

Juvia: Free software Disqus comment server - comice
https://github.com/phusion/juvia#readme

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kemayo
It's nice to see a self-hostable alternative to Disqus. It's not likely to
make me stop using Disqus, because I like the convenience of not having to
deal with the hosting myself, but it makes me feel more comfortable knowing
that if Disqus ever became evil I could move away.

~~~
asomiv
I wrote it mainly because I found Disqus and IntenseDebate too limiting, not
because of concerns about hosting or data ownership. I'm trying to implement
per-section commenting for the Phusion Passenger manual similar to how it's
done in the Django book (<http://www.djangobook.com/>). However after a week
of trying it became painfully clear that Disqus was only designed for one use
case in mind: a single comment box per page, e.g. blogs. Comment topics in
Disqus are tied to the URL, which doesn't work in my case because I want each
section on the same page to have a different comment topic. The Disqus
developer documentation says that they support AJAX but I did things exactly
as documented and all I got was vague undebuggable JavaScript errors.

IntenseDebate was the almost exactly same. I gave up after two days.

I finished the most important parts of Juvia today. I got Juvia commenting in
the manual working in about 15 minutes.

~~~
loceng
Have you made a final decision on no-nested comments/replying? There are some
comments related to adding nesting as a feature, as you can even see with your
own comment reply here- it's useful and pretty much a necessity these days to
make sense of conversation.

~~~
asomiv
No it's not a final decision, but I'm not going to write support for it so
feel free to contribute. That said I did add a 'Reply to comment' button a few
minutes ago by popular demand.

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zerostar07
_Juvia currently also makes no effort to support nested comments. I believe
nested comments only make sense for extremely active discussion forums._

Quite the contrary, high traffic sites like facebook have single thread
comments where everyone keeps repeating the same things. Threaded comments are
necessary for discussions.

~~~
asomiv
If people keep repeating the same thing then that would qualify as an active
discussion. Juvia is specifically _not_ designed for active discussion. It's
just for simple commenting.

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bad_user
For what it's worth, I've got my own Disqus alternative:
<https://github.com/alexandru/TheBuzzEngine>

You can see it in action here: <http://thebuzzengine.appspot.com/>

However, on my blog I have switched back to Disqus. Mostly because the only
thing bothering me about Disqus is its bloatness which makes the page take a
performance hit, but other than that it works great and you can export your
comments at any time.

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djacobs
I think the primary reason I use Disqus instead of coding my own comment
server is for its community.

When you have Disqus powering your comments, you have two ways of contributing
to this community: by commenting on other people's thoughts (be they blog
entries, photos, or news articles) or by writing your own entry and having
people comment. You're basically getting a free identity system without the
complexity of OpenId or the control of Facebook. I like that balance.

I'm not sure this software can give me that, but I'll be happy if it does.

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Zirro
Is Juvia compatible with Gray? (Judging by the comments so far, few people
will get it, but with that logo, this comment is required)

~~~
asomiv
Finally! I was waiting for someone to recognize the name. :D

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asomiv
I just added a 'Reply to this comment' button because so many people asked for
it.

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sathyabhat
The test page <http://juvia-demo.phusion.nl/admin/sites/1/test> is giving a
404

~~~
asomiv
That's because someone deleted the site object. The demo database is reset
every 24 hours and I've just issued a manual reset.

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Johnyma22
I really like disqus and I don't want to have to invest in rails. Wish the OP
the best of luck though :)

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zobzu
where's browserid support ;-)

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drivebyacct2
Lack of nested comments is a shame, I believe it's vital for anything more
than Engadget/Youtube style comments.

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gitarr
Misleading title as this is not a "Disqus comment server", but a comment
server unrelated to Disqus written in RoR.

~~~
asomiv
The submitter probably just meant "Disqus-like commenting server".

~~~
gitarr
It's just funny because Disqus is criticized right away within the readme on
github.

