Comments
Bear does not have native comments. There are a few reasons for this:
- Comments aren't a great platform for communicating nuanced thoughts. They tend to be very surface-level and impersonal. Instead it's generally recommended to encourage readers to reach out via email, since this tends to lead to better interactions.
- They aren't a good medium for discussion since it's difficult to have a meaningful back-and-forth conversation in this context.
- They're a nightmare to moderate. Due to spam bots and click farms, comment systems need to be well moderated in order to not become overwhelmed with spam content. Due to this, all comments need to be approved by the blog owner, reducing the nuance and immediacy of the conversation.
With that being said, there are some reasons people want comments on their blogs:
- Readers can leave an additional bit of information at the end of a post. Perhaps a clarifying remark, or to expand on a point.
- Readers can leave a note of appreciation.
- Readers can agree or disagree with a post in a (hopefully) constructive manner.
Add comments to your blog
Go sign up for Cusdis (Komments is also a goodie), which is an open-source and privacy respecting alternative to Discord. Add your blog and get the Embedded code at the top of the dashboard.
You can add comments to a post or page by adding the code to your page. Replace the following:
{{ PAGE_ID }}with{{ post_link }}{{ PAGE_URL }}with{{ post_link }}{{ PAGE_TITLE }}with{{ post_title }}
Here's what your code should look like (with your own data-app-id, of course):
<div id="cusdis_thread"
data-host="https://cusdis.com"
data-app-id="xxx"
data-page-id="{{ post_link }}"
data-page-url="{{ post_link }}"
data-page-title="{{ post_title }}"
></div>
<script async defer src="https://cusdis.com/js/cusdis.es.js"></script>
If you would like the comments to appear on every post and page, you can add that code to your Post template so that your post is pre-populated with it.
Here's an example comment system in action: