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Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

beej.us

31–40 of 63 posts

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#31
I think this is a pretty great step in the direction of not being wholly dependent on one platform; makes you start thinking about your website as the source and the social media networks as just a representation.

https://micro.blog has a good implementation of this for both the Fediverse and Bluesky. A random example of mine that has an array of 'em if you want an example: https://zacwe.st/2025/02/12/amazon-is-removing-the-ability.h...

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#33
post #25
post #11

Nice! I'm waiting for (/ thinking of building) something similar for #atproto/Bluesky. You could even use OAuth to allow users to add responses inline, which would then also show up in the Bluesky feed (if you wanted), with a UX pretty similar to Disqus. Mastodon is great, but the "pick a server" step is a pretty hard filter for most users, who just want to sign up for something. You'd also get to benefit automatical…

But bluesky is a proprietary service based in the US. A less privacy friendly choice for your readers/commenters.

The protocol is fully open and adoption is picking up rapidly. You can easily host your own data server in your preferred jurisdiction if that is important to you.

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#34

I can't think of something more hostile than requiring an account on a 3rd party, totally unrelated, platform to post a comment on a blog. I'll literally take ads and tracking over it.

Mastodon is part of the fediverse, meaning accounts are federated (accounts on services can communicate with other accounts on other services). You can run your own server, on your own hardware, make your own account, own every step of the stack, and can comment on there. It's not just 3rd-party login, it's YOUR-party login.

Lol I knew I would get this kind of answer and downvotes.

You still have to make an account on a totally unrelated website. It's the shittiest experience one can think of.

But your excuse is "Hey actually you can also setup the whole application yourself before making the account to post a blog comment on an unrelated website, so that's actually super awesome!".

Absolutely ridiculous, and if any company you didn't like were to do something similar you would screech.

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#36

I can't think of something more hostile than requiring an account on a 3rd party, totally unrelated, platform to post a comment on a blog. I'll literally take ads and tracking over it.

Disqus requires an account on their system, too.

Optionally it does not, see https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717211-guest-commenting

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#37
One cool implementation of Mastodon-as-comments was with the G-Droid frontend app for the F-Droid ecosystem.

F-Droid apps don't have comments or ratings on the default F-Droid app. They're generally less necessary because the apps don't have ads or severe privacy concerns like the ones from Play Store do, but it's still nice to hear others' experiences and comments on them.

G-Droid introduced a commenting system by simply redirecting you to a mastodon URL when you clicked "Add a comment". That URL will by default add "@gdroid@mastodon.technology" and a hashtag based on the app package name to your post. For eg., for the Markor app, it would add

     @gdroid@mastodon.technology #net_gsantner_markor #fdroid_app_comments
at the end of your comment post. The @username will notify a bot to pickup this comment, the hashtag will help it attribute it to the right app, and so your comment will get collected and displayed below the app listing in G-Droid.

Sadly, G-Droid itself doesn't seem to be actively maintained anymore, the last update being a few years old, but it's a really cool example of what is possible when you have open, flexible systems that can be plugged in together in many ways to create the features you need.

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#38
post #24
post #22

If you want to use Matrix instead of Mastodon for your blog's comments, there's https://cactus.chat/ There's a rather long list of other solutions over at https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/ And there's https://github.com/carlitoplatanito/disgus for adding Nostr based comments to your static blog.

Aren't they 2 very different things? Matrix is live chat, similar to IRC, whereas Mastadon is a microblogging platform similar to X.

While they seem different, they can be used in similar ways. Sorta like how Delta Chat turns email into something like IMs with a conversation view. It's all passing around text/media at the end of the day.

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is part of the fediverse, meaning accounts are federated (accounts on services can communicate with other accounts on other services). You can run your own server, on your own hardware, make your own account, own every step of the stack, and can comment on there. It's not just 3rd-party login, it's YOUR-party login.

Lol I knew I would get this kind of answer and downvotes. You still have to make an account on a totally unrelated website. It's the shittiest experience one can think of. But your excuse is "Hey actually you can also setup the whole application yourself before making the account to post a blog comment on an unrelated website, so that's actually super awesome!". Absolutely ridiculous, and if any company you didn't li…

You would prefer to create a new account on every blog you visit and wish to comment on?

Re: Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

#40
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I knew I would get this kind of answer and downvotes. You still have to make an account on a totally unrelated website. It's the shittiest experience one can think of. But your excuse is "Hey actually you can also setup the whole application yourself before making the account to post a blog comment on an unrelated website, so that's actually super awesome!". Absolutely ridiculous, and if any company you didn't li…

You would prefer to create a new account on every blog you visit and wish to comment on?

Usually blogs don't require creating an account to leave comments. Why present this false alternative when the common thing to do is just leaving a comment without creating an account?
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