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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 roo

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
https://comments.network/ https://comments.network/ (my own) (; Feel free to reach out and ask anything, but mine was a short test (which worked quite well, but discontinued for other reasons).
Vinnl 9y ago
You might also want to check Talk: https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html
foob 9y ago
That sounds like it will be an extremely interesting post, I'm looking forward to it. I can chime in with an anecdote about the first one on your list, RemarkBox [1]. We've been using it as the comment system on the Intoli Blog, and we couldn't be happier [2]. We first heard about RemarkBox from one of foxhop's posts here on Hacker News that we happened to see right around the time that we were thinking about adding comments to the blog anyway. We liked the idea of working with a smaller company instead of Disqus, so we got in touch and signed up to be what I suspect was one of the site's first paying customers. The reason that I feel compelled to mention this here isn't that the comment system has worked well for us—although it has—but rather that it has been a real pleasure to communicate with foxhop and to be involved with RemarkBox at this relatively early stage. He's been extremely responsive to our feature requests, wishes us congratulations when one of our articles does well, lets us know if we forget to approve a comment, etc. Overall, it's just been a really pleasant experience. Definitely check them out if you're thinking about adding comments to your site! [1] https://www.remarkbox.com/ https://www.remarkbox.com/ [2] https://intoli.com/blog https://intoli.com/blog
- foxhop 9y ago
  Thank you for the kind words, it really means a lot! One of my long term goals with Remarkbox is to be more then just a "comment system". I want the Remarkbox brand to act like part of the customer's team. I want to help find solutions to help the customer win at whatever they are trying to accomplish. Yes, you are customer number 2 and I'm very grateful for that!
  - gog 9y ago
    Nice work. It would be nice if you could provide your potential customers with a minimal comment page demo. I am always interested in how resource intensive (in terms of CSS/JS size) is the commenting system itself.
    - foxhop 9y ago
      Thank you for the suggestion. Do you mean like the demo on the bottom of the homepage, or something else?
brightball 9y ago
Do any of these options provide a way to import existing site comments from Disqus? That's my main hesitation with replacement because I don't want to lose previously good discussions.
- losowsky 9y ago
  Hi there - Andrew from The Coral Project's Talk platform (https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ https://coralproject.github.io/talk/) We've developed a Disqus importer. We just deprecated it so we can tidy it up, but it's only a day's work for us to fix. Let us know if you're seriously interested and we can prioritize getting it back up.
  - brightball 9y ago
    It’s not urgent, but when the time comes I will be. Don’t shift priorities on my account though.
- r3bl 9y ago
  Have you checked the submitted URL of the thread? Because: > Disqus & WordPress Import > You can migrate your Disqus/WordPress comments without any hassle.
  - brightball 9y ago
    Somehow...I didn’t see that. Thanks.
losowsky 9y ago
We'd love to be involved: https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ Talk is part of The Coral Project from Mozilla. It's an open source commenting tool now in use on The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Intercept, and many others. We also conduct research about online communities, as well as publishing strategy guides and trainings. https://coralproject.net/research.html https://coralproject.net/research.html Code, Heroku install link, and more here: https://github.com/coralproject/talk/ https://github.com/coralproject/talk/
dceddia 9y ago
Here's another one called Just Comments -- https://just-comments.com/ https://just-comments.com/
michaelbrooks 9y ago
This is a cool idea. I feel like you might want to look at Brave and check out their BAT tokens that offer users the ability to donate some of their BAT tokens to creators/publishers. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7cr7yc/new_to_bat_read_this_introduction_to_basic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7cr7yc/new_to_b...

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

https://comments.network/ https://comments.network/ (my own) (; Feel free to reach out and ask anything, but mine was a short test (which worked quite well, but discontinued for other reasons).

Vinnl 9y ago

You might also want to check Talk: https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html

foob 9y ago

That sounds like it will be an extremely interesting post, I'm looking forward to it. I can chime in with an anecdote about the first one on your list, RemarkBox [1]. We've been using it as the comment system on the Intoli Blog, and we couldn't be happier [2]. We first heard about RemarkBox from one of foxhop's posts here on Hacker News that we happened to see right around the time that we were thinking about adding comments to the blog anyway. We liked the idea of working with a smaller company instead of Disqus, so we got in touch and signed up to be what I suspect was one of the site's first paying customers. The reason that I feel compelled to mention this here isn't that the comment system has worked well for us—although it has—but rather that it has been a real pleasure to communicate with foxhop and to be involved with RemarkBox at this relatively early stage. He's been extremely responsive to our feature requests, wishes us congratulations when one of our articles does well, lets us know if we forget to approve a comment, etc. Overall, it's just been a really pleasant experience. Definitely check them out if you're thinking about adding comments to your site! [1] https://www.remarkbox.com/ https://www.remarkbox.com/ [2] https://intoli.com/blog https://intoli.com/blog

foxhop 9y ago
Thank you for the kind words, it really means a lot! One of my long term goals with Remarkbox is to be more then just a "comment system". I want the Remarkbox brand to act like part of the customer's team. I want to help find solutions to help the customer win at whatever they are trying to accomplish. Yes, you are customer number 2 and I'm very grateful for that!
- gog 9y ago
  Nice work. It would be nice if you could provide your potential customers with a minimal comment page demo. I am always interested in how resource intensive (in terms of CSS/JS size) is the commenting system itself.
  - foxhop 9y ago
    Thank you for the suggestion. Do you mean like the demo on the bottom of the homepage, or something else?

brightball 9y ago

Do any of these options provide a way to import existing site comments from Disqus? That's my main hesitation with replacement because I don't want to lose previously good discussions.

losowsky 9y ago
Hi there - Andrew from The Coral Project's Talk platform (https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ https://coralproject.github.io/talk/) We've developed a Disqus importer. We just deprecated it so we can tidy it up, but it's only a day's work for us to fix. Let us know if you're seriously interested and we can prioritize getting it back up.
- brightball 9y ago
  It’s not urgent, but when the time comes I will be. Don’t shift priorities on my account though.
r3bl 9y ago
Have you checked the submitted URL of the thread? Because: > Disqus & WordPress Import > You can migrate your Disqus/WordPress comments without any hassle.
- brightball 9y ago
  Somehow...I didn’t see that. Thanks.

losowsky 9y ago

We'd love to be involved: https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ Talk is part of The Coral Project from Mozilla. It's an open source commenting tool now in use on The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Intercept, and many others. We also conduct research about online communities, as well as publishing strategy guides and trainings. https://coralproject.net/research.html https://coralproject.net/research.html Code, Heroku install link, and more here: https://github.com/coralproject/talk/ https://github.com/coralproject/talk/

dceddia 9y ago

Here's another one called Just Comments -- https://just-comments.com/ https://just-comments.com/

michaelbrooks 9y ago

This is a cool idea. I feel like you might want to look at Brave and check out their BAT tokens that offer users the ability to donate some of their BAT tokens to creators/publishers. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7cr7yc/new_to_bat_read_this_introduction_to_basic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7cr7yc/new_to_b...