jekyll-comments-google-forms

Files necessary to add commenting functionality to Jekyll sites using Google Sheets as storage.

See this article for more details: Using Google Forms for Jekyll Comments, Revisited

Configuration Options

Images of all of these features can be seen in the article linked above.

Adding to Jekyll

The baisc idea is to copy comment-section.html to your _includes folder in your Jekyll project.

Then use the following liquid statement on any page or layout template in which you want to add comments:

{% include comment-section.html %}

Comments are stored with reference to the current page's url (via page.url), so if you have a page generated with comments and change the url later (adding a permalink or something), then it would not show the existing comments. You could update the Google Sheets to change the url though for existing commnets.

If you have some other id you want to use instead of page.url, update the following line inside comment-section.html:

var thisPageUrl = "{{ page.url }}";

Data Source

If using Google Sheets + Google Forms as described in the original article, you should have the following items in your _config.yml file:

comment-read: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/xxxx
comment-post: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/xxxxxx
comment-post-fields: [ entry.1111111, entry.1111111, entry.1111111]

See this article if you need a refresher on how to get these values.

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If using Google Sheets + Google Apps Script, you should have the following in your _config.yml file instead:

google_forms_comments:
  google_app_script: Apps Script URL

For a refresher on how to get your app's script URL, see the Using Google Forms for Jekyll Comments, Revisited article.

Chunked Comments

This feature shows the user only 5 comments at a time. If there are more comments, a "Load Older Comments" button is displayed.

This feature is ON by default.

This feature can be enabled or disabled on a site-level and a page-level.

To enable/disable the feature for the entire site, update _config.yml with the following boolean item

google_forms_comments:
  chunked_comment_loading: false

To enable/disable this feature on a per-page basis, update the page's front-matter:

chunked_comment_loading: false

If the page's front-matter value for chunked_comment_loading differs from the configuration option mentioned in the base site config, the page's value will be used. Therefore, you can have a site with chunked comments off on all but a single page or vice versa.

Lazy Loaded Comments

This feature waits to load any comments or scripts required for the comments (jQuery, jquery-csv, validator) until the user signifies that they actually want to read the comments.

This feature is OFF by default.

This feature can be enabled or disabled on a site-level and a page-level.

To enable/disable the feature for the entire site, update _config.yml with the following boolean item

google_forms_comments:
  lazy_load_comments: false

To enable/disable this feature on a per-page basis, update the page's front-matter:

lazy_load_comments: false

If the page's front-matter value for lazy_load_comments differs from the configuration option mentioned in the base site config, the page's value will be used. Therefore, you can have a lazy loaded comments an all but a single page or vice versa.

reCAPTCHA

This feature can be enabled when using the Google Sheets + Google Apps Script.

After adding the relevant secret key to the Google Apps Script RECAPTCHA_SECRET_KEY variable, the Jekyll site's _config.yml should have the site key added in the following variable:

google_forms_comments:
  recaptcha_site_key: Site Key Here

For more specific details on setup required, please see the reCAPTCHA section of Using Google Forms for Jekyll Comments, Revisited

Comment replies

This feature allows users to reply to other comments directly which gives more context to the comments. To see a preview of this feature, see the January 29 update on the Using Google Forms for Jekyll Comments, Revisited article.

This feature is set using the comment_replies_enabled option and is disabled by default.

google_forms_comments:
  comment_replies_enabled: true

If you happen to enable the feature for your site and later turn it off, everything should still work as expected. In the very worst case, you would need to remove extra data from the beginning of comments that had been replies to other comments, but that does not currently appear to be necessary.

Deleting comments that are being replied to also ensures that the replies no longer try to link to the deleted comment.

Comment caching

This feature only applies when using Google Apps Script.

Comment data is now cached for 1 hour after a successful GET call retrieves comment data while using the AppsScript method. This cache is cleared in any of the following scenarios:

• An hour elapses
• A new comment is added via API
• The underlying spreadsheet or form are updated manually
• An error occurs when either adding or retrieving comments

This seems to significantly speed up time to load comments when cached data is available as shown in the v2.2.0 release notes.

Although this feature is on by default, you can disable it by setting the CACHING_ENABLED variable in Code.gs to false.