Question

I have been looking for a proper comment system for my blogging site. I built my blog engine from scratch using php and mysql and do not use wordpress, joomla, or anything like it. I want the comment system to be functional even if a user has javascript disabled.

I was previously looking at Disqus, but it turns out that I am required to embed some javascript files produced by Disqus in my existing code, which I assume means that the comment section will be unavailable if javascript is turned off. It looks like some other websites that use Disqus have this problem when javascript is turned off.

Is it common nowadays to ignore users who turn off javascript/non-tech-savvy people who do not know how to turn javascript on?

Answer 1

I understand your trepidation, but I’ve slapped together a commenting system on my own also. Even got threaded comments to work. Really, it’s just a matter of filling a form with username, email and the comment, then assigning it a timestamp and ID in your database. For spam protection you can use:

• OpenID, which of course has other benefits
• stuff like Akismet, which filters the data posted
• captchas as a last resort

The biggest difficulty with commenting is not the format, it’s the spam.