Meh…
- …is a simple, no-frills commenting system
- …is self-hosted
- …has multi-site support from a single installation
- …has multi-language support
- …has Mastodon integration
- …has Disqus import
- …is simple enough to understand and modify
- …made by splitbrain
Meh is a commenting system with a client-server architecture:
-
Server Component: A PHP backend that handles comment storage (in SQLite), moderation, and API endpoints. It can be installed on your own server and supports multiple sites from a single installation.
-
Client Components: A set of web components (custom HTML elements) that can be embedded in any website to display and submit comments. These components communicate with the server via a REST API.
A quick and dirty way to get started is to use the built-in PHP server on your local machine.
cd backend
composer install
cd ../frontend
npm install
npm run build
cd ..
cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env
./meh migrate
php -s localhost:8000 -t publicYou can now browse this documentation at http://localhost:8000. It will also serve the Meh components and the API.
In your blog, add the following to your HTML:
<!-- Add a comment form -->
<script type="module" src="http://localhost:8000/meh/meh.esm.js"></script>
<meh-form>
<meh-mastodon></meh-mastodon>
<meh-login></meh-login>
</meh-form>
<meh-comments></meh-comments>This should give you a rough idea how Meh works. For a production setup, you should point your web server at the public.
More details on how to set up the server can be found in the Server Setup section.