Something I set out to do differently this Blaugust was to make sure I spent more time poking my nose above the parapet of my own blog — sniffing the roses and seeing what else is out there.
Alright, I might’ve mixed a few metaphors there — and no, I don’t know why the roses are above the parapet either — but you get the idea, right?
In the thick of Blaugust and chasing down that rainbow badge for 31+ posts, it’s easy to fall into the trap of keeping nose to the grindstone and missing the gloriousness of everyone coming together to participate in the event.
But… I’ve hit something of a wall. And wall thy name is minimalism.
The Locked Blog Door
Minimalist blogging is seemingly the ‘in’ thing right now — and fair enough, I guess. Sites like Bear Blog, 11ty, and other static-site generators have a lot going for them. They’re fast, clean, clutter-free. A reader’s dream… until you try to actually do something with the content. Like, say, reply. Or react. Or even just drop a “hey, this really resonated — thanks.”
Instead, what you get is a quiet link at the bottom suggesting you email the author or perhaps connect via social media. Which is fine, I guess. Except it isn’t… Not really.
And look- I know, despite what the post title says, that WordPress and its ilk are far from paradise, between the continual enshittification of the wp.com service, the rising cost of self-hosted wp.org setups and the slow-motion abandonment of Blogger by Google.
But here’s the thing:
Whatever it is you might feel you’re gaining in a switch to minimalism, you’re paying for in community interaction.
No Place for the Reader
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that nearly half of the new (or new-to-me) blogs I’ve investigated have adopted one version or another of the minimalist approach.
When there’s no space to respond, engagement naturally falls away. Readers care less, connect less. Even when the writing is excellent — sometimes especially when it’s excellent — it can be deflating to reach the end of a post and find there’s no natural way to either offer a nod of appreciation, or better yet, to carry the conversation forward without jumping through friction-filled hoops.
Comment sections aren’t just a feature — they’re a signal. A sign that the reader is welcome, that their presence and response matter. Without them, even the most thoughtful writing can start to feel sealed off. Like reading through glass.
At that point, it stops feeling like a blog and starts feeling more like a website — and I don’t believe the two are fully interchangeable.
But… Your Blog, Your Call
Of course, not every blogger is looking for community engagement — and that’s completely valid. Some write to reflect, to document, or simply to express, without the need (or desire) for interaction. There’s no one ‘right’ way to blog.
But for me — and I suspect for many others, too — part of what makes blogging special is the conversation that can follow. The shared moments in the comments. The spontaneous idea threads. The sense that this isn’t just a publishing platform, but a space to connect.
I’m not here to say everyone should go back to WordPress, or that every blog needs a comment section.
But I do think we lose something when those doors are closed by default — when the reader is welcomed to read, but not to respond. So if you’re on the fence about whether to enable comments, or thinking about whether that little “reply” box still matters — well, this is me, waving from my side of the screen, saying:
It does.
This was posted during Blaugust 2025, the annual blogging event normally hosted by Belghast, with a twist this year of being hosted by Krikket. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Back when I was debating if I should continue to blog or not, one of the options I considered was to move to SSGs. But the biggest wall I found for that plan was comments. I just couldn’t find any comment system that was free, easy to install and test in my local machine and didn’t make me feel paranoid about the blog’s security. The closest I could find at the time were some paid options but add that to hosting costs and it would make it a very expensive hobby. And I already have a lot of those.
Just like you having a place people could drop comments was important as a blog owner. So my options felt between continuing with WordPress which was just feeling painful for me to use (and I did even before all the drama) or go with a SSG blog without comments. In the end I decided to just abandon all of it as I just didn’t have the same drive to blog anymore.
Some times I still miss it. But I still don’t have the motivation to blog anymore and those lingering feelings just go away quickly.
Would you consider just going with a free wp.com site just to blargh onto a page whenever the mood did strike?
I have to say, even now, after what must surely be at minimum a couple of years since you stopped and took Shards of Imagination down, I still miss your posts an voice in the community. Suffice to say, very appreciative when you do poke in and say ‘Hello’. :)
I considered it but no. I just don’t feel like blogging anymore. The very few thoughts I have about games nowadays I can just throw them away at Mastodon and that has served me well.
I have been musing for quite a while making a “digital garden” though, which is fancy-shmancy term for an old school site. The main content would be reviews for Visual Novel games I played since I often hear from some friends that they would like to give them a try but are afraid of ending up playing a porn game instead. So that would be for them. It would also have a blog on the side and whatever other subject I felt like writing about.
But the state of the web nowadays doesn’t motivate me much for that either. (read: AI crawlers)
Definitely sad to hear, but understandable. Welp, you’re welcome to comment here anytime you please! :)
I agree. Comments are very important. I chose hyvor for mine as I run on Hugo. It’s pricey so idk if I’ll stay with it but I won’t go without comments.
Oh, I like your solution. It integrates very smoothly, it looks like. But I took a look at Hyvor’s pricing, and I can also see what you mean about cost. That is more than I pay for hosting of the entire site here!
Minimalism has a price, I guess. I too feel that the ability to comment on or even ‘like’ a post is a priority feature for blogging.
I often feel that sense of disappointment when I read a blog post and find that there is no easy way to respond. Perhaps “disappointment” is the wrong word: what word says “being told in no uncertain terms that my input is not wanted”? I’m pretty sure that this is not really the intent of static or minimalist sites, but… it is how it comes across.
Honestly? At some points during writing this post, I leaned more toward that disappointed / shut out angle, but felt like I might be over-dramatising it somewhat — so I’m glad to hear someone else say it too, because I still think it’s true.
Although, also like you say, I would think that generally, it isn’t the point, more just a side effect.
For all the many, (many, many) faults WordPress may have; the ecosystem that comes with it is still top notch for the in-blog community aspects.
That said, I have seen some OK solutions popping up. Matt’s blog (comment above) has a nicely integrated solution, although it isn’t free.
Well, that saves me the trouble of writing the post I was going to do later in Blaugust! I could not agree more strongly. Immediately before reading this post I’d been catching up on the overnights from Blaugust, where Ihave all the new contributors in a section of their own on Feedly. It was hugely frustrating because several of the posts I read were very interesting and worthy of comment but none of them had comment sections. Neither did most of the less interesting ones, for that matter.
Most had some means of submitting a response, either directly by email or via some external social media platform. There are several problems with that approach, one of which may be mine, the other of which is everyone’s. On a personal level, I find the idea of emailing a complete stranger absolutely weird. Creepy, even. It’s tantamount to going up to a stranger in the street and saying “Hey, I really like your tee-shirt! Where did you get it?” That, as I say, may just be me.
Inviting responses via specific social media platforms, mostly Mastodon/Fediverse/BlueSky this year, is specifying an audience and expecting anyone outside it to sign up and become part of that group. That’s even more of a hurdle than the regular issues that already make commenting harder than it should be. And even if a reader is willing to deal with those annoyances, making a direct response to a blog’s author by email or on their social media of choice is not entering into a public conversation in the way leaving a comment at the blog itself does. Comments beget comments and conversations ensue. That’s why we call them comment threads. Afterwards, by all means “take it to tells” but don’t start there!
I spoke up about this last year, after Blaugust ended. Honestly, I am tempted to suggest that Static Sites with no public reader response option are no more fitted for inclusion in Blaugust than AI-generated sites. They may be written by humans but they block human responses. We had a purely AI site last year and it had a comment section – which I used! If AI can do it then surely humans can.
I’m uncomfortable with the suggestion that people should be forced to allow comments to participate, although I do understand the sentiment and wish comments were enabled more broadly.
I’ll be honest and say that my interest in a blog plummets when there is no way to interact.
Of the alternatives to on-site comments I’ve seen so far, the least problematic, I think, is where there is a link to a specific social thread (e.g., on Mastodon, BlueSky, whatever) that all commenting is happening under.
The more common approach, where social was used, appeared to unfortunately be to just have the link just generally go to the person’s profile, or perhaps to generate a new thread/chain.
Email just isn’t a valid replacement option for comments, in my opinion. I don’t know if ‘creepy’ is how I’d explain it, but it’s also an issue I am having trouble articulating clearly. I think it comes down to the ‘feel’ of email being so different. Almost like a higher degree of commitment just to start it, and even once you have it doesn’t seem to be occupying the same precise function/role.
Hm.
Might have to think on that one further.
In any case, as always, still kinda hope you do your own post on the topic should you be so inclined — you often bring new insights to the table any time you do.
Totally agree with you about email Bhagpuss. It feels a little too personal for me, which maybe is the point? I’m sure there’s some people who like that one on one interaction. But then it’s also just a conversation between reader and author and not readers and author and I think there’s a lot lost there.
The other option I’ve seen on these sites are Guestbooks. Where it’s a separate page not connected to the post I want to reply to and looks like you’re gone around asking everyone to sign your yearbook. It’s hard to have a conversation on a specific post with that format too.
Aye, I’ve seen some with the guestbook approach as well, and agree with your thoughts on it as a solution.
In terms of email, I think you definitely nailed a part of the problem with it there in shifting the conversation from being between readers (plural) and the author, to just reader and author, which likely has a hand to play in that increased ‘personal’ feel, for better or worse, depending on your point of view.
I recognise too that this subject might make it easier for us to come across as crotchety old people yelling at the kids to get off our lawn, but I hope even if this does ring a little bit like that to some of the new kids on the block, it is also at least plain to see that the request isn’t ‘get off’, its, ‘get on’, and it’s less ‘lawn’ and hopefully, at least, more ‘community park’.
For me, a blog post is like giving a small talk in a church hall and then people coming up afterwards and politely discussing what was said, over tea and biscuits. Removing comments negates that. You are no longer talking to people, but at them.
I appreciate that people don’t want to run the risk of abuse and unpleasantness that sometimes comes with allowing comments on a blog. But I wonder if this symptomatic of wider malaise, where people just can’t cope with the social dynamic of a one on one discussion?
Thanks Roger — and thanks for the follow-up conversation as well.
I really like the church hall analogy, it nails the ‘feel’ of it in my opinion. I mean, sure- technically, anyone can wander in off the ‘street’ into either said church or our blogs and make a mean comment, but in both cases it is a) rare, and b) easily dealt with.
I do also wonder, like you, whether the issue is more generally about the social dynamic shifts between generations or whether simply the technical difficulty of actually achieving a (good) comment system on a static site is the real blocker.
I wasn’t going to say anything anymore since I feel I already rambled enough and pretty much veered off-topic on my first comments. But given how other people seem to be perceiving the subject I will make the comment I should have done from the beginning.
clears throat I don’t think this is a case of any malaise or anything like that. Rather I think it is just another symptom of people’s dissatisfaction with Big Tech and the enshittification of the internet.
What I mean by that is that instead of relying on software/services like WordPress and Blogger they prefer to go with something they can control and know they own the content without any strings attached. (And yes, I am aware you can self-host a WordPress site and even export its contents. However good luck trying to to convert such content to good ol’HTML.)
Thus people go for a SSG. It is easier than coding by hand and just gives you a plain HTML that you can upload anywhere. You also don’t have to worry about databases or anybody hacking it.
The problem then comes to find a good solution for comments. Like I mentioned at least a couple years ago it was hard to find one that was free, trustworth and easy to install. Now maybe I am idiot or maybe I didn’t look far or maybe things changed since then. Maybe there is a solution like that right now. If there is I certainly would like to know.
The closest I could think of and discarded it back in the day is because I had some privacy concerns about Disqus. That and all the comments would essentially be owned by Disqus for them to do whatever they wanted. I also don’t know how trivial it would be to export the comments if you ever got fed up with Disqus and decided to move to something else. So it goes back to my point of owning and controlling your content. Or maybe I should say the contents of others that are hosted on your blog? Ah, you know what I mean.
And the paid options aren’t only very expensive but could have the same problems as Disqus.
Given all that I can see why people would forgo the trouble with setting up a comment system and just get something out there.
It does suck though we can’t continue the discussion under the post though.
That is how I see the issue anyway. Obviously I can’t speak for everyone that decided to go that route. It is just the impression I get from hanging on Mastodon and how often I see people seeking alternatives to Big Tech.
So, the TL;DR is: people wanted something they can own and control and not be screwed whenever a CEO goes insane and throwing a temper tantrum. The drawback is finding a good comment system is hard and/or too expensive.
It always feels a bit odd to find no way to comment on a blog, but I’m guessing some people also have good reasons to have turned it off, so imo it’s fair.
But you just reminded me of a couple of weeks ago where I read a blog post, really enjoyed it, then spent five minutes scrolling around trying to figure out if I could give it a like anywhere. I was so confused when I couldn’t give it a simple thumbs-up, star, heart or anything.
And honestly, looking at your comments on here really proves your point. People aren’t just engaging with your post, but also your replies, each other etc. That’s truly lost when you can only send an email to the author.
Yeah, aside from the fact that it is actually difficult (to do both cost-effectively and well), there are plenty of valid reasons someone may just not want to have them.
So it isn’t like I don’t get it, but I still have my preferences for them to be present wherever possible. :)
[…] Time to Loot – They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Static Site […]
Here via Auxxy.
I’ve been personally disillusioned with WordPress in recent years, but certainly the comment sections are one of the things I’ve valued about it. For what it’s worth, there was also some recent discussion on this topic just last month, started by Forking Mad.
On indie blogs it seems like the most common workaround I see is to offload commenting onto Mastodon, which unfortunately presents its own set of problems in that Mastodon is really quite bad for managing comments.
[…] of course, you enable comments. Or likes. And hope that your potential commenters weren’t turned away by this […]
[…] the most part, I do like Naithin’s post relating to comments. It feels generally “neutral”, but there are a few things that […]
Hmm, I’ve tried to submit a comment twice now and it doesn’t seem to have gone through, even though some pingback comments have been added since then. Could that be because I’m using too many links? Let’s see if this one goes through.
Links might well be doing it, this one went through no problem.
Just went and looked through spam, and sure enough! Links flagged them as spam. I’ve recovered your original comment now. :)