Show HN: Blog comments, nice looking, open source – Talkyard

Show HN: Blog comments, nice looking, open source – Talkyard(blog-comments.talkyard.io)

23 points by KajMagnus 1 year ago | 5 comments

Disqus alternative. License: AGPL. Uses a bit much memory (2 GB min, 4 better), should be possible to get below 0.5 GB if pre-compiling JVM stuff.

There's SaaS hosting. Long term (2027+ ?), the idea is that inactive blogs (those that don't get comments) pay 1? 2? EUR / month. Then, one wouldn't need to feel stressed up about having an inactive blog — it'd cost about the same as the domain name.

Previously on HN: (as you can see, I've been working on this for a while — had another job in between, and, sleepiness health problems, making things take longer, plus, being generally clueless in the beginning)

- Show HN: New embedded comments, open-source, new features, alt to Disqus and Talk, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15242630 (1 comment, 2017)

- New open source Disqus alternative: Debiki Embedded Comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7205878 (9 comments, 2014)

- Show HN: A better discussion system. For blogs, forums, perhaps sites like HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4823103 (7 comments, 2012)

Biz model isn't really blog comments — instead, it's forum software and B2B (the software works for forums too). But blogs are fun :-) and I need blog comments myself, so much to write about. Made in Sweden. No ads, no tracking.

imiric 1 year ago |

Kudos for working on this for such a long time! You've clearly put a lot of thought into a good discussion system. I like the distinction between liking and disagreeing. I may like a comment because of what it adds to the discussion, and disagree with it at the same time. The two are often used interchangeably here and on Reddit, which is a shame.

Though I still like Slashdot's voting system the most. Granular votes for specific categories: informative, insightful, offtopic, etc. Limited amount of votes per user, and IIRC the vote quota increases with rank/karma.

BTW, there's a typo on your Pricing page: "The more interesting commets first", and the links under "Old plans" return 404. Though I would suggest a general revision of the copy on this page, and removing all the "later" features.

KajMagnus 1 year ago | |

> I like the distinction between liking and disagreeing

Me too :- ) I'm thinking that if something gets 10 upvotes, and sth else get 10 upvotes and 10 disagree votes, then more often it's the latter that's more interesting to read?

There's also an Unwanted vote, for things that are too off-topic or rude etc, similar to how downvotes work here at HN.

Slashdot's vote system I like too :- ) (Maybe the vote system could be pluggable in the distant future.) — There's also half implemented Do-It votes and Do-Not votes, for ideas and upcoming Joint Decision topic types.

> commets ... and the links under "Old plans" return 404

Oh, thanks! Hadn't noticed. They work from here: www.talkyard.io/pricing (the www subdomain), but from the blog-comments and education subdomains, all those "Old plans" links are broken. (So I'll need to point the links to the www subdomain.)

> I would suggest a general revision of the copy on this page,

The pricing page? If you want & have time to write a bit more, that'd be interesting.

(Or if you're too short of time, I guess I can ask someone who works with UX & pricing)

> and removing all the "later" features.

Hmm, someone else has mentioned this too. Maybe there can be a "Show-later" checkbox, default un-ticked.

Thanks for the thoughts & feedback!

imiric 1 year ago | | |

> The pricing page? If you want & have time to write a bit more, that'd be interesting.

I suppose my main criticism was about the "later" features. It comes off as dishonest to mention features that may be implemented at some point in the future on a page meant to inform potential customers about what they would be paying for _today_. So I would suggest to only promote fully-working features, and leave future features for a roadmap page linked elsewhere.

Other than that I would say that there are a lot of asterisks and clarifications that might confuse users. The page looks overloaded with information that is not well structured IMO. It's also mentioned that a credit card is not needed for the trial, but then you will email users about how to pay. Maybe this should be clarified on this page? And there are minor visual details like inconsistent font sizes, font weights, and parenthesis usage (e.g. why is "Idle blogs" between bold parenthesis?).

It seems that you're not a native English speaker, and that's fine (neither am I), but I would suggest hiring someone who is, and has experience in writing technical documentation to revise your entire site, so that it can have a more professional appearance. These days LLMs can also be helpful with this, as long as you set their tone and review their output.

Good luck!