Mastodon Comments Plugin

[happybeing]

I've just set up my Publii blog and the only thing that it needs now is a way for people to comment - that doesn't really on a commercial service.

For me the best option would be Mastodon / ActivityPub. I believe this exists for WordPress so I'm hoping this would also be feasible for Publii.

I realise it would have to work differently so I imagine that when you create a post you would have a way for it to be posted to your Mastodon account and that Publii would store the toot URL with metadata for the post.

A comment plugin could use the URL to let a commenter create a reply from their own Mastodon account, which would be displayed on the Publii blog as a comment (by fetching all the replies to the toot and showing them as comments).

[candidexmedia]

This is a great idea! I've been casually collecting different implementations of Mastodon comments inside of a static site, and can share what I found below:

• https://danielpecos.com/2022/12/25/mastodon-as-comment-system-for-your-static-blog/ : Not bad, but doesn’t look great on mobile
  • ⇒ Easy web component: https://github.com/dpecos/mastodon-comments (simplest approach)
• Precursor of the above: https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/
  • Hacker News comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570268
• https://grahammacphee.com/writing/mastodon-blog-comments: looks good
  • Code: https://gist.github.com/gmph/02a44fc28f7da91da05462f7046ab19f
• https://cassidyjames.com/blog/fediverse-blog-comments-mastodon/ (no code yet, looks really nice)
• https://jszym.com/blog/mastodon_blog_comments/ (not the cutest looking, but good writeup)

Haven't tested them in Publii yet, but each one requires some degree of getting your hands dirty in code, or self-hosting something. If you try some out, please report back with your findings! :)

Keep in mind though: people replying to your post may not necessarily know / consent to having their avatars, names, and comments appear on your site. Here are some articles discussing some of the challenges and pitfalls of Mastodon site comments / webmentions / indieweb:

• https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/the-ethics-of-syndicating-comments-using-webmentions/
• https://sebastiangreger.net/2018/05/indieweb-privacy-challenge-webmentions-backfeeds-gdpr/
• https://robertkingett.com/posts/6408/
• https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/05/why-i-retired-my-webmention-server/
• https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/

You could also argue that "every mastodon host out there [is] a website" in the same way that yours is, but it's something to keep in mind. Perhaps making a mention of it in your profile?

Otherwise, I do want to note that there are non-commercial, open source comment services — one of which even has a Publii plugin:

• Cusdis: has a Publii plugin, and can be used with the hosted version or self-hosted
• Waline: which can be self-hosted pretty much for free
• There's, of course, Commento and its offshoots, but I think the main project hasn't been maintained in a while, last I checked

[candidexmedia]

Oooh, some more fun stuff regarding Mastodon / Activity Pub integrations with static sites like Publii:

• You can verify your Publii site so that it appears in plugins like Streetpass: see Add custom HTML to "featured posts" page #1485 (reply in thread)

• You can add an author attribution byline, so that whenever an article of yours is shared in Mastodon, people can find your Mastodon profile (even someone else posted the link): see Add custom HTML to "featured posts" page #1485 (reply in thread)

• You can automate the posting of your articles to Mastodon using your Publii RSS feed with MastoFeed: https://mastofeed.org/

• Mastodon share button: https://mastodonshare.com/about

• Your site could serve as its own Fediverse account, receiving @ mentions as webmentions using Bridgyfed. I was able to try this out and get it working (my site can be followed on the fedi as @[email protected]), but I haven't tested the conversion of posts to microformats yet so that they automatically appear on the feed.