Disqus is one of the most popular third-party commenting platforms, offering robust moderation tools and social features.
Setup
- Create a Disqus account and register your site
- Get your Disqus shortname from your site settings
- Add the Disqus embed code to your blog post template
Add a Component to your Page Type for Disqus configuration:
Utterances uses GitHub Issues as a comment backend, making it ideal for developer-focused blogs and open-source projects.
Setup
- Install the Utterances GitHub App on your repository
- Create a Component with the configuration fields
- Add the embed script to your template
For full control over your comments system, you can build a custom solution using ButterCMS Collections and the Write API.
This approach requires a backend server to handle comment submissions and moderation. The ButterCMS Write API requires authentication with a Write API token (not the Read API token) and should never be called directly from the client—always use a backend server.
Create a Collection called Comments with these fields:
Beyond comments, you can use ButterCMS Collections to build various community features:
User testimonials Collection
Allow users to submit testimonials that can be moderated and displayed:
Q&A / FAQ section
Build a community-driven FAQ:
User-generated content gallery
Showcase user submissions:
Best practices
Moderation
- Pre-moderation - Review comments before publishing
- Spam filtering - Use services like Akismet
- Community guidelines - Publish clear commenting rules
- Report system - Allow users to flag inappropriate content
- Lazy loading - Load comments after main content
- Pagination - Don’t load all comments at once
- Caching - Cache approved comments
Privacy & compliance
- Data collection notice - Inform users what data is collected
- Email privacy - Don’t display emails publicly
- Right to deletion - Allow users to request comment removal
- GDPR compliance - Include consent checkboxes
Integrating in your app
Usage with ButterCMS Blog Posts
Use the ButterCMS Write API from a backend server only. Never expose Write API tokens in client code.
Backend API (Node.js/Express)
Frontend component