I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse • Hacker News Board

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#21

Post by undebuggable » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:34 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

I 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.

Without comments it's much simpler and cheaper than a $5 VPS and a random CMS, with comments it's much complicated and expensive than a $5 VPS and a random CMS.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#22

Post by boxed » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:34 AM UTC

p0w3n3d wrote: post #4

[flagged]

The ad spam is a consequence of EU laws? That's clearly bs.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#23

Post by HeckFeck » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

I 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.

I've been using self-hosted Isso to serve comments on my static sites. It's worked well enough, it's practically the same as Disqus.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#24

Post by vivzkestrel » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:37 AM UTC

For those of you stuck with this issue reading this, there is a nice open source commenting system I found on GitHub https://valine.js.org/en/index.html

Here is another one https://docs.coralproject.net/

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#25

Post by rokkamokka » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

mickeyp wrote: post #14

rokkamokka wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose it's rather the "without maintenance" part. Had everyone updated their WordPress sites the problem would've been much less.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#26

Post by nsim » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

I've found https://remark42.com/ works well with static sites, and has plenty of user login options.

But, the solution I've been looking for/prototyping is one that lets people comment from the Fadiverse, so it will also double as a feed. Nothing to show yet, but one-day maybe.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#27

Post by jaapz » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

Hard_Space wrote: post #3

Disqus is a great idea turned into hot garbage by (inevitable) lowest-level monetization. I once worked on a blog with Disqus. Whenever we had a hit, such as an HN front page, horrific ads would be injected into the comments section for that page. Any page without significant traffic had no ads, lulling you into a false sense of security. If a page 'hit' in your off-hours, the ghastly and repulsive ads could be runni…

When it was released there were no ads at all, and it was a great way of quickly adding comments to your site. Of course there is no thing as free lunch so the enshittification was inevitable

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#28

Post by BoKKeR11 » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#29

Post by JdeBP » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:50 AM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #7

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

I 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.

If you really run it "for years without maintenance" then your blog will get taken over by attackers and used to distribute malware or worse.

Indeed, the problem isn't necessarily even the site being taken over. There was an example of what happens to comments over a period of 9 years without anyone dealing with spam on Hacker News just the other day.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45370971

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#30

Post by huijzer » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:54 AM UTC

I just can't be bothered to have comments on my site. It adds nothing but headaches. Cross-posting articles to HN or Reddit for comments is a much nicer way, I think.