Adding Privacy-Friendly Comments to a Hugo Site with Chirpy

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I needed a comment system for this blog. Not because I expect a flood of discussion (let’s be honest, most personal tech blogs don’t) but because those rare moments when someone has a question or insight are worth enabling. The challenge? Finding a solution that respects privacy, stays free or cheap, and doesn’t require a PhD in server administration.

The Search: What I Actually Needed

My requirements were straightforward:

Privacy-preserving - No aggressive tracking or data selling
No account required - Reduce friction for commenters
Anonymous commenting - Allow users to comment without revealing their identity
Free or cheap - This is a personal blog, not a business
Proper moderation - I need to delete spam and get notified of new comments
Simple setup - Ideally just drop in a script tag
Future flexibility - Open source preferred, so I could self-host later if needed

Why Not Disqus?

I tried Disqus first. It’s the obvious choice. It’s nearly ubiquitous, feature-rich, and easy to set up. But the more I learned about its privacy practices, the less comfortable I felt.

How to Publish Unlisted Posts in Hugo

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How to Publish Unlisted Posts in Hugo

Sometimes you want to publish a blog post that’s accessible via direct URL but doesn’t appear in your site’s normal navigation or discovery mechanisms. This is useful for sharing draft content with specific people, creating landing pages, or publishing content that you want to keep semi-private.

When creating unlisted posts, you typically have four main concerns:

Search Engine Visibility: You don’t want the post to appear in Google search results
Sitemap Inclusion: You don’t want it listed in your sitemap.xml
RSS Feed Inclusion: You don’t want it appearing in your RSS feeds
Site Listings: You don’t want it showing up on any list pages (homepage recent posts, category pages, tag pages, etc.)

Let’s address each of these concerns systematically.

Web Development on Daniel Lyons

Adding Privacy-Friendly Comments to a Hugo Site with Chirpy

The Search: What I Actually Needed

Why Not Disqus?

How to Publish Unlisted Posts in Hugo

How to Publish Unlisted Posts in Hugo