David RevoyJul 24, 2023

Today, I've decided to give up on my blog's commenting system.

I've been blogging for almost 20 years. I have received 13,007 comments on 978 of my posts. So why am I stopping now?

Blog post:
→ https://www.davidrevoy.com/article980/ive-decided-to-give-up-on-my-blogs-commenting-system

#blog #selfhosting #pluxml #moderation

I've decided to give up on my blog's commenting system

David Revoy
Show threadAurélien GâteauJul 24, 2023

@davidrevoy That is really sad, but not surprising :(.

An alternative I am playing with (but I am very far from having your audience size) is to add a link "Discuss this article on Mastodon" at the end of my posts. With just a link (not inlined Mastodon comments), you give readers a place to comment but the moderation stays on Mastodon side.

Show threadAurélien GâteauJul 24, 2023
@davidrevoy Ah, I too, missed the part where you said your Mastodon instance deletes older comments 🤦🏻
Show threadDavid RevoyJul 24, 2023
@agateau Thanks. No problem and I just added a little '[1]' update: I got news from my instance, Framapiaf isn't removing automatically the comments after 30 days. I assumed it was like that because of a bias: 30 days ago they flushed accidentally it during an upgrade. it's not planned for it to happen again in the future.
So, maybe adding a masto ID in my admin panel and writing a link in the footer to invite to read comments is probably something I'll do.
Show threadCarl Schwan 
@davidrevoy @agateau If you plan to do that, here is the helpful link :) https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/
Adding comments to your static blog with Mastodon

Update 29.01.2023: Adapted the code to work with Mastodon 4.0 and replaced linuxrocks.online by floss.social Update 15.03.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], this code now handles replies in a lot nicer way. You might want check out her solution too. Update 07.07.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], the layout was improved and this now handle emojis One of the biggest disadvantages of static site generators is that they are static and can’t include comments.

Carl Schwan
Jul 24, 2023 at 8:54pmWeb
Show threadAurélien GâteauJul 24, 2023
@carlschwan @davidrevoy Your article has been in the back of my mind as something to add to my blog since you wrote it :), but I recently reconsidered the idea because of moderation. I was worried about not being able to moderate content which would show directly on my site
Show threadDavid RevoyJul 24, 2023

@agateau That's a good point. With my cache of 4h, I made a mechanism in my admin panel of my blog where I could renew the cache immediately for a given article. This way, if a bad comment appears on Mastodon, I would have to moderate it from Masto, and if my blog caught it before I moderate it, I would have to connect to my admin panel and force refresh the article (or wait 4h for the next refresh). Doable with a smartphone. But more works than just linking directly on masto.

@carlschwan

Show threadDavid RevoyJul 24, 2023
@carlschwan @agateau It's what I did last week 🙂 (fully php, with a cache that catches the API json file once every 4h to not overload my instance with all my visitors and your code was inspiring, I had the bookmark open all the time during integration Carl 💜 (thanks for the recent update).
I abandoned it because I thought my instance was trashing all comments after 30 days.

Maybe I'll digg back in my git history to find it and reinstall it. It was like 100% ready: screenshots:
Show threadCarl Schwan Jul 24, 2023
@davidrevoy @agateau Once you find it back from your git history, I could probably mention your solution on my blog post since a few readers asked me for a php /server side solution
Show threadDavid RevoyJul 24, 2023

@carlschwan Right. I'll try to publish the core of the code on the post, an easy version without all the catavatar, integration to PluXML , etc... just a core. I'll take example from your blog post.

@agateau