Show HN: A commenting system that works via email https://ift.tt/MvYI4XF

Show HN: A commenting system that works via email Hi everyone, I made a commenting system that accepts submissions via email, instead of requiring a login. The back story is I wanted some interactivity for my site/blog, but I felt like requiring a signup wouldn't be a good UX. I'm looking to get feedback on it from the HN community. Please feel free to ask questions and let me know your thoughts, especially what you don't like about it. If it's a decent UX then I would like to make it OSS, as I feel that it could potentially fill a void, especially for beautiful small websites. Here's the basic flow of data: 1. When the site is generated, mailto links embed information for where the future comment will go 2. When a user clicks on a "comment" or "reply" link, it opens a draft comment in their mail client. Instructions are pre-baked into the email body. 3. When a user hits send, the email is received by my software, which parses the email, validates it for tampering against a pre-computed hash, and then opens a pull request. The user gets an "auto-reply" email, informing them that the submission was successful, along with a link to preview it. The site moderator (so, in this case, me) gets an email, with links to the PR. When the comment is approved, the site is rebuilt and deployed. Other info and potential gotchas: * Emails are all hashed for privacy (with a secret "pepper") that's occasionally rotated * Comments are represented as individual files, so there are no merge conflicts * DKIM, DMARC, and SPF are all checked to help prevent spoofing There's a FAQ on the link above that has more information, and you can also see a demo on my personal website: https://ift.tt/xiGVXRH Thanks for reading! https://r3ply.com/ December 8, 2023 at 11:49PM