqus alternatives comes up every once in a while on HN, so I was thinking about inviting the people working on Disqus alternatives to my chat room and have a conversation about their projects and the comments space in general and write a lightly edited blog post based on the chat. Here are some of the people I plan to talk to: * `foxhop of https://www.remarkbox.com/ https://www.remarkbox.com/ * `adtac of https://github.com/adtac/commento https://github.com/adtac/commento * `KajMagnus of https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ https://www.effectivediscussions.org/ * The person behind Isso * The person behind https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack * Aja of Civil Comments (it shut down recently https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-comments-41859d3a2b1d https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-commen... ) * And of course, my own https://www.hostedcomments.com/ https://www.hostedcomments.com/ We actually had the first discussion in the chat room (though we went off topic very quickly), you can read it here https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?date=2018-01-07 https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?dat... There are a few opinions people have about this space, some feel going ad-supported is the only way, others feel bootstrapped operations are sustainable and there are others who feel there's no money in this space. If you have any questions that you would like me to ask the people mentioned above let me know here or in my chat room https://www.hackerschat.net/ https://www.hackerschat.net/

alpb 9y ago
I was going to say the same thing. It looks like this project was posted on HN a while ago, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700065
darekkay 9y ago
I find this topic extremely interesting, as I've been searching for a Disqus alternative for a while. Recently I wrote about different comment options on my blog[0] (which I will update after your post, thanks for those links!). I am looking forward to reading the blog post you are planning to do. [0] - https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/ https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/
franciscop 9y ago

chrissnell 9y ago

I've run a few large vBulletin forums for years. The biggest problem with internet commenting isn't the software, it's the spam. I wish I had a system that I could train with 10 years of user registration and comment moderation history and have it do the tedious, daily pointy-clicky grind for me.

Harelin 9y ago
The forum spam problem is easily solved if you ask a question during registration like: "What are the last four letters in the name of this website?" Anything that requires momentary thought from an actual user, and is specific to your website, will throw bots off.
- nodja 9y ago
  This only mitigates spam if your forum is small enough for spammers to not care. Those questions are a mere extra parameter on the registration post request. Spam software automatically detects those and asks a human to fill it. If the question is static it's even easier than a captcha solver.
  - ryacko 9y ago
    Spam is done by massive botnets that crawl the web at a rate nearly equal to Google's.
    - AFNobody 9y ago
      And they have their equivalents of Amazon's Mechanical TURK to learn how to bypass security questions. https://2captcha.com/public_statistics https://2captcha.com/public_statistics <- this for example You can find humans willing to work for $0.001/captcha.
      - littlestymaar 9y ago
        I've also read that some torrent or other illegal download website display captchas that are in fact captchas from other websites, to crowdsource the captcha bypass.

darekkay 9y ago

I've been searching for a Disqus alternative for a while, and Isso is one of the first project I cape upon. However, I had some problems getting it to run and it did not fully convince me. Recently I wrote a blog post[0] summerizing different options to offer comments on my static site. But in the end I dicided to keep Disqus, but only load the script on a "load comments" button click. [0] https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/ https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/

thekashifmalik 9y ago
Yay! Glad you stayed. We'd be sad to lose you :( If Disqus built an optional/configurable load-comments-button feature into the product, would you use it?
- darekkay 9y ago
  Great to see a response from Disqus here :) The big problem most people have with Disqus are privacy and performance issues [0][1]. Of course, a fully free service at this scale often comes at such a price. Hacking a load-comments-button myself was really easy, but I'm sure many more people would use it if you provided it out of the box. [0] - https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comme... [1] - http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/

raister 9y ago

Yet Another Commenting Server - how many of those do we really need?

ryannevius 9y ago

I'm just curious, since it wasn't touched upon in the README or the landing page: what's wrong with Disqus? Alternatively: what problem are these Disqus alternatives trying to solve that Disqus doesn't? As someone who has added Disqus to many projects, I'm genuinely not sure what added value I'd see by using an alternative.

detaro 9y ago
9$ a month to turn off ads. Various other things like (supposedly accidentally) injecting affiliate links (http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-disqus-review-increased-comments-by-304/ http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-disqus...). Control about your comment data in case they pull yet another one of these things and you want out. Not wanting to expose your users to yet another tracking company.
darekkay 9y ago
Mostly because of privacy and performance issues [0][1]. Additionally, you may not want to force your readers to register to Disqus to leave a comment (you can post as a guest without an account, but this is quite hidden). [0] - https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comme... [1] - http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/
zhte415 9y ago
I have never seen better conversation come from Disqus than from originally hosted, or even "let's do this on Twitter?" comments. I have never seen value in such a centralised comment-tracking system.
foxhop 9y ago
Hi ryannevius, I list some of the reasons to switch here: https://www.remarkbox.com/finally-a-disqus-alternative.html https://www.remarkbox.com/finally-a-disqus-alternative.html

xez 9y ago

Somehow it seems like none of these so-called Disqus alternatives cover the use case of people with static websites that don't wan't or can't host the comments themselves.