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Static site with self hosted comments?
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Static site with self hosted comments?

pbxpbx Member

Hi LET

Trying to get rid of WP, I'm having a hard time finding a good static site management engine that would allow me to self host the comments easily.

Jekyll + staticman sounds neat if one hosts on github, but not so much for self hosting on small VPS or CDN.

Using a JS based solution like isso could work and would be easy to setup but I'd really prefer to have the comments generated when I update the site and integrated to the HTML.

Any good solution I didn't think about?

Thanks :smile:

Comments

  • @pbx said: I'd really prefer to have the comments generated when I update the site and integrated to the HTML.

    Are you the only one writing comments? Or do you want the whole HTML to be re-rendered every time there's a new comment?

  • I want visitors to be able to submit comments, but those to be shown only when they have been accepted by me: could be when I manually push an update, in which case I don't mind if the whole HTML is re-rendered (if there is a new comment for a page).

    I'd enjoy if it could be easy to validate and answer to comments.

  • Insert a google form and adding comments manually.

  • why not ?
    dynamic web site

  • @pedagang said:
    why not ?
    dynamic web site

    If you site have no interactive component required, make it static have many benefits, such as put the website on CDN directly. Faster and safer.

    Thanked by 1pedagang
  • i had this kind of setup but I used disqus for the comment part

    Thanked by 1kkrajk
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @pbx said: Jekyll + staticman sounds neat if one hosts on github, but not so much for self hosting on small VPS or CDN.

    I've used jekyll on a small VPS before and it was fine. All you're doing is serving HTML.

    I've also used Pelican and Hugo. Hugo is amazing if you have a large site.

    You can do all the content gen on your home laptop or whatever and then push, so the resource-intensive part of it doesn't depend on the size of your web server.

    @pbx said: I want visitors to be able to submit comments, but those to be shown only when they have been accepted by me: could be when I manually push an update, in which case I don't mind if the whole HTML is re-rendered (if there is a new comment for a page).

    I'd enjoy if it could be easy to validate and answer to comments.

    Then if you don't want live comments like Disqus, you're going to need some kind of server to receive that submission. I like @elliotc's idea of Google Forms. Perhaps Amazon Lambda could be made to work. Or if you want to be really lowend...a MAILTO link :-)

  • Not related, but similar question:

    I need some sort of REST API starter package in PHP. Any suggestions?

  • Hugo + Disqus, hosted on Netfliy

  • pbxpbx Member
    edited September 2020

    Thanks for the replies!

    Could be interesting with long term caching: lighter / simpler than WP and comments and stuff like that would be supported out of the box...

    @elliotc said: Insert a google form and adding comments manually.

    Would be an easy way. As the volume of comments is fairly small, adding the comments manually could be an option.

    @Hotmarer said: Hugo + Disqus, hosted on Netfliy

    Easy and should scale well but I'd like to self host the comments, and ideally have them being part of the html (not loaded via JS).

    @pedagang said: why not ? dynamic web site

    Very fast, very secure, very stable (no updates, no way to break it), can be hosted on a CDN... lots of pros actually!

    @jeorlie said: I used disqus for the comment part

    Would work fine but I don't want to give comments away to a big company.

    @raindog308 said: Hugo is amazing if you have a large site.

    My site isn't large but I'm gonna check Hugo out. Heard about it but never actually tried it.

    @raindog308 said: you're going to need some kind of server to receive that submission. I like @elliotc's idea of Google Forms. Perhaps Amazon Lambda could be made to work. Or if you want to be really lowend...a MAILTO link :-)

    Mailto link is neat but I'm afraid it'll keep some folks from commenting. I'd like anybody to be able to comment easily. The good point of google docs or amazon lambda is that I could host the site with a CDN. That being said, wouldn't mind using a VPS or shared hosting to get and store the comments.

    @elliotc said: Insert a google form and adding comments manually.

    Or even a very basic php script that would just receive the comments and write them to a static file could do the job. If something better already exists (spam detection and stuff like that) that would be better. If not I'll probably setup a small script to get the result and do some askimset or similar on it.

  • If you're going to do it manually, then check out Formspree.

  • If you are ok with SQLite you can use http://pomax.nihongoresources.com/pages/EasyPageComments/
    Sqlite is similar to flat file database.

  • BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep

    Let Disqus handle the comment system for you. You can keep the comments under moderation, approve them via Disqus and then it will display on your site.

    Thanked by 2raindog308 Hotmarer
  • WebProjectWebProject Host Rep, Veteran

    Use grav cms

  • @lokuzard said: If you're going to do it manually, then check out Formspree.

    Seems interesting, thanks! The free tier could be enough for the beginning. Quickly gets expensive though!

    Nice, but seems like it hasn't been maintained for a while.

    @BlaZe said: Let Disqus handle the comment system for you.

    Would be too easy! But it seems to me that a similar (but self hosted) JS based solution will be the easiest way to implement a good commenting system on a static site.

    @WebProject said: Use grav cms

    Gonna give this one a try for sure, but probably not for this project as I'd like to experiment more with really static website.

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