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A major feature that Jekyll is missing is commenting. Relying on Disqus, a closed source platform, is not ideal because it slows down page load times, does not

by metra 15y ago

A major feature that Jekyll is missing is commenting. Relying on Disqus, a closed source platform, is not ideal because it slows down page load times, does not contribute to SEO, and it does not let you host and search for comments in your git repo. Some people argue that adding a dynamic commenting system contradicts the static html goal of Jekyll. Going along those lines, critics say that a conversation is best carried out on 3rd party sites like HN. However, for technical blog posts specifically, a two-way conversation helps illuminate finer points in the original blog post. Googling around for 'jekyll comments' or 'disqus open source alternative' reveals many people who would use such an idea. However, aside from some quick-and-dirty projects, I see no compelling open source alternative to disqus that will include features such as OpenId, spam prevention, comment threads, etc. Does anyone know of such a project?

mechanical_fish 15y ago
Are you thinking of some kind of hybrid system, in which there's a Disqus-like web app to serve recent comments and enable the commenting infrastructure, but the comments eventually (on a timescale of hours) get rendered into static HTML in my git repository for long-term archiving, SEO, searchability, faster page loads, etc? That sounds interesting. My next question is: Does Disqus's API let me do this via... Disqus? Surfing through the API docs suggests that the answer may be "yes".
- thedz 15y ago
  Yup, the API lets you do that. You can pull our your comments and sync to a local datastore.
  - thetylerhayes 15y ago
    Guide: http://docs.disqus.com/help/58 http://docs.disqus.com/help/58 (though it's already automatic in our WordPress and MovableType plugins).
swanson 15y ago
What about a form that lets someone submit a comment and it appeared as a Pull Request in your repository? Once you merge in the change, Github will rebuild your blog and it will appear. That would be kind of cool. Or you could just have a comment link that uses the github website comments - if you are really interested in technical discussion it's probably fair to assume the poster has a github account
bentlegen 15y ago
> Disqus ... is not ideal because it slows down page load times Do you know to what degree they are slowed down? I am observing that they load particularly fast (< 1 second) on this blog post.
simanyay 15y ago
Engineer from Disqus here, I work on the front-end side of our product. Disqus doesn't slow down page load times because we use a non-blocking technique to load required files. We work hard to make sure that we don't add any performance regressions to sites using Disqus. We are also working on making comments made via our product indexable by search engines. As for the open source version of Disqus, I am not sure what you mean by that since Disqus is a service and not a program that you can download and install. People prefer Disqus because they don't want to spend time implementing and hosting discussion platforms for their websites just like people using GitHub don't want to spend time implementing and hosting developer collaboration software. Anton P.S. If you are having problems with Disqus slowing down your page, email me at anton@disqus.com and I will check it out.
- sixcorners 15y ago
  Open source software is not limited to client side code. Reddit and hackernews are examples of open source software that is also hosted as a service.
  - simanyay 15y ago
    Things like HackerNews, Reddit, GitHub and Disqus are more useful to everyone using them when they are provided as a hosted service and not a deployable software. We give site owners a hassle-free discussion platform that can be integrated into their websites with additional perks such as moderation tools, analytics, spam filters (trained on the whole network of websites and not just one) and others. And people leaving comments on different websites are now able to manage and control their comments across the web, and use their Twitter/Facebook/Google accounts knowing that Disqus will never abuse their trust. Boxed software installed on different sites managed by different people would likely never be able to provide neither the integration nor the trust. But don't get me wrong, we absolutely love open source. Check out our Code page[1] or our public account on GitHub[2]. We released many different projects, some of which are adored by the Python/Django community (e.g. Django Sentry). I think Disqus as a product is better when it is a service and not a boxed software. Anton [1] — http://code.disqus.com/code/ http://code.disqus.com/code/ [2] — https://github.com/disqus/ https://github.com/disqus/
bad_user 15y ago
Hi, For a developer, making your own Disqus is actually easy. And I have done so myself, with free hosting on top of Google's App Engine ... http://alexn.org/TheBuzzEngine/ http://alexn.org/TheBuzzEngine/ + https://github.com/alexandru/TheBuzzEngine https://github.com/alexandru/TheBuzzEngine Don't expect the same polish as Disqus. This is meant for my usage mostly and I have simple needs.

by metra 15y ago

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Are you thinking of some kind of hybrid system, in which there's a Disqus-like web app to serve recent comments and enable the commenting infrastructure, but the comments eventually (on a timescale of hours) get rendered into static HTML in my git repository for long-term archiving, SEO, searchability, faster page loads, etc? That sounds interesting. My next question is: Does Disqus's API let me do this via... Disqus? Surfing through the API docs suggests that the answer may be "yes".

thedz 15y ago
Yup, the API lets you do that. You can pull our your comments and sync to a local datastore.
- thetylerhayes 15y ago
  Guide: http://docs.disqus.com/help/58 http://docs.disqus.com/help/58 (though it's already automatic in our WordPress and MovableType plugins).

swanson 15y ago

What about a form that lets someone submit a comment and it appeared as a Pull Request in your repository? Once you merge in the change, Github will rebuild your blog and it will appear. That would be kind of cool. Or you could just have a comment link that uses the github website comments - if you are really interested in technical discussion it's probably fair to assume the poster has a github account

bentlegen 15y ago

> Disqus ... is not ideal because it slows down page load times Do you know to what degree they are slowed down? I am observing that they load particularly fast (< 1 second) on this blog post.

simanyay 15y ago

Engineer from Disqus here, I work on the front-end side of our product. Disqus doesn't slow down page load times because we use a non-blocking technique to load required files. We work hard to make sure that we don't add any performance regressions to sites using Disqus. We are also working on making comments made via our product indexable by search engines. As for the open source version of Disqus, I am not sure what you mean by that since Disqus is a service and not a program that you can download and install. People prefer Disqus because they don't want to spend time implementing and hosting discussion platforms for their websites just like people using GitHub don't want to spend time implementing and hosting developer collaboration software. Anton P.S. If you are having problems with Disqus slowing down your page, email me at anton@disqus.com and I will check it out.

sixcorners 15y ago
Open source software is not limited to client side code. Reddit and hackernews are examples of open source software that is also hosted as a service.
- simanyay 15y ago
  Things like HackerNews, Reddit, GitHub and Disqus are more useful to everyone using them when they are provided as a hosted service and not a deployable software. We give site owners a hassle-free discussion platform that can be integrated into their websites with additional perks such as moderation tools, analytics, spam filters (trained on the whole network of websites and not just one) and others. And people leaving comments on different websites are now able to manage and control their comments across the web, and use their Twitter/Facebook/Google accounts knowing that Disqus will never abuse their trust. Boxed software installed on different sites managed by different people would likely never be able to provide neither the integration nor the trust. But don't get me wrong, we absolutely love open source. Check out our Code page[1] or our public account on GitHub[2]. We released many different projects, some of which are adored by the Python/Django community (e.g. Django Sentry). I think Disqus as a product is better when it is a service and not a boxed software. Anton [1] — http://code.disqus.com/code/ http://code.disqus.com/code/ [2] — https://github.com/disqus/ https://github.com/disqus/

bad_user 15y ago

Hi, For a developer, making your own Disqus is actually easy. And I have done so myself, with free hosting on top of Google's App Engine ... http://alexn.org/TheBuzzEngine/ http://alexn.org/TheBuzzEngine/ + https://github.com/alexandru/TheBuzzEngine https://github.com/alexandru/TheBuzzEngine Don't expect the same polish as Disqus. This is meant for my usage mostly and I have simple needs.