A walkthrough of building a Mastodon-powered comment system for a static blog, replacing Disqus after it dropped its free ad-free tier. Covers fetching replies via the Mastodon API, parsing JSON to extract commenter data, generating HTML with flexbox CSS, handling media attachments, implementing a blacklist for moderation, and managing the chicken-and-egg deployment order. The implementation is JavaScript-only, client-side, with no server component required.
Table of contents
AudienceGetting the Post IDMy Site GeneratorWhat's the API?JavaScript at LastBuilding the HTMLMedia AttachmentsReplyingBlacklistingChicken and EggMaiden VoyageCommentsSort: