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New open source Disqus alternative: Debiki Embedded Comments

14 points by KajMagnus ↗ HN
Hi,

I've built an embedded comments discussion system:

  http://www.debiki.com/embedded-comments
It's open source so you can install it on your own servers. It's available as a service too, in case you don't want to host it yourself.

It's a bit different from Disqus and LiveFyre: - It has Wiki-like features - It uses a novel 2D layout that hopefully contributes to a more varied discussion - It has some features intended to save people's time

Would you like to use it? What should I change and improve? (I could make the 2D layout optional for example.) What do you think about the overall concept? Feedback very welcome.

Best regards, KajMagnus

9 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 27.8 ms ] thread
marveller
Thanks for creating this, will be testing this soon.
sheraz
This is interesting, and I am glad to see people trying out various ideas.

That said, I don't think the 2D scrolling is for me. It is too easy to get lost on the page. I can see where this would work for tablets, but for laptop/desktop with a mouse/trackpad it feels like too much work.

Still, I've bookmarked your site because I'm interested in this space (Disqus competitors).

Good luck!

Also,

stevekemp
Interesting timing, as I came up with my own implementation last week:

Code: https://github.com/skx/e-comments/

Demo: http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/e-comments/demo.html

This was built for my server-optimizing site, http://tweaked.io/ which is still in its infancy.

KajMagnus
Nice! I had a look at the demo. What motivated you to write it? What features does it offer that Isso and Juvia does not?

(I noticed you listed some features, but I don't know which of them, if any, are also provided by Isso and Juvia.)

arn
Love the concept. I've thought about comments a lot, and considered this sort of design. in execution, though, it's hard to get used to.

Still feel like Slashdot might have had the best comment system yet.

gobengo
Ben from Livefyre here. I think this is pretty darn awesome.

Most of you probably tend to see our Comments product around the web, but my job is to use our real-time CMS web services to make other embedded webapps. If I do my job right, there's no reason someone couldn't use their free Livefyre Community site to power a real-time Debiki embedded app.

Check out what we've done with other apps built on the platform: http://apps.livefyre.com

And the JavaScript SDK we write to power them all: https://github.com/Livefyre/streamhub-sdk

Would any of you with alternative visions for the UX of comments or annotations find it interesting to be able to build the client however you want (or use an open source one) but delegate server traffic, storage, and real-time pubsub to a free backend as a service?

KajMagnus
Hi Ben,

Would it be possible to use some LiveFyre API to write a script that migrates comments from Debiki to LiveFyre? So that it would be possible to shut down one's account at Debiki and migrate comments to LiveFyre instead.

If so, is https://github.com/Livefyre/streamhub-sdk the API to use?

pl3as3
This is pretty cool. Is there currently a way to permalink directly to a specific section of the thread on the horizontal?