Using GitHub for comments on your blog

As I've just started to build my personal website, I wanted to add a comment section for each published article. Previously I've used Disqus to do so - however, this time I wanted to keep it as lightweight as possible.

The problem with Disqus

Disqus is a great product, no question there. But all the great features Disqus has to offer come with a price. A price you will pay with the loading time of your website:

If you are interested in details how Disqus works, check out the article I wrote a few years back on the topic on the RisingStack blog: On Third-Party JavaScript - In Production Case-Study.

What I ended up using instead: GitHub

GitHub has a very well documented REST API, which exposes most of the resources used by GitHub. Luckily, it also exposes issues, with all of their information, including comments! 🤗

The only thing left was to write a small JavaScript snippet that grabs the details of an issue and append it to the website. The script looks like something like this:

const apiUrl =
  "https://api.github.com/repos/gergelyke/gergelyke.github.io/issues/<%- page.githubIssueId %>/comments";

$(function () {
  $.ajax(apiUrl, {
    headers: {
      Accept: "application/vnd.github.v3.html+json",
    },
    dataType: "json",
    success: function (comments) {
      const $commentSection = $(".blog-post-comments");
      comments.forEach(function (comment) {
        $commentSection.append(
          `
          <div class="comment">
            <a class="commenter" href="${comment.user.html_url}" 
              target="_blank">${comment.user.login}</a>, 
              ${new Date(comment.created_at).toUTCString()}
            <p>
              ${comment.body_html}
            </p>
          </div>
          `
        );
      });
    },
  });
});

Actually, you can already comment on this post using the very technique you just read about! Give it a try! 😎

You can see the actual implementation here.

Gotchas

As most solutions, using GitHub for the comment engine on your site has some drawbacks:

• GitHub rate limits its' APIs, so this solution won't work if you have a huge number of visitors,
• it only suits audiences with GitHub accounts.

If you are ok with this limitations, GitHub provides a great way to let your audience comment on your writings.