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Astropress

Community & discussion

Astropress supports three layers of community interaction: comments on individual pages, a standalone forum, and live chat for real-time support. Each is optional and independent.

Comments

Section titled “Comments”

Comments appear inline on blog posts or pages. Astropress defaults to Giscus; Remark42 is the self-hosted alternative.

Giscus (default)

Section titled “Giscus (default)”

Giscus stores comments as GitHub Discussions. Visitors authenticate with their GitHub account to post.

Attribute Detail
Licence MIT
Hosting GitHub CDN (no server to run)
Cost Free
Requires A public GitHub repository and visitors with GitHub accounts
Terminal window
# Giscus is on by default — no flag needed
astropress new my-site


# Explicitly select it
astropress new my-site --community giscus

After scaffolding, configure your GitHub repo in giscus.config.ts following the giscus.app setup guide.

When it’s the right choice: your audience is developers or open-source contributors who already have GitHub accounts and are comfortable using them.

Limitations:

  • Visitors must have a GitHub account to comment — a significant barrier for non-technical audiences
  • All comment data lives in GitHub Discussions — you cannot export it to a self-hosted system later without API scripting
  • Comment moderation happens in GitHub, not in your Astropress admin

Remark42

Section titled “Remark42”

Remark42 is a self-hosted, privacy-focused commenting system. It supports multiple login providers (GitHub, Google, Twitter/X, email) or anonymous comments.

Attribute Detail
Licence MIT
Hosting Self-hosted Go binary or Docker
Cost Free (server cost only)
Requires A persistent server (Docker, ~50 MB RAM)
Terminal window
astropress new my-site --community remark42
astropress add --community remark42

After scaffolding, see SERVICES.md for Docker Compose setup. Configure REMARK42_URL and REMARK42_SITE_ID in .env.

When it’s the right choice: your audience is not on GitHub, you want moderation controls in your own admin, or you need to keep comment data on your own server for compliance reasons.

Limitations:

  • Requires running a persistent Docker container
  • You manage moderation, spam filtering, and backups

Further reading: remark42.com · Remark42 docs

Forum

Section titled “Forum”

A forum is a separate discussion space — not tied to individual posts. Use it when you want a community space with topics, categories, and user profiles.

Flarum

Section titled “Flarum”

Flarum is a lightweight, extensible forum built with PHP. It’s fast to deploy and has a clean, modern UI.

Attribute Detail
Licence MIT
Hosting Self-hosted PHP + MySQL/MariaDB
Cost Free (server cost only)
Requirements PHP 8.0+, MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+
Terminal window
astropress new my-site --forum flarum
astropress add --forum flarum

Configure FLARUM_URL and FLARUM_API_KEY in .env after deploying Flarum.

When it’s the right choice: you want a forum with moderate traffic, don’t have strict performance requirements, and prefer a simpler PHP stack over Discourse’s heavier infrastructure.

Further reading: flarum.org · Flarum docs

Discourse

Section titled “Discourse”

Discourse is the most feature-complete open-source forum platform: full-text search, trust levels, email integration, SSO, plugins, and a robust moderation system.

Attribute Detail
Licence GPL 2.0
Hosting Self-hosted Docker (official install script)
Cost Free (server cost only — minimum 2 GB RAM dedicated VM)
Requirements Docker, 2 GB RAM, Redis, PostgreSQL (all managed by Discourse’s install script)
Terminal window
astropress new my-site --forum discourse
astropress add --forum discourse

Configure DISCOURSE_URL, DISCOURSE_API_KEY, and DISCOURSE_API_USERNAME in .env.

When it’s the right choice: you need a high-traffic, full-featured community forum with trust levels, gamification, and a proven moderation toolkit. Discourse is the industry standard for developer communities.

Limitations:

  • Requires a dedicated VM with at least 2 GB RAM — it will not run on a cheap shared server
  • Higher operational complexity: Redis, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq background workers, and email configuration all need to be running
  • Not suitable for low-traffic sites where the operational overhead outweighs the benefits

Further reading: discourse.org · Discourse install guide

Live chat

Section titled “Live chat”

Tiledesk

Section titled “Tiledesk”

Tiledesk is an open-source live chat and customer support platform. It supports chatbots, agent routing, conversation history, and integrations with Slack and Teams.

Attribute Detail
Licence Apache 2.0
Hosting Self-hosted Docker or Tiledesk cloud
Cost Free self-hosted; cloud plans from $25/month
Terminal window
astropress new my-site --chat tiledesk
astropress add --chat tiledesk

Configure TILEDESK_API_URL, TILEDESK_PROJECT_ID, and TILEDESK_TOKEN in .env.

When it’s the right choice: you need real-time customer support with multiple agents, conversation history, and escalation routing. Not appropriate for sites that don’t have staff available to respond to chats.

Further reading: tiledesk.com · Tiledesk docs