Serverless Forum

A serverless forum experiment. Powered by Netlify & DiscussBot.

How it works

Use Netlify Forms to collect discussion meta data.
Use DiscussBot to collect and display discussion replies.
This repository will fetch form submissions via Netlify API, then render them to HTML pages, with DiscussBot code inside. This repository should be deployed to Netlify.
Optional. You can set a webhook on Netlify, so the pages will be rebuilt automatically when the form receives a new submission every time.

Fork this repository.
Create a new site on Netlify, and select the repository you just forked.
Fill npm run build to build command, and dist to publish directory. Then click the 'Show advanced' button, add a new environment variable name FORUM_NAME, enter any words to the value field (other variables will fill later). Then click 'Deploy site'.
Once the site deployed successfully, visit YOURSITE.netlify.com/submit.html to submit a new discussion.
Go back to Netlify dashboard, visit the forms page and click the 'discussion' form. The last part of its URL is the NETLIFY_FORM_ID. Write it down, will use later.
Go to https://app.netlify.com/user/applications, generate a new personal access token. It's NETLIFY_TOKEN. Write it down, will use later.
Go to https://comments.app/manage, connect the site you just created. Then you will get DISCUSSBOT_SITE_ID. Write it down.
Go to the deploy settings page of your site on Netlify, add all these variables to the environment one by one.
```
FORUM_NAME
NETLIFY_TOKEN
NETLIFY_FORM_ID
DISCUSSBOT_SITE_ID
DISCUSSBOT_COMMENTS_LIMIT
```
Trigger a new deploy manually on Netlify Deploys page. It will update the forum site based on the latest submissions.

Go to Netlify Deploy Settings page, add a new build hook, then copy the unique URL.
Go to Netlify Forms Settings page, create a new form outgoing webhook, the 'URL to notify' is the URL you just copied.