
Commento: Open-Source Disqus Alternative - August-Garcia
https://www.256kilobytes.com/content/show/4957/what-is-commento-the-open-source-disqus-alternative
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210697)

This is the second time this account has submitted an article about a project
that had major attention on HN a short time earlier. If this is with the idea
of promoting your blog here, that is not the way. What we want is interesting
content that _hasn 't_ been seen recently or (better still) ever.

~~~
40four
To be fair, the person who posted this instance is not the author of the
library/old article you linked. I was wondering why this suddenly disappeared
from the front page. I guess it's possible they are doubling dipping with
accounts? If not, they can't really help if someone else liked it and shared
again.

Anywho... looks fantastic, I'm certainly interested in trying this out! Speaks
to the interest this project is gaining that it rose to the top twice! As
someone who missed the post a few weeks ago, I am very happy to have caught
this one.

~~~
dang
Submissions aren't dupes because they have the same submitter, but because
they cover the same story. The story here is substantially the same as
19210697, and the pattern I was trying to pointing out is visible at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=August-
Garcia](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=August-Garcia). (It has
nothing to do with the creators of this project or the other one, but yes
there has been more than one form of double dipping.)

I agree that it is a cool project! Marking this post a dupe isn't to deny
that. It's just that front page real estate is the scarcest resource on HN.
More explanation here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247).

Not seeing all the cool things that show up on HN is a problem all of us have.
One thing we made to try to mitigate this is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front](https://news.ycombinator.com/front),
which you can get to by clicking 'past' in the top bar.

~~~
40four
Okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah, your updated response is more clear. I
was confused before, but you are actually addressing August-Garcia. For sure
seems like they are trying to capitalize on popular posts, and driving traffic
to 256k website is clearly the goal. I'm definitely not a fan of this behavior
& have ranted about similar activities in the past... lol

Also, props to the 'past' feature. Great idea! I'm a big fan. Thanks for all
the hard work!

~~~
dang
You're welcome, and thanks for the kind words.

------
adtac
Lol it's so surreal seeing your project when you're randomly browsing the
frontpage. Anyway, creator here, AMA!

>adtac has succeeded in reducing download to just 11 kB and isn’t done yet

Someone raised an issue to support Brotli in Commento (which I wasn't aware
of) [1] and I did a quick test; it'd decrease the JS+CSS payload even further
to under 8-9 KB. Nearly all modern browsers support Brotli [2], so I'm really
looking forward to this.

I now realise this could be a modern take on the famous C10K problem, just
with a different meaning: developing web services with under 10 kilobytes of
payload :)

[1]
[https://gitlab.com/commento/commento/issues/125](https://gitlab.com/commento/commento/issues/125)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli#Browser_support](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli#Browser_support)

~~~
technion
The brotli experience has been frustrating.

All modern browsers support it, so you'd think it would be an easy win. The
top nginx search is an official looking Google project which is long abandoned
and doesn't support current versions of the library. There's an official nginx
module which is commercial, and then finally there's a supported fork that
that sits on about page three of Google.

Shared hosts don't generally support it. AWS Cloudfront doesn't support it,
along with several other CDNs. Big + to Cloudflare for proper support.

It reduced my bundle sizes measurably. We all hate bloat and want to reduce
bundles, but there seems to be a community inertia around mass deployment.

~~~
fouc
Anyone know why brotli needs to be generated at the web server level? Just
curious why/if it can't be done at the web app level.

~~~
samschooler
Its generally used as a data transfer compression system. So the web server
needs to compress the data before its sent to the browser. If you did it at
the web app level (client/browser side), the data would already be transferred
so there are no size savings.

~~~
tracker1
Many web servers will serve file.ext.(gz|br) as a pre-compressed option. In
order for brotli to beat gzip on size, you need more CPU time, so it's best if
precompressed. This also means it's not really an option for dynamic content.

------
StavrosK
My experience with comments on my site has not been great. My general sense is
that, beyond the occasional "thank you", which I appreciate but which is not
very actionable, the best discourse happened by email anyway, and comments
were mostly by people who wanted me to solve their problems for them.

I made my email address even more prominent and disabled comments on my site
after realizing it would be a net improvement.

~~~
dmos62
On this note, what are some examples of comments providing considerable value?

I can think of: comments in torrent trackers, where comments sometimes provide
useful information; and, if this even counts, forum sites, like Reddit or HN,
where comments host discussions.

~~~
josteink
For blog-posts which contains technical how-to information, the comments often
contain corrections or other additional information which may be relevant for
later releases or other distros.

I’ve certainly found that useful more than once.

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, this is one example of useful comments. It's just that, for my site,
those tended to be over email, which I generally respond to immediately, so
it's equivalently useful.

Comment sections are especially good for sites which the author doesn't
update, so you can read the correction in the comment.

------
chiefalchemist
Kudos! And nice to see you're using GitLab as well.

Not to get off topic but my theory is, something like this is one of the
reason why Automattic's / WordPress' recent Gutenberg efforts were misguided.

That is, it's not only about the content (of the individual node sites /
blogs) but (in a networked / graph world) also the importance of the
connections between the nodes, as well as the participation of third-parties
(i.e., those leaving comments).

Long to short, commenting and connecting could result in an (informal social)
network (of sorts). With WP powering ~30% of the web, laying the ground work
for such a graph could have been revolutionary. Content __and__ connections.

Instead, they went with Gutenberg (and imho missed a massive opportunity to
move away from the dated silo-based content model).

p.s. If Commento can (easily) work with the current copy of static site
generators, what would be worth mentioning somewhere in your marketing /
feature / benefits copy.

Also, since Disqus is a pseudo social network, how would Commento work if the
same instance were used across multiple sites / blogs? In such a situation,
could Commento be used as a proxy-network among the sites that share a given
instance?

~~~
StavrosK
Actually, it would be great if comments had ActivityPub integration. Then you
could comment on articles from your Mastodon account.

------
darekkay
I've summarized many ways to include comments on a static site in my blog post
[1]. It's great to see how many alternatives are around.

[1] [https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-
comments/](https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/)

------
filesystemdude
I see on Commento.io it explicitly mentions being able to import from Disqus
comments, but the "Import from a different service" is behind a signup wall.

Rather than signing up for a service that may or may not work for my site, I'm
curious, does it allow importing from existing native Drupal and/or WordPress
commenting systems?

That's my biggest pain point right now. Exposing public login to my CMS is a
security risk (see: plugins/modules with permission escalation bugs) and
frankly a pain I don't want to manage anymore. Migrating old comments to a new
system is preferable to keeping the legacy comments system (and user accounts)
in place while maintaining a second system on top of it for new comments.

~~~
filesystemdude
Related (if the creator is still around): Is there a roadmap/timeline for SSO?

~~~
adtac
I plan on implementing SSO for the next release (v1.7.0), but I've been a bit
busy with school work for the past week or so. Still about ~2 weeks away, by
my estimate.

~~~
filesystemdude
Oh wow, great.

I'm used to roadmaps and software planning cycles in months or years so
"weeks" is probably before I could even get somebody to open an email to start
thinking about this. :)

------
js4ever
[https://gitlab.com/commento/commento](https://gitlab.com/commento/commento)

~~~
m3adow
Commento is hosted on Gitlab now:
[https://gitlab.com/commento/commento](https://gitlab.com/commento/commento)
The Github page is only a mirror.

~~~
js4ever
Yes sorry about that, it took me few seconds to notice it and updat the link
in my message

------
foxhop
I'm actively bootstrapping an alternative to Disqus called Remarkbox
([https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com)).

It's a real struggle to get people to actually make the switch.

------
born2discover
How this compares to Isso [1]?

[1]([https://posativ.org/isso/](https://posativ.org/isso/))

~~~
Mariehane
> Even compared to other open source Disqus alternatives, such as Isso and
> Schnack, Commento is much faster and requires less download data and RAM.

If you click on the link, there is also a table comparing Commento, Isso and
Schnack

------
cabalamat
I note that putting lines of text between ```...``` can be used to put them in
a monospaced font.

This is useful when discussing programming, as one can include excerpts of
code. To do this in Reddit, you have to prefix each line by 4 spaces, which is
hard to do because the comment box doesn't use a monospaced font.

Maybe Commento could have an option of a monospaced font for the comment box?

~~~
aboutruby
Reddit supports ``` BTW. You are thinking of StackOverflow probably (which is
very annoying). Extra bonus points to sites like Github for supporting
```language-name, e.g. ```js / ```ruby / etc.

~~~
medmunds
StackOverflow finally added ```language fenced code blocks a few months ago.

[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/322000](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/322000)

~~~
aboutruby
You are a life saver! Now they just need to fix the reputation for new users
but that's a lot more complex.

------
vanderZwan
There was some discussion about adding comments to beta.observable.hq a while
back[0][1]. One of the offered solutions was to embed disqus into a notebook
manually[2]. Could you do that with Commento as well?

[0] [https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-
notebooks/1662](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-notebooks/1662)

[1] [https://talk.observablehq.com/t/let-s-talk-about-
observable-...](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/let-s-talk-about-observable-
suggestions/1675)

[2] [https://observablehq.com/@bumbeishvili/comments-on-
notebooks](https://observablehq.com/@bumbeishvili/comments-on-notebooks)

~~~
adtac
Yep, looks doable. All you need to do is insert two tags: a <script> and a
<div>. You can also disable auto loading and manually trigger loading comments
(see `data-auto-init` in the docs [1]).

[1]
[https://docs.commento.io/configuration/frontend/](https://docs.commento.io/configuration/frontend/)

------
trextrex
I've used a similar solution called TalkYard [1] which provides a interesting
combination of commenting and forums, and has super-helpful support.

[1] [https://www.talkyard.io/](https://www.talkyard.io/)

------
prophesi
Another kudos to the project, adtac!

A few days ago, I self-hosted Commento to slowly replace Disqus on my sites.
It was pretty painless to get the release binaries working on a little $5
Digital Ocean droplet, and get SMTP + Google OAuth configured.

To keep my page loads sane when I used Disqus, I had to delay the Disqus
scripts from loading until the user hit a "Load Comments" button. It's nice
that Commento comes with that sort of functionality right out of the gate,
along with the ability to pass in a CSS file to override the styling.

------
tracker1
Very cool as an alternative... the link at the top though, I thought it was
like 1997 all over again.

I'm glad to see alternatives... Though, I kind of miss when newsgroups and
BBSes were more popular.

------
kristerv
You have a "Your Price" option? Love it!
[https://commento.io/pricing](https://commento.io/pricing)

------
Chazprime
Honestly, Disqus has been so unhelpful with fixing issues (such as users not
being able to post comments from iPhones) that this might be worth a look.

------
pictur
[https://github.com/posativ/isso](https://github.com/posativ/isso)

~~~
orthur_b
[https://github.com/umputun/remark](https://github.com/umputun/remark)

~~~
forlorn
This should be upvoted more.

------
everybodyknows
From:

[https://gitlab.com/commento/commento](https://gitlab.com/commento/commento)

> ... half a second increase in page load time results in a 20% decrease in
> engagement and site traffic.

An intriguing stat. Wonder if the 20% figure is specific to new visitors, who
have never seen the site before?

------
morningmoon
Instead of using another data silo, consider webmentions. Post a reply on your
own blog with rel=“reply-to” and send a webmention notifying the author, who
uses a plugin or webmention service to display replies.

It’s decentralized web comments. See indieweb.org for more information.

------
cabalamat
How does the spam filtering work? Is it just Akismet, or is there something
else you do locally?

------
orkon
Cool project! I am also creating a similar product [https://just-
comments.com/](https://just-comments.com/) It's great to see so many
alternatives to be created recently.

------
tracker1
Suggested a feature on GH project. Would be cool to see an extension for this,
similar to dissenter, that could inject related comments, particularly for
websites that don't even have comments.

------
fareesh
What are some competitors to Disqus re: hosted comments?

What are the challenges with implementing one?

Does Disqus store the comments against a url? What happens if you add some
nonsensical GET parameters? Do the comments disappear?

------
dberhane
Coral Talk commenting system is a good alternative:
[https://coralproject.net/talk/](https://coralproject.net/talk/)

------
StavrosK
I made a comment below about my negative experience with comments but forgot
to mention an important detail: I took down my comments section because of
spam.

I had found your solution back when I was researching comment systems, and it
looked (and still does look) great! I especially like the clean UI and tree-
style comments. However, the big issue for me is how it handles spam. What
sort of tools are there to save me from spending time moderating comments?

Even something as simple as "initially hide comments that contain URLs" would
go a long way towards removing lots of spam.

------
mintplant
The demo page locks up for ~5 seconds before the comments appear. I wouldn't
call this "lightweight".

~~~
adtac
500+ comments and 5k+ page loads in the last few hours, but it turns out the
backend was still pretty fast. It was the JavaScript that dynamically
generated the comments web page that added a couple of seconds of delay. Looks
like I know where to look for performance improvements next :)

------
zimpenfish
This has reminded me to enable it on my blog (temporary testing). Thanks
@adtac for creating it!

------
unixhero
Cool name!

~~~
adtac
Funny story behind that. I originally thought the name was Latin for
"comments". Naming things is hard, so I figured I'd just take the easy way out
and translate from a dead language. I realised it was Italian only months
later lol. Google Translate failed me.

~~~
unixhero
And Spanish & Portuguese more or less

------
ykevinator
This is great. Is disqus still in business?

------
throw7
dang. requires javascript.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.256kilobytes.com/content/show/4957/what-is-
comme...](https://www.256kilobytes.com/content/show/4957/what-is-commento-the-
open-source-disqus-alternative), which points to this.

------
Golfkid2Gadfly
Only I can't open this page?

~~~
m0d0nne11
Count yourself lucky. Hoorah! for any alternative to Disqus, of course, but
OMG the layout of their WWW page is heinously awful example of what can happen
when children are permitted to do CSS.

~~~
hawos
The actual site for the project is
[https://commento.io/](https://commento.io/).

But you're right, the site in the op is super ugly.

