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ferg1e
comment-castles
JavaScript2022–2025
ferg1e / comment-castles

comment-castles

Lightweight internet forum

Data & DatabasesSystems & InfrastructureCreative & MediaCommunication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
2Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
75GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Lightweight internet forum

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2022-07-16 18:50:55 UTC to 2025-07-27 18:40:25 UTC.

0123452022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

13 sources
codingclaws·Dec 26, 2024
Yeah, here is what you need to do: - install Node.js, Redis and PostgreSQL - start the Redis server - start PostgreSQL, create a database and run structure.sql: https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles/blob/master/sql/st... - get all the source code for the actual app (ie. the code from the comment castles repo) - figure out all your environment variables (the ones I list in the README) - now you can run the node app (you probably want to use pm2 if on Linux) - then connect that running node app to the public internet (I use something random for the HTTP_PORT environment variable, like 3333, and then I Nginx reverse proxy that to port 80 on my domain name (I will try to get this Nginx code and post it here later)) - and then I run the let's encrypt certbot for https
In Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025
friend_and_foe·Jun 15, 2023
I've been checking out some of the reddit alternative software as of late, not so much the many different servers and communities around. Ones I've liked: Kbin https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core Lotide https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide Lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy Brutalinks https://sr.ht/~mariusor/brutalinks/ Those all (are supposed to) federate. I don't think federation in these communities is always ideal, drive by posting and what not, I think a better approach would be a client that can read your followed stuff from a local list. But some non-federating options are: StackerNews https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news Comment Castles https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles freedit https://github.com/freedit-org/freedit There are lots more, some are great some not. There have been quite a few posted on this site in recent d
Read the rest
ays. Some communities really just need forums or wikis, link aggregation and content voting aren't really always necessary. I do believe communities should host their own sites. Some communities just don't have the interest to be viable long term, and Reddit was a way to externalize cost so that non viable communities can continue to exist. We see the results of that now, a company that isn't profitable due to bearing costs that nobody else is willing to bear squeezing users to try to stay afloat. This was always a temporary state of affairs. If you can't find a single community member dedicated enough to keep a VPS running, or with large communities, you can't scrounge up enough money from donations or whatever to keep the server running, that community simply isn't viable.
In Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?
codingclaws·Jun 7, 2023
I am. I've been working on it for 3.5 years. It's open source and it's called Comment Castles [0]. I am currently in the process of changing the name to Comment Castles, the main instance is currently at the old name [1]. All the features work with front-end JavaScript turned off. I am currently wrapping up the OAuth 2 server implementation so that we can have third party apps (no API fees!). After I wrap up some remaining features I am going to move everything to commentcastles.org and forward the old site there. It's currently text only (emojis allowed). I do want to build good custom search but haven't really started on that task yet. [0] https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles [1] https://www.peachesnstink.com
In Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

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