I’m currently working on Asfaload and with the aim of having a better interaction with users, we needed to add a commenting system. As the website is also managed with Soupault, we looked for a solution to be integrated in a static site generator, while still respecting the privacy of our visitors. That’s how we got to Remark42, which supports OAuth authentication with many provides, but also authentication by email, and even anonymous comments.

Despite its extensive features, its deployment is easy with a provided docker compose file, which can easily be converted to be used with Docker Swarm as used by this server (see below for the compose file). I deployed Remark42 to the URL https://remark42.taktiki.com and chose the site id yvesdennels for this blog.

Integrating it with Soupault is also very easy. The following configuration first inserts a div in which to place the commenting system, and then inserts the required javascript (as provided by Remark42) at the end of the body, but only in pages under /posts/.

[widgets.remark42-comment]
  widget = "insert_html"
  html = '<div id="remark42"></div>'
  selector = "main"
  section = "posts"
  include_subsections = true
  parse = true
[widgets.remark42-config]
  widget = "insert_html"
  html = '<script> var remark_config={ host: "https://remark42.taktiki.com", site_id: "yvesdennels", } </script> <script>!function(e,n){for(var o=0;o<e.length;o++){var r=n.createElement("script"),c=".js",d=n.head||n.body;"noModule"in r?(r.type="module",c=".mjs"):r.async=!0,r.defer=!0,r.src=remark_config.host+"/web/"+e[o]+c,d.appendChild(r)}}(remark_config.components||["embed"],document);</script> '
  selector = "body"
  section = "posts"
  include_subsections = true
  parse = true

As for the compose file to be used with Docker Swarm, here it is (it is deployed to a swarm set up with a Traefik reverse proxy as described here):

services:
  app:
    deploy:
      labels:
        shepherd.enable: "true"
        traefik.constraint-label: traefik-public
        traefik.docker.network: traefik-public
        traefik.enable: "true"
        traefik.http.routers.remark42s.entrypoints: https
        traefik.http.routers.remark42s.rule: Host(`remark42.taktiki.com`)
        traefik.http.routers.remark42s.tls: "true"
        traefik.http.routers.remark42s.tls.certresolver: le
        traefik.http.routers.remark42.entrypoints: http
        traefik.http.routers.remark42.middlewares: https-redirect
        traefik.http.routers.remark42.rule: Host(`remark42.taktiki.com`)
        traefik.http.services.remark42.loadbalancer.server.port: "8080"
    env_file:
      - private/remark42-github-cid
      - private/remark42-github-csec
      - private/remark42-secret
      - private/remark42-smtp
    environment:
      AUTH_ANON: "true"
      BACKUP_PATH: /backup
      DEBUG: "true"
      REMARK_URL: https://remark42.taktiki.com
      SITE: yvesdennels
    image: umputun/remark42:latest
    networks:
      - traefik-public
    volumes:
      - /data/remark42:/srv/var
      - /data/backups/remark42:/backup
  init:
    command:
      - mkdir
      - -p
      - /data/remark42/
      - /data/backups/remark42"
    deploy:
      restart_policy:
        condition: none
    image: debian
    networks:
      default: null
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: /data
        target: /data
        bind:
          create_host_path: true
networks:
  traefik-public:
    name: traefik-public
    external: true

As for the files under private/, they define the environment variables configuring remark42. The variables defined are:

• AUTH_GITHUB_CID
• AUTH_GITHUB_CSEC
• SECRET
• SMTP_HOST
• SMTP_PORT
• SMTP_TLS=true
• SMTP_USERNAME
• SMTP_PASSWORD
• AUTH_EMAIL_FROM
• NOTIFY_EMAIL_FROM
• AUTH_EMAIL_ENABLE
• AUTH_EMAIL_FROM
• NOTIFY_ADMINS=email
• NOTIFY_EMAIL_FROM
• ADMIN_SHARED_EMAIL