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Are there any often mentioned products or services for adding end user comments to pages that aren't served up by a CMS or blog engine? Assuming the host can execute PHP, Python, ASP.NET classic, or other very common programming languages.

The solution must:

  • Allow end users to leave a comment on a web page, with an easy login process for the user.

  • Store and emit the comments in such a way that they can be crawled by search engines, and are indexed as part of the parent page. (The only way I know of would be to in-line the comments as plain HTML in the parent page, using PHP / SSI / etc. AFAIK this rules out all Javascript-based solutions such as Facebook's Comments Box?)

  • Have very robust anti-spam capabilities, preferably with some sort of heuristics and crowd-sourced blacklists (like Akismet).

  • Have an administration backend with spam management and batch approve capabilities.

This is related to but still different from "Adding comments to static pages?". There is also the more recent "Facebook comment and other commenting system for SEO".

It would be ideal if the solution could easily be integrated in the HTML using just a Javascript, an IFRAME, or something similar. But a light-weight server module written in PHP or another common web development language is also good.

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3 Answers 3

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Disqus does have the option to cache comments locally, and emit them into the parent page. But it's neither easy nor elegant. Their documented solution is to create a database table, and set up a cron job to query their API, using their API client code.

For the Rails crowd: Juvia seems very interesting. It's a self-hosted generic commenting system which works much like Disqus or IntenseDebate. It also uses Javascript as its default method of embedding comments, and thus doesn't meet my SEO requirements. But changing over to conventional HTML views shouldn't be too hard for a Rails programmer.

Livefyre claims to have SEO baked in too. I can't see exactly how they do it, and their API is only enabled on the commercial plan which doesn't have public pricing.

Another potential way would be embedding Wordpress comments into PHP pages. The Wordpress wp_list_comments seems to be for just that. However, Wordpress is well known for requiring server-side resources and some performance tweaking. If I am to use Wordpress' comments, then it seems I might just as well migrate the entire site to Wordpress. That's exactly what I wanted to avoid.

So far I really haven't found anything that fits. There is an accepted answer waiting for he who finds something better...

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Disqus is what you're looking for.

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  • Doesn't Disqus use Javascript?
    – DisgruntledGoat
    Apr 23, 2012 at 11:26
  • Yeah, but apparently Google indexes them. I'm guessing they went out of their way to make sure they could due to its popularity.
    – John Conde ♦
    Apr 23, 2012 at 12:41
  • Fair enough. I guess if they just load something via Javascript without any specific interactions then it should be fine for Google.
    – DisgruntledGoat
    Apr 23, 2012 at 16:24
  • {{citation needed}}
    – Matthew Simoneau
    Jul 22, 2012 at 0:00
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Well while the title says without Javascript I think it's clear some kind of client side scripting would be needed. Disqus is good here is another system.

IntenseDebate http://www.intensedebate.com/

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