How do I add a comments section to a Quarto blog?

[joshuaquinlan]

Description

hi all. i am looking to add a comments section to my quarto blog but i haven't found a solution for this that fits my particular needs. the most popular solutions appear to be utterances and giscus, but they require users to sign in through github. i would prefer a solution that allowed people to comment anonymously or without a separate login, if possible. this would be more like the website "guestbooks" of yore, i suppose, or like the 4chan style of anonymous commenting. does anyone have any recommendations for how i might implement something like this? i toyed around with a couple of options a couple months ago (lost now, unfortunately, as this was in november and my memory is not quite that strong) but they didn't seem like they were compatible with quarto—at least from my extremely novice perspective.
thanks in advance!

edit: i remembered one of the options that i toyed with: remark42. i struggled getting it to work with quarto though and am ultimately unsure as to whether it can work.

[mcanouil]

Quarto "builtin" commenting features are listed in https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/html-basics.html#commenting.

If you want something else then you have to figure out what system that is and it would need to work for static website.
Now, assuming your find the tool you want, it's very likely HTML/JavaScript. This can be integrated in your website using:

• include-: https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/html-basics.html#includes
• raw blocks: ```{=html} or inline `whatever HTML`{=html}

Related to:

• Is there a way to include disqus or any other custom script with comment system on quarto blogpost? #2168

[joshuaquinlan]

ah, thank you! yes, i suppose what i am looking for is a recommendation for a system of that nature, given that the "built-in" commenting features don't really suit my needs.

[mcanouil]

Well Quarto is not really the best place to ask for HTML/JavaScript technologies.
You'll have better luck elsewhere on GitHub or other platforms dedicated to these technologies.

This being said, it's possible that someone from the community that did implement something come across this post.

[harrelfe]

Even though hypothes.is requires an account, the functionality makes it worth using. I really like how users can post either public of private (viewable only to the reader) comments, questions, answers, highlighting.

[edenian-prince]

@joshuaquinlan what did you end up going with?

I found some blogs that have commenting set up through github. https://cameronpatrick.com/post/2023/07/quarto-thesis-formatting/

I haven't explored them myself, but looks like quarto has other commenting tools built-in, not just hypothesis https://quarto.org/docs/reference/projects/websites.html#comments

[joshuaquinlan]

@joshuaquinlan what did you end up going with?

I found some blogs that have commenting set up through github. https://cameronpatrick.com/post/2023/07/quarto-thesis-formatting/

I haven't explored them myself, but looks like quarto has other commenting tools built-in, not just hypothesis https://quarto.org/docs/reference/projects/websites.html#comments

i ended up just using utteranc.es due to its ease of implementation, but unfortunately it's quite useless for my purposes. i wanted to implement anonymous commenting so that people could easily just leave a thought/question/whatever. requiring the reader to sign into github is enough of an obstacle to stifle most commenting, i think (especially since many people don't have even have github accounts). i'd still love a method that allowed anonymous commenting!

[davidleitch1]

Just recently I set up Isso comments for my articles. You start an Isso server and then I wrote an html page that loads the java script. Then in those articles I want to include comments in I include the comments file with an include after body

author: "David Leitch"
date: "2024-08-25"
categories: [analysis,nem,wind]
image: "../media/image-20240828205204106.png"
lightbox: true
format:
  html:
    include-after-body:
       - "../comment_load.html"
  docx: default
draft: false

the html page:

<script data-isso="//myserver/"
        data-isso-css="true"
        data-isso-css-url="null"
        data-isso-lang="en"
        data-isso-max-comments-top="10"
        data-isso-max-comments-nested="5"
        data-isso-reveal-on-click="5"
        data-isso-avatar="false"
        data-isso-avatar-bg="#f0f0f0"
        data-isso-avatar-fg="#9abf88 #5698c4 #e279a3 #9163b6 ..."
        data-isso-vote="true"
        data-isso-vote-levels=""
        data-isso-page-author-hashes="f124cf6b2f01,7831fe17a8cd"
        data-isso-reply-notifications-default-enabled="false"
        src="https://myserver/js/embed.min.js"></script>
        <section id="isso-thread" data-title="Test tag" ></section>

I am only an aged amateur (finance is my thing, now electricity and decarbonisation) so it took a little while to get it running, things like trailing slashes can make a difference. However like a lot of programming stuff its rewarding when it eventually works. The server runs on my own server box via a cloudflare tunnel, the comments end up on my website which runs on netlify. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. Quarto is an excellent publishing system for a single person, together with Holoviz Panel you can move to a web based life. Publishing can be improved to be more incremental.

[mcanouil]

You could embed all this as a Quarto extension, see https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/.

[davidleitch1]

Perhaps after a bit more testing. Although my coding leaves much to be desired.