How to migrate from Disqus and keep your comments

Step 1 Export your comments from Disqus

Sign in to Disqus and open your site's admin. Go to Community → Export (or straight to disqus.com/admin/discussions/export) and click Export Comments. Disqus builds the file in the background and emails you a download link. On a big site that can take a while.

The file ends in .xml.gz. Don't unzip it: Disfora reads it as it is.

Step 2 Add your site to Disfora

Create a free account, start a project for your site and add its domain, like yoursite.com. Disfora treats the www and non-www addresses as the same site.

Before the widget goes live, you'll verify the domain with a DNS record, a file or a meta tag. You can upload the export before that.

Step 3 Upload the export

In your project, open Settings and find Import comments. Choose the file and click Upload and import. Files up to 100 MB work, and an .xml.gz is about six times smaller than the XML inside it. If yours is bigger, get in touch and we'll import it for you.

Disfora checks the file when it's uploaded and shows an error straight away if it isn't a Disqus export. The import then starts within five minutes, and you can cancel it until it starts. You can close the page; Disfora emails you when it's finished.

Step 4 Check the import

When it's finished, the Import comments card in your settings shows:

• Comments imported, and how many of them are replies.
• Pages that now have comments, and how many of them were new to Disfora.
• Authors, shown by name. They don't have a Disfora account, so there's no profile to link to.
• Waiting for review: comments that were unapproved in Disqus, now in your moderation queue.
• Deleted comments, spam, comments imported before, and comments on other sites that were skipped.
• The five pages with the most comments.

Example: 6,172 comments imported from a blog with 142 posts.

Imported comments don't send notifications or trigger webhooks. Click View comments to read them in your dashboard.

Step 5 Replace the Disqus embed

Find the Disqus code in the template that renders your posts. With Disqus's universal embed it looks like this:

<div id="disqus_thread"></div>
<script>
  var disqus_config = function () { … };
  (function () {
    var d = document, s = d.createElement('script');
    s.src = 'https://your-site.disqus.com/embed.js';
    …
  })();
</script>

Delete it, along with Disqus's comment-count script (count.js) if you use one. If Disqus came from a plugin or a theme setting, switch that off instead. On WordPress, deactivate the Disqus plugin and install the Disfora plugin, which puts the comments in place for you. Everywhere else, add Disfora where the comments should go:

<script src="https://disfora.com/public/disfora.js" async></script>
<div data-disfora-comments></div>

Each post's comments are matched by its address. Disfora treats these as the same address: http and https, with or without www, with or without a trailing slash, and with tracking tags like utm_source. There are step-by-step guides for WordPress, Hugo, Jekyll, Ghost and other platforms.

Step 6 Catch comments posted in the meantime

Readers may have commented on Disqus between your export and the switch. Once Disfora is live, export from Disqus again and upload the new file. Only comments that aren't in Disfora yet are added, and replies to comments you imported earlier still land in the right thread.

Keep the last export file as a backup. You can then close your Disqus account.

What comes across

If comments are missing

"None of these comments are on yoursite.com"

The export's threads point at a different domain from the one in your project. The message names the domains it found. Upload the file to the project for that site, or add the domain to this one.

Some comments were skipped as "on other sites"

Usually a staging site or localhost that ran Disqus at some point. That's expected, and the summary lists the domains so you can check.

A post shows no comments after the switch

The post's address has changed since Disqus saw it, for example after a new permalink structure. Delete the imported comments, fix the thread links with Disqus's URL mapper, export again and upload the new file.

Importing from Commento

The same card takes a Commento export: the gzipped JSON file from Commento's data export. Self-hosted Commento and Commento++ write the same file. Upload it under Import comments in your project's settings, as in step 3, and Disfora works out which kind of file it is.

Comments come across under the right pages with their replies, author names and dates, and keep their Markdown. Unapproved ones go to your moderation queue, and ones Commento held as spam are left out. Re-importing and Delete imported comments work the same way as for Disqus. If you're leaving Commento, Disfora and Commento compared covers the rest of the switch.

Questions

Comparing the two first? See Disfora and Disqus compared.

Ask a question

Something missing or unclear? Ask here and we'll answer in the thread.