5 slug = "ditching-disqus-comments"
7 title = "Ditching Disqus Comments"
8 date = 2017-04-17T13:05:00Z
10 image = "/images/blog-cover-images/dog-splash-peter-hershey.jpg"
13 Just a small update about a change on the blog here.
14 I have decided to drop the use of Disqus as a commenting system and instead
15 replaced the comments area with a few simple links to my twitter and to the
16 BookStack issues page.
18 I've really liked Disqus and am grateful for the service they
19 provided but it looks like they are moving forward with increasing their ad
20 displaying and user tracking.
22 A few times recently I've noticed requests hanging when loading blog pages
23 which keeps the tab loading icon spinning making the load time feel slow and
24 you'd sometimes see tracking domains pop up in the corner of the browser.
25 Looking at the network requests a whole load of requests were going out to
26 ad tracking domains even though ads were not showing. Some of these requests
27 were even failing stretching out that load time feeling.
29 Here's two screenshots to compare the page network activity for the same page
30 with and without Disqus:
34 
38 
40 So here's what that shows, On a single page Disqus:
42 * Increased the download size by 2.5x
43 * Increased the request count by 8.5x
44 * Increased the total page load time by 25x
46 This was tested on a locally served maching so that will effect those results
47 against Disqus's favour but the difference on the live, remote system isn't much
48 different. From the above I've decided, for my use case, Disqus is not worth it.
49 I'd rather have faster feeling pages and increase user privacy than have
52 Thank you to all those whom have previously left constructive and positive
53 comments about the project. I am thinking about using something like Gitter
54 as an alternative source of feedback and discussion but for now I'm keeping it
59 <span style="font-size: 0.8em;opacity:0.8;">Header Image Credits: <a href="https://unsplash.com/@peterhershey" target="_blank">Peter Hershey</a></span>
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