7 ms·
Ask HN: Best Self Hosted Comment System?
Because every recommendation I see seems to be a Disqus esque service requiring a third party server, or have some dependence on an external business and their 'network'.
So what's the answer for those who want to host every part of the system themselves, with no reliance on third parties? Cause my site has a 'no third parties' policy, which means I want every single aspect self hosted rather than reliant on a service that can either go out of business, shut down, be sold off or be encouraged to stop serving me because of an angry mob.
I'm currently using WP Disqus, but it costs a fortune because of their business model (charging for every extra feature).
Any recommendations here?
- hazz99 8y agoIf there is a demand for this, I will happily build it! I've been looking for a new FOSS project to start. Please either upvote or comment to let me know :)
- osdiab 8y agoYes! If it’s something that I can host as cloud functions or something that would be even cooler :) I’d contribute.
- avinassh 8y agoUsing Cloud Functions would be interesting. But how would you handle persistence?
- captn3m0 8y agoHaven't looked, but I distinctly remember AWS Lambda +Dynamo DB based solution long back on a Show HN. I'm on mobile now, but will find and post a link later
- LinuxBender 8y agoAWS is third party.
- avinassh 8y agoFound it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11644042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11644042
- buboard 8y agohow will you handle spam?
- hazz99 8y agoNot sure, I've never had to handle spam before. Something to learn! Rate limiting is the easiest solution. I could have an IP blacklist also. It'd all be manageable by whoever is hosting.
- stevekemp 8y agoMy solution was is here - https://github.com/skx/e-comments https://github.com/skx/e-comments There are others, such as https://github.com/posativ/isso/ https://github.com/posativ/isso/ out there too. There doesn't seem to be a single "standard" solution, because most people just don't care. They use Wordpress, or similar, with integrated comment-support, or they use disuqis.
- jedimastert 8y agoAre we talking about comments on things like blog posts? I guess it depends on the features you want. Do you want: * Moderated by yourself or other? * Nested comments? * Register before commenting? What would be your feature wish list?
- decasteve 8y agoBuild a minimal one in php. Basic JavaScript and php form validation before the php sends an email to a comments@domain account. The email spam filter takes care of the spam. Your moderation tool becomes the email client. Have a script that runs locally to read the email and automatically insert it into the appropriate page. In my case I insert it into a Jekyll page yaml before recompiling and publishing the comment.
- maceurt 8y agoWhy would you write it in php over django or node?
- decasteve 8y agoAny mention of WordPress and I automatically think php. It’s pervasive and simple enough to setup. To validate a form and send an email you can use whatever is there — whatever is quickest and easiest for you.
- ArchTypical 8y agoLike https://mylittleforum.net/ https://mylittleforum.net/ ?
- Scriptor 8y agoWhat if your server gets blacklisted by your email provider?
- javipas 8y agoDiscourse (https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/) would be my bet.
- wortelefant 8y agowe use staticman for a static / jekyll site, it adds comments via forms and github pull requests. works well if you're not exactly drowning in comments and if only minimal moderation is required. some recent blog articles describe similar systems, e.g. https://www.bhnywl.com/blog/comments-for-your-static-blog-with-staticman/ https://www.bhnywl.com/blog/comments-for-your-static-blog-wi...
- iamgopal 8y agoShouldn't Hacker news be open source, since monetization is not their primary intent ? That could be a nice comment system. Edit: since Hacker news uses firebase, it would be nice to have some statistics for Their firebase usage and costing etc, if available anywhere ?
- krapp 8y agoThe software Hacker News is based upon is open source[0], however Hacker News itself is not, because the site is run by a venture capital firm and monetization is the primary intent of many users who are YC's potential clients. [0]http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/
- guu 8y agoI’ve never tried self hosting it but commento (https://gitlab.com/commento/commento-ce https://gitlab.com/commento/commento-ce) might work for you.
- adtac 8y agoHeyo, thanks a lot for the shout-out. Original author here, happy to answer any questions you guys might have. Here's a demo of what Commento looks like: https://demo.commento.io https://demo.commento.io I should mention that there's also an enterprise edition that adds proprietary, enterprise-y features like audit logs, SSO, etc. that you can purchase for a one-time fee [1]. It also supports the project :) But worry not, the community edition will always be fully functional and I'll never make it crippleware. [1] https://commento.io/pricing https://commento.io/pricing
- cweagans 8y agoI host Commento for a couple sites, and it's awesome. It's really easy to manage and it kind of just works. My only gripe with it is the lack of email notifications for followup comments, but that's certainly not a deal breaker for small sites like mine.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- iKevinShah 8y agoOn a related note, say I want to build my own commenting system (self hosted), any good papers / articles / discussion topics to share? Topics from db structure to how to handle nesting(display wise), sorting (top / trending), etc. Some gotchas which we might miss.
- se7entime 8y agohttps://posativ.org/isso/ https://posativ.org/isso/ https://github.com/posativ/isso https://github.com/posativ/isso
- KajMagnus 8y agoTalkyard looks like Disqus, is open source self hosted. Plus serverless hosting no ads no tracking: Demo: https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments/ https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments/ More info: https://www.talkyard.io/blog-comments https://www.talkyard.io/blog-comments There're Discourse + Hacker News discussion forum features too, if later on you want to start a forum / community around your blog. Email notifications. Sign in with Gmail / Facebook / GitHub / email+password. I'm developing Talkyard.
- _frkl 8y agoFound this just yesterday, and really really like the concept. Would be cool if it supported logins via Keycloak, as that's what I use. Will keep watching, it seems there's some work on Oauth/SSO going on.
- KajMagnus 8y agoCan I ask what do you use Keycloak for — is it for you blog only? Or for other things too? — Keycloak is a separate server with its own user database, right? To me that sounds a bit heavyweight to have login on a separate server, for a blog? So that's why I'm curious about if you use Keycloak for other things too :- ) B.t.w. I'm thinking about starting to use pac4j, which apparently supports Keycloak: https://github.com/pac4j/pac4j/blob/master/pac4j-oidc/src/main/java/org/pac4j/oidc/client/KeycloakOidcClient.java https://github.com/pac4j/pac4j/blob/master/pac4j-oidc/src/ma...
- osdiab 8y agoIt looks like the comments aren’t showing up properly when I’m on Safari on iOS in the blog post :P http://imgur.com/kFPTMaC http://imgur.com/kFPTMaC
- KajMagnus 8y agoI've started fixing this now ... by removing cookies completely (unless one logs in to post/edit a comment; then there's a session cookie). + adding a cookieless just-type-name-and-email Guest login. (Session id remembered only for the current page load; everything forgotten on page refresh. This should make it impossible for iOS etc to classify this as a tracker.)
- pythonik 8y agoCheck Talk https://coralproject.net/talk/ https://coralproject.net/talk/ .
- mantlepro 8y agoI wouldn't mind seeing an ActivityPub-based (http://activitypub.rocks http://activitypub.rocks) comment system. It would enable a decent self-hosted, experience that works with other AP-based platforms. The landscape for such a thing should be forthcoming given the popularity of Mastodon, PeerTube, and others supporting the protocol. Doesn't seem overly hard to implement for a comment system.
- oboroten 8y agoLook at https://remark42.com/ https://remark42.com/
- dddw 8y agonice but I wouldn't want to use sso
- zzo38computer 8y agoUse NNTP perhaps
- fosco 8y agoLobsters[0] put their code up, might need some massaging, but maybe you could use it for inspiration. [0] https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
- ivankolev 8y agoNot affiliated in any way, haven't actually used it and I see no development happening lately, so caveat emptor, but https://github.com/s-gv/orangeforum https://github.com/s-gv/orangeforum might be worth a look, it is written in Go and it does look decent.
- sideproject 8y agoHelloBox is another alternative https://www.hellobox.co https://www.hellobox.co