web development blogging

My ‘back-to-basics’ commenting system

I’ve reverted to an email-based workflow for readers’ comments in my personal blog

My experience with readers’ comments in this KirbyCMS-based blog — using Sebastian Greger’s Commentions plugin — has been (almost) entirely positive.

That said: I’ve had very low traffic, and only a few readers have ever commented. And of these, more than half replied in a personal email, or via Kirby’s user forum, by-passing the Commentions plugin entirely.

A couple of comments that made my day!

But these few comments have meant a lot to me. They’ve been my most tangible way of knowing that a few people are interested in my geeky discoveries and ideas.

Sadly, just when I was ready to update my blog to Kirby version 4, Sebastian stopped maintaining his plugin, as he couldn’t afford further investment of his personal time. Nevertheless, I’m truly grateful for Sebastian’s hard work — it’s clearly been a massive undertaking.

Considering my options, Maurice Renck’s Komments plugin looks like an ideal alternative. Except I worry that it’s become Kirby’s only remaining comments plugin, again reliant on a solo open-source developer.

Plus, there’s an unexpected friction point I didn’t anticipate when I first decided to use a native Kirby plugin…

The flaw in my previous ‘Commentions’ workflow

Although I post infrequently to my blog, I constantly tinker with both its coding and its content. Adding endless tiny edits to ‘improve’ my writing, and extra Markdown hacks to accommodate each new type of post.

To avoid syncing errors with all these changes, I always treat the localhost version of my blog as its single source of truth. And I rely on Panic Nova’s ‘Publishing’ workflow to monitor and send all my changed files and content, ‘up’ to the remote ‘live’ server.

This semi-automated FTP process works really well for me: I can sync everything with a single click in Nova — almost without thinking.

But there’s an unexpected problem. Whenever a reader creates a new comment, the Commentions plugin saves all these direct to Kirby’s flat-file database on the remote server. This means I have to regularly delve into the live Control Panel to check for these, and manually synchronise each new comment — but in the opposite direction — back down to my local server.

This manual copy-and-paste process is easy enough for my low traffic blog. But at any scale, it would become risky and unmanageable.

So, if I ever get more than a trickle of comments, I’ll need to consider subscribing to one of the commenting apps in my previous post.

My new, email-based workflow

In the meantime, I’ve adopted this experimental ‘back-to-basics’ email workflow:

  1. Before upgrading my site to Kirby 4, I’ve stripped out all its (now incompatible) Commentions code.


  2. To replace this, I’ve added a new ‘Readers comments…’ panel to a few trial posts — and the first of these is at the foot of this page.

  3. The big red button in this panel triggers a pre-filled email on the reader’s own device. If you click on the ‘Email your comment…’ button below, you can see how this works on your own PC or mobile.

    I’ve recently discovered that email fields, generated like this, can be pre-populated, albeit only with plain text. 

So the code for this pre-filled email is just HTML, with some PHP to fetch the page title, and multiple %0As to add new lines: 

    <button>
 <a href="mailto:comments@brianliddell.com?subject=<?= $page->title() ?>&body=Please edit the pre-filled text below, and then add your comment below that. %0A%0A — Thank you, from Brian Liddell %0A%0A%0A 1. My name is:  %0A%0A 2. Please add my comment to this blog post: YES or NO %0A%0A 3. Please include my name: YES or NO %0A%0A 4. My website’s URL is:  %0A%0A 5. Please include a link to my URL: YES or NO %0A%0A 6. Please reply by email: YES or NO %0A%0A%0A My comment, in plain text or Markdown: %0A%0A%0A%0A “>
   Email your comment…
 </a>
</button>

  4. Next, I’ve manually reinstated the few comments I’ve had so far — simply by copying and pasting them into a new text area in each post’s Control Panel, and adding a few Markdown tags.

  5. I’m planning to adopt this same workflow to publish future emailed comments. Although still a manual task, this is simpler and less error-prone than my previous Commentions syncing — and I can compose my own replies at the same time.

  6. Finally, I’ve added a single check-box in each post’s Control Panel:

    • To enable the ‘Readers’ comments…’ panel
    • And to replace this with a ‘Comments are closed…’ panel when the checkbox is deactivated, and comments have been published.

Is this a workable long-term solution?

Recently, there’s been a tiny resurgence in personal blogging, in response to the growing toxicity of social media.

I’ve been encouraged that quite a few of these re-energised blogs seem to be happy with a much reduced footprint (compared with social media), and simple email links (like mine), aiming for a more personal connection with like-minded readers.

These include many of the interviewees in Manuel Moreale’s (terrific) newsletter, and even the two creators of Kirby’s comments plugins, who also actively encourage feedback by email:

So will I follow these good examples? Will I begin to post again? Will I participate more visibly in user forums or Mastodon? Will this drum-up a few more readers?

Time (and readers’ comments), will tell…