Isso – Ich schrei sonst
=======================
You love static blog generators (especially [Acrylamid][1] *cough*) and the
only option to interact with your community is [Disqus][2]. There's nothing
wrong with it, but if you care about the privacy of your audience you are
better off with a comment system that is under your control. This is, where
Isso comes into play.
[1]: https://github.com/posativ/acrylamid
[2]: https://disqus.com/
**[Try Yourself!](http://posativ.org/isso/)**
Features
--------
* [CRUD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete) comments written in Markdown
* SQLite backend, Disqus import
* client-side JS (currently 54kb minified, 18kb gzipped)
* I18N, available in german and english (also fallback)
Installation
------------
- Python 2.6, 2.7 or 3.3
- a working C compiler
Install Isso with:
~> pip install isso
Set your database location and website:
~> cat my.cfg
[general]
dbpath = /var/lib/isso/comments.db
host = http://example.tld/
Optional: you can import your comments from [Disqus.com](https://disqus.com/):
~> isso -c my.cfg import ~/Downloads/user-2013-09-02T11_39_22.971478-all.xml
[100%] 53 threads, 192 comments
Now start the server:
~> isso -c my.cfg run
2013-10-30 09:32:48,369 WARNING: unable to connect to SMTP server
2013-10-30 09:32:48,408 INFO: connected to HTTP server
Make sure, Isso can connect to the server that hosts your blog, otherwise you
are not able to post comments.
Website Integration
-------------------
You can run Isso on a dedicated domain or behind a sub URI like `/isso`. It
makes actually no difference except for the webserver configuration (see
below).
Whatever method you prefer (just change the URL), to embed comments add
```html
```
to your HTML (presumedly into ``) and
```html
```
below your post. That's all. The JavaScript client will automatically detect
the API endpoint.
To show the comment count for posts (but no comments), add
```html
```
to your header and all links ending with `#isso-thread` are updated with the
current comment count.
This functionality is already included when you embed `embed.min.js`, do
*not* mix `embed.min.js` and `count.min.js` in a single document.
### Client Configuration
You can configure the client (the JS part) via `data-` attributes:
* data-title
When you start a new thread (= first comment on a page), Isso sends
a GET request that page to see if it a) exists and b) parse the site's
heading (currently used as subject in emails).
Isso assumes that the title is inside an `h1` tag near the isso thread:
```html
Website Title
Post Title
...
```
In this example, the detected title is `Post Title` as expected, but some
older sites may only use a single `h1` as their website's maintitle, and
a `h2` for the post title. Unfortunately this is unambiguous and you have
to tell Isso what's the actual post title:
```html
```
Make sure to escape the attribute value.
* data-isso
Isso usually detects the REST API automatically, but when you serve the JS
script on a different location, this may fail. Use `data-isso` to
override the API location:
```html
```
* data-isso-css
Set to `false` prevents Isso from automatically appending the stylesheet.
Defaults to `true`.
```html
```
* data-isso-lang
Override useragent's preferred language. Currently available: german (de),
english (en) and french (fr).
* data-isso-reply-to-self
Set to `true` when spam guard is configured with `reply-to-self = true`.
### Webserver configuration
* nginx configuration to run Isso on `/isso`:
```nginx
server {
listen [::]:80;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_name example.tld;
root /var/www/example.tld;
location /isso {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Script-Name /isso;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
}
}
```
* nginx configuration to run Isso on a dedicated domain:
```nginx
server {
listen [::]:8080;
server_name comments.example.tld;
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
}
}
```
### Init Scripts
* SystemD: [isso.service](https://github.com/jgraichen/debian-isso/blob/master/debian/isso.service)
* SysVinit: [isso.init](https://github.com/jgraichen/debian-isso/blob/master/debian/isso.init)
* OpenBSD: [GH:Gist](https://gist.github.com/noqqe/7397719)
Documentation
-------------
- [Configuration](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/docs/CONFIGURATION.rst)
- [uWSGI](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/docs/uWSGI.md)
- [Contributing](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)
- [Development](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPMENT.md)
- [API overview](https://github.com/posativ/isso/raw/master/docs/API.md)
For further help, join `#isso` on Freenode!
Alternatives
------------
- [talkatv](https://github.com/talkatv/talkatv) – Python
- [Juvia](https://github.com/phusion/juvia) – Ruby on Rails
- [Tildehash.com](http://www.tildehash.com/?article=why-im-reinventing-disqus) – PHP
- [SO: Unobtrusive, self-hosted comments](http://stackoverflow.com/q/2053217)