Setting up Giscus Comments

This blog uses Giscus for comments. Giscus leverages GitHub Discussions as a backend, providing a powerful, free, and GitHub-native commenting system.

Setup

1. Create a Repository: Create a public GitHub repository to hold your comments (e.g., blog-comments).

2. Enable Discussions: Go to the repository settings in GitHub and enable Discussions.

3. Install Giscus App: Install the giscus GitHub App and grant it access to your discussions repository.

4. Configure Giscus: Visit giscus.app and follow the instructions to generate your configuration.

5. Set Environment Variables: Copy the following values from the Giscus website into your .env file (or your CI/CD environment variables):

   PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO="username/repo"
   PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO_ID="R_..."
   PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY="Announcements"
   PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY_ID="DIC_..."

Implementation Details

• The comments widget is rendered by the Comments.astro component.
• It only renders if the PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO variable is configured, allowing for an easy opt-in/out.
• Comments are automatically associated with the post based on its URL pathname.