Show HN: Free comments section for personal sites

[elpachongco]

I've been working on creating threaded blog posts using RSS feeds. Something similar to Twitter but kind of worse and better in its own way.

I had an idea that if users are allowed to embed the threads to their posts, it acts like a simple comment section.

Try it out, no accounts required.

[dewey]

Usually the biggest problem with comment sections is moderation. For example for spam (automated or non-automated). I couldn't find anything about that topic on the site, how are you going to deal with that?

[elpachongco]

Thanks for pointing this out, it's an important aspect of comment sections. Honestly, I'm still at the stage of figuring out how to deal with this. As of the moment, the only control I have is to delete individual feeds that don't classify as a personal website or spam.

An idea I have is to implement a publicly-viewable ban list. Possibly a file like `bans.txt` available in the public repo which anyone can discuss and add suggestions. This will be a list of domains which Bhread and other instances can reference as an 'ignore' list.

I'm open for ideas. I'm still looking for other options.

[throwaway0665]

Webmention is another similar concept of distributed comments but as an open W3C web standard. There is lots going on on the IndieWeb.

[elpachongco]

Webmention is great, it's truly decentralized but it doesn't work if you have a static site which is probably a considerable percentage of personal sites.

In the future, I might come up with something that integrates Webmention for sites that already have them.

[Groxx]

Seems like it's pretty equivalent? For webmentions you 1) set a header link to show where to submit mentions, it doesn't have to be the same domain afaik, and 2) js / iframes to show the mentions from some other server. It's fine for static sites.

[jszymborski]

Shameless plug, but I recently wrote about the pros and cons of using Mastodons powered comment sections.

One of the pros is that it is super fast to set up and free in most cases.

https://jszym.com/blog/mastodon_blog_comments/

[LorenDB]

I personally prefer Cactus Comments. https://cactus.chat

[elpachongco]

Interesting. I've only heard of this now. This seems like the fediverse equivalent of my project and it's miles ahead of what I've accomplished so far. I'll be using this for inspiration. Thanks for sharing.

[tamimio]

I loved this!! Does it work without JavaScript enabled? I have Zola, will give it a try.

[tamimio]

I don’t know why I can’t edit my previous reply.

I tried it on Zola, works great and I love it, but it still requires JavaScript, will keep it in the meantime, if someone knows something else that works without JavaScript that would be appreciated!

[whenlambo]

height="350px"

You can’t use “px” in height attr.

[elpachongco]

I just checked and you're right. I seriously didn't know. Thanks for telling me. Good eye!

[KomoD]

I don't even understand how to comment...

Do I need a blog somewhere to leave a comment?

[elpachongco]

> I need a blog somewhere to leave a comment? Correct. You must have a blog with an RSS feed to comment.

This may give you a better overview: https://github.com/elpachongco/bhread?tab=readme-ov-file#abo...

Thanks for checking this out. Believe it or not, this is good feedback for me to improve user-facing documentation and general UX.

[mkoryak]

Same boat here. I clicked "Comment with a blog post!" Which took me to a marketing type page where the CTA seems to be to "take my money, JK lol". I skimmed that page looking for a way to comment, then clicked the CTA which brought me to another page containing the show hn page as a post.

Very confusing. I gave up trying to figure out how to comment, or sign up

[elpachongco]

Apologies for the bad experience.

I appreciate the feedback especially the detailed description of your interaction with the site. This is helpful for me so I can create a better experience for new users.

[mkoryak]

No apologies needed, it's free right?

Anyway, I would have expected to not see the marketing page when I clicked the "post" link. I already care about learning how to post / add this to my site, you don't need to sell me anything more right now. I would have liked to learn more about how posting would work since I already learned how to add the iframe and that was easy.

[amne]

I don't understand how you would comment so that your blog post still makes sense for people following only you and not the blog you're commenting on.

I'm thinking of a blog post on your personal site saying "That is no nice!" without any context. How does that work?

[elpachongco]

Hey thanks for checking this out.

I've considered this, Bhread detects replies when another site publishes a post containing this:

- A string: "replying to "

- followed by a link to the the one they're replying to

I think this is enough to provide context but it's still early to tell if that's effective.

[yellow_lead]

How does bhread know to ingest my blog? Can the RSS feed be submitted somewhere?

I think this is an interesting concept but you might want to include this info in your show hn post, including this info youve just shared about how bhread detects replies. Otherwise, I had no idea how any of this works even after looking through several pages on the site.

[elpachongco]

Glad you found the concept interesting. I admit it's my fault for not including enough information for anyone who's willing to spend their time for my project.

I'm out of the edit window now so I'll answer your question here.

There's a page for RSS feed submission: https://bhread.com/feeds/

And for more details about bhread, I have a blog post that may help (how to participate, and why): https://blog.bhread.com/posts/about-bhread/

In the future, I'll add a page that will get new users up to speed in a single place. Everything's scattered right now and pasting links is getting old for me.

Anyways, thank you for the feedback and suggestions, I'm taking notes.

[yellow_lead]

Thanks! I appreciate your friendly reply. Best of luck

[julienreszka]

How can it be free. How can it be sustained if it's free?

[elpachongco]

I run it on a $6 digital ocean droplet out of my pocket. It's basically similar to an RSS reader. It doesn't have to do a lot of things that's why it's free.

[mindaslab]

Looks suspicious.

[elpachongco]

Can you elaborate? I just checked the site and saw someone has already added a site with substantial data. It kind of looks like spam to me since this is meant for personal sites. Maybe you saw that? If yes, then I agree. It looks suspicious because I don't have any moderation logic in place.

But if you mean something else, it would be nice if you can tell me why. I'll do my best to address it.