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[543.60 --> 549.16] The final nail in the coffin was I was at reInvent in Las Vegas last week or the week before. |
[549.16 --> 556.74] And I was browsing without an ad blocker for the first time, you know, in some time, to be honest with you. |
[556.74 --> 561.22] Because even when I'm out and about, I use Tailscale to route back through my home network, typically. |
[561.98 --> 565.22] And for whatever reason, my hotel Wi-Fi just didn't work with that. |
[565.28 --> 566.18] So I just turned it off. |
[566.56 --> 569.78] I went to my personal blog to put on the pictures of the desert that I took. |
[570.00 --> 573.02] And I was like, what are all these adverts in my website? |
[573.22 --> 574.36] I didn't put them there. |
[574.36 --> 590.34] And it turns out Disgust, the commenting engine that I've been using, injects tons of really gross adverts into my content, into my website, without me really being aware of it. |
[590.94 --> 592.88] Well, I had missed this entire thing. |
[592.94 --> 598.76] And that is extremely frustrating because, like you, I probably would not notice it because I also often run with an ad blocker. |
[598.76 --> 602.02] And I run with an ad blocker at the network level as well. |
[602.24 --> 603.86] So it's across all my systems. |
[605.20 --> 609.46] And by the way, I do pay for memberships for many sites that offer them. |
[609.58 --> 613.44] Like I just renewed for Pharonix and LWN just this week. |
[613.92 --> 617.76] But for me, it's a matter of saving bandwidth because I'm on an LTE connection. |
[617.76 --> 620.98] And I just do not want to download that crap over an LTE connection. |
[621.22 --> 623.12] So I prefer to block it at the network level. |
[623.42 --> 631.58] So I guess you were probably a little, I would say, disappointed when you came across this and probably spurred you into action. |
[631.58 --> 639.50] I was actually really quite angry to the point where I've been putting this project off and I was like, right, I'm sat in my hotel room with nothing better to do tonight. |
[639.96 --> 641.30] I'm going to get this done. |
[641.30 --> 646.76] And so I found this project called Giscus, G-I-S-C-U-S. |
[646.76 --> 653.62] And this uses GitHub notifications to track interactions and comments with your content. |
[653.62 --> 660.06] So rather than having some third party database I've got to maintain or anything like that, this relies on GitHub. |
[660.58 --> 668.60] So it means that commenters to my website, you know, being a largely technical kind of blog, need a GitHub account. |
[668.78 --> 670.36] So I didn't think that was too much of a problem. |
[670.36 --> 677.50] It means that GitHub takes care of spammers for me as well, which is a huge problem with self-hosted commenting systems. |
[678.22 --> 690.70] A lot of spammers target Discuss because it's used all over the Internet, whereas Giscus is largely a nerd level project and not that many people use it, which I see as a feature. |
[690.70 --> 694.82] So for me, I was actually thought, right, this ticks all the boxes. |
[695.22 --> 702.42] I can have a nice self-hosted comment system that integrates with a third party that I trust, GitHub, Microsoft. |
[703.54 --> 708.68] But I've got, you know, seven, eight years worth of comments on some of these posts. |
[708.76 --> 711.28] And some of them have had tens of thousands of views. |
[711.32 --> 715.42] And I thought it would be a shame to lose that context on some of these posts. |
[715.42 --> 723.58] And so I had to find a way to export the comments from Discuss, which luckily they do provide as a CSV file. |
[723.84 --> 724.96] Or is it a JSON? I forget. |
[725.54 --> 729.44] There is a script to export it from the Discuss admin console. |
[729.76 --> 734.54] Then once I'd exported it, I used a script which I linked to in the blog post, which will be in the show notes, |
[734.74 --> 744.58] which basically traverses this file and goes through and uses the GitHub API to automatically create a GitHub discussion per post. |
[744.58 --> 746.28] And import each comment. |
[746.82 --> 754.02] Now, the downside to this is there isn't a one-to-one mapping between comments on GitHub and comments in Discuss. |
[754.70 --> 758.06] And the reason for that is because different people have different usernames. |
[758.64 --> 763.98] And so if you think to yourself, right, well, I'm called Ironic Badger over here and I'm called Fred28 over there. |
[764.48 --> 767.90] How is this script possibly going to know who is who? |
[767.90 --> 775.26] So what it does is it uses my avatar to import all of these comments and say original commenter name was Fred28. |
[775.84 --> 779.10] And the date and time of the comment was this. |
[779.22 --> 780.96] And then it shows the text of the original comment. |
[781.04 --> 782.72] And it's very clear in when it does that. |
[783.12 --> 785.36] I did run into a couple of API rate limits. |
[785.50 --> 788.18] It probably took me about an hour to import all of my comments. |
[788.18 --> 793.88] And I had to try five or six times before I got the API to play nice with everything I was doing. |
[793.88 --> 797.88] But after that sort of 30 to 60 minute window, it was all good. |
[798.46 --> 802.28] So what was the process of actually getting the backend software up and running? |
[802.34 --> 807.02] Because it looks like you don't actually even have to self-host it if you don't necessarily want to. |
[807.08 --> 808.46] But I assume you probably went that route. |
[809.16 --> 812.86] So a couple of years ago, I forked the default Ghost Casper theme. |
[813.42 --> 818.14] And then I used a GitHub action to auto-deploy that theme to my blog using the Ghost API. |
[818.14 --> 826.00] So whenever I make a change to the theme on GitHub, it automatically pushes those changes to my blog on the internet. |
[826.72 --> 831.66] And so it was just a case of modifying, because I'm using the Ghost blogging engine, |
[832.16 --> 836.90] it was just a case of modifying maybe five to ten lines with a script snippet, |
[837.02 --> 840.94] replacing the Discuss snippet with the Giscuss snippet. |
[841.24 --> 842.98] And it deployed the theme. |
[843.20 --> 844.22] I refreshed the page. |
[844.38 --> 845.90] And that was that. |
[846.66 --> 847.88] I'm just picturing you. |
[848.14 --> 853.12] So I'm picturing you like dark hotel room, maybe the TV's on. |
[853.34 --> 854.58] It's Vegas, right? |
[854.74 --> 858.14] You got like a bright laptop going and you're hacking away at this. |
[858.24 --> 861.16] Are you doing like some Uber Eats while you're doing this? |
[861.30 --> 863.62] I think I might have ordered room service that night, yeah. |
[863.64 --> 864.02] Okay. |
[864.52 --> 866.52] And I was watching the World Cup on my iPad, |
[866.78 --> 869.54] which, by the way, I should probably talk about at some point in this episode, |
[869.54 --> 875.06] because HD Home Run and Plex has been a godsend throughout the World Cup. |
[875.32 --> 876.86] But let's finish this topic first. |
[876.86 --> 878.32] So we'll come back to that one. |
[879.12 --> 884.34] So what are your thoughts about its obvious dependency on GitHub? |
[884.84 --> 889.12] Because, I mean, clearly there is a bit of a compromise there, although, I mean, it's checking all the boxes. |
[889.38 --> 890.78] The compromises make sense. |
[890.96 --> 894.96] But, you know, that's going to probably be one of the number one red flags in the audience. |
[894.96 --> 900.96] If you're truly trying to self-host something like this, well, you're just building a dependency on GitHub here. |
[901.50 --> 905.26] Well, the alternative for me, honestly, because I don't want to turn myself into a content moderator, |
[905.26 --> 909.38] because our lord and savior Elon Musk has shown us just how easy that is, |
[909.48 --> 911.72] is to just not have comments at all. |
[911.72 --> 913.98] That would honestly be my alternative. |
[914.40 --> 917.00] My purpose with this blog is to get information out there. |
[917.02 --> 919.18] And it's the same reason we use Discord in this show. |
[919.46 --> 922.58] It's the same reason that I'm using GitHub on these comments, |
[922.58 --> 928.16] is because being a pragmatist at heart, I just want to get s*** done. |
[928.58 --> 931.08] And sometimes that means making some compromises. |
[931.44 --> 935.20] And, you know, I give my rationale for why I make certain compromises. |
[935.20 --> 938.32] And in this case, it's that I don't want to manage spammers. |
[939.12 --> 940.22] Yeah, I would totally be the same way. |
[940.32 --> 941.60] I'd just rather not have comments. |
[942.90 --> 948.36] If I could plug some bot into GitHub and have matrix comment moderation automatically be done, |
[948.60 --> 950.86] I'd take that dependency right now. |
[951.24 --> 953.44] It's just such a pain in the neck and it's such a problem. |
[953.56 --> 957.82] And the issue is the more scale you have, the better you are at managing it, |
[957.82 --> 959.30] because the more data points you have. |
[959.46 --> 961.88] So it just kind of makes sense to centralize that too. |
[961.98 --> 962.52] I don't love it. |
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