Self-hosting my blog comments with Remark42

I wanted comments on this blog. The default way to get them is to drop in Disqus or one of the hosted comment widgets, paste a script tag, and move on. The default way also means a third party now sits on my page, loads a pile of tracking onto my readers, owns every comment they leave, and on the free tiers sometimes shows them ads. On my own site. No thanks.

So the comments here run on Remark42 instead. It is free, open source, and I host it myself. The whole thing is a single small binary that serves the comment box, stores the comments, and not much else. That is exactly as much comment engine as a blog needs.

It runs quietly on the server behind the site, and the site passes one path through to it, so to a reader it is just part of the page. Anonymous commenting is on, which was not optional for me. I am not going to make someone create an account and hand over an email to leave one sentence on a blog post. If I have to sign up to comment, I close the tab, and I assume you do too. Pick a name, say your thing, done.

The piece that took a little thought was keeping the comments alive across deploys. When I push an update to the site, the deploy wipes the web files and lays down the new ones. If the comment data lived in there, every redeploy would quietly delete every comment. So the little database the comments live in sits somewhere a deploy never reaches, completely apart from the website files. Boring to set up, and the kind of thing you really want to get right before people start commenting, not after.

It also pings me on Telegram when a new comment lands, through a small bot I gave it. That fits how I run everything else around here, where the box tells me when something needs me instead of making me go and check. I do not have to refresh my own blog to see if anyone said anything.

Why go to the trouble instead of pasting in the hosted option? I own the data, my readers are not tracked or sold to, the page stays fast, and nothing about my comments depends on a company that might change its terms or its pricing next quarter. For a personal blog that I want to still work in five years, that is the trade I want.

The comment box at the bottom of this post is the exact thing I just described. If you want to kick the tires, leave me a line. No account, no email, just a name and a thought.

Thanks for reading.