I was in the same boat and built my own commenting system. It has an importer for disqus (so you don't lose your old comments) and also imports Mastodon replies.
https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2025-03/26-meh_another_comme...
I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
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Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#12I don't know why a $5 VPS and a random CMS isn't the default for developers blogs. Dead simple, runs for years without maintenance, minimal cost, no ads.
Once you add comments you have to add a database and anti-spam measures. Not so simple anymore.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#13I tried we mentions for a while, but then switched to just POSSE (publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere). So the comments are moved to other platforms atm.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#14I don't know why a $5 VPS and a random CMS isn't the default for developers blogs. Dead simple, runs for years without maintenance, minimal cost, no ads.
Well, back in the day this lead to thousands upon thousands of vulnerable WordPress sites
False equivalence. That the creators of various PHP blogging platforms sucked at security does not invalidate the poster's point that a self-hosted CMS with a simple comment system is indeed much simpler and easier to reason about.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#15I did the same. I was sad to lose the comments, but the ads were awful and I don't particularly want someone elses ads / tracking on my hobby site. I switched to gisqus [1], which is powered by GitHub discussions, which seems to be working ok. (The site is hosted on GH pages so seems reasonable to also use GH discussions for the comments.)
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#16I don't know why a $5 VPS and a random CMS isn't the default for developers blogs. Dead simple, runs for years without maintenance, minimal cost, no ads.
The author is using a random CMS, namely Hugo.
You probably mean a PHP that can be hosted for cheap. But then, you end up with a Wordpress nightmare, even more spam and security issues.
I had a pretty popular blog and some posts gathered hundreds of useful comments. But I was so tired of fighting spam that I threw it all away and started using Hugo too, without comments.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#17I don't know why a $5 VPS and a random CMS isn't the default for developers blogs. Dead simple, runs for years without maintenance, minimal cost, no ads.
Comments are the only functionality of a blog that require write access to a backend, without comments a blog can be a simple collection of static files. Any write access to a backend exposes the blog to potential vulnerabilities, requires the backend to be kept up to date. This is not dead simple and does require maintenance. Updating is not trivial if a version of a backend becomes obsolete, you need to dedicate time to migrate your backend to new versions to stay secure.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#18I blocked Disqus locally on my computer via /etc/hosts many years ago. Reason is very simply. Because comments as genre is almost useless.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#19Removed Disqus from my website after getting huge spam waves (not the classic garbage spam but "real" comments, but for completely different sites, like they were intended for other sites but instead posted to mine. They were all from a few days old accounts). I wish I'd have used the built-in WordPress comments from the start but well, it was a different time back then. Related: I've used WordPress Jetpack Stats until they extorted every free website, no export possible. Would've cost me 200 € per year, that's more than I pay for my website. Switched to self-hosted Umami but 10 years of data just gone.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#20When the ads showed up I immediately put disqus loading behind a "load comments despite ads" button, and instead just had a static export of the comments loaded by default.
But that's a temporary solution.
Sure, I can code an in house comment system within an hour, but the real work is to combat spam. Because people (and now also disqus) suck.