What Is the Problem With Comments in Hugo?
Recently, I swapped the framework for my blog from Wordpress to Hugo. Ever since, I have been happy with the increased speed with which my page loads, and writing articles directly in Markdown is a bliss. But one thing has been missing: A way in which users can write comments for my blog.
Hugo itself is a static framework. It does not come with a database in which it could store any user-generated content like blogposts. You need an extra solution for this.
Why I chose Echothread
I first looked into open-source frameworks, but there were none that run on PHP, which is the only option I have available on my Hetzner Webhosting. Other solutions like ISSO run on Python or need Docker or Go available, which ruled them out for my project.
Then I asked ChatGPT. It proposed to vibe-code my own, but did not want to go into details like moderation and spam filtering.
In the end, I decided to go with Echothread. It is a commercial solution, but the first website is free as long as it has less than 100,000 visitors per month.
Also, I can export comments as CSV, so I am not locked in. And it comes with a moderation backend and a spam filter, something that would be really a lot of work to roll on my own.
How I Integrated Echothread in my Setup
Echothread comes with an integration guide to Hugo, see this page.
The main changes were to create the file layouts/partials/comments.html and paste the custom code from the Echothread backend there. That was already it!
Now I can go further and tweak the layout and colors in the Echothread dashboard, but for now I am already happy with the look and feel.
I find this solution really easy to integrate. The pricing is fair and the loading times are fast. I really recommend this tool if you are looking for a comment function for your Hugo homepage yourself.