---
title: Comments
linktitle: Comments
description: Hugo ships with an internal Disqus template that requires negligible effort to implement, but Disqus isn't the only commenting system that will work with your new Hugo website.
date: 2017-02-01
publishdate: 2017-02-01
lastmod: 2017-02-01
tags: [sections,content,organization, fundamentals]
categories: [project organization]
weight: 140
draft: false
aliases: [/extras/comments/]
toc: true
wip: true
---

As Hugo is a static site generator, the content produced is static and doesn't allow for a high degree of interaction with the website's end users. The most common interaction people ask for in static websites is the ability to add comments.

Hugo ships with support for [Disqus](https://disqus.com/), a third-party service that provides comment and community capabilities to websites via JavaScript.

Your theme may already support Disqus, but even it if doesn’t, it is easy to add.

## Disqus

Hugo comes with all the code you need to include load [Disqus][], a popular commenting service for both static and dynamic websites.

### Configuring Disqus

Disqus comments require you set a single value in your [site's configuration file][configuration]. The following show the configuration variable in TOML and YAML, respectively:

```toml
disqusShortname = "yourdiscussshortname"
```

```yaml
disqusShortname: "yourdiscussshortname"
```

For many website, this is enough configuration. However, you also have the option to set the following in the [front matter][] of a single content file:

* `disqus_identifier`
* `disqus_title`
* `disqus_url`

### Rendering Hugo's Built-in Disqus Partial Template

See [Partial Templates][partials] to learn how to add the Disqus partial to your Hugo website's templates.

## Commenting Alternatives

There are a few alternatives to commenting on static sites for those who do not want to use Hugo's built-in Disqus support:

* [Static Man](https://staticman.net/)
* [IntenseDebate](http://intensedebate.com/)
* [Livefyre](http://livefyre.com/)
* [Muut](http://muut.com/)
* [多说](http://duoshuo.com/) ([Duoshuo](http://duoshuo.com/), popular in China)
* [isso](http://posativ.org/isso/) (Self-hosted, Python)
    * [Tutorial on Implementing Isso with Hugo][issotutorial]
* [Kaiju](https://github.com/spf13/kaiju)

## Kaiju

[Kaiju](https://github.com/spf13/kaiju) is an open-source project started by [spf13](http://spf13.com/) (Hugo’s author) to bring easy and fast real time discussions to the web.

Written using Go, Socket.io, and [MongoDB][], Kaiju is very fast and easy to deploy.

It is in early development but shows promise. If you have interest, please help by contributing via pull request, [opening an issue in the Kaiju GitHub repository][kaijuissue], or [Tweeting about it][tweet]. Every bit helps.

[configuration]: /getting-started/configuration/
[forum]: https://discuss.gohugo.io
[front matter]: /content-management/front-matter/
[kaijuissue]: https://github.com/spf13/kaiju/issues/new
[issotutorial]: https://stiobhart.net/2017-02-24-isso-comments/
[partials]: /templates/partials/
[MongoDB]: https://www.mongodb.com/
[tweet]: https://twitter.com/spf13