How to Use Disqus with Your Gatsby Site

After stopping gatsby develop, install the react-disqus-comments library from NPM:

npm install react-disqus-comments

Then, restart your Gatsby site:

gatsby develop

I recommend creating some sort of Disqus.jsx or Comment.jsx wrapper component in case you decide to display your comments section in multiple places. Or, you can import directly into a page.

In either case, import the react-disqus-comments library into your page or component:

import ReactDisqusComments from 'react-disqus-comments';

In the render method of your page or component, load Disqus:

<ReactDisqusComments
    shortname="your_short_name"
    identifier={post.id}
    title={post.title}
    url={post.url}
    category_id={post.category_id}
/>

Specify your Disqus short name and other desired props to render the comments widget. shortname is the only required prop, but I recommend using the others to make it easier to manage your Disqus thread in the future.

In this example, you can see that Disqus short name is a string and all other props are dynamic variables based on the post itself.

This library provides some neat callback methods so that you can do dynamic things when comments are posted. For example, if you wanted to alert a user that a new comment was posted:

<ReactDisqusComments
    shortname="your_short_name"
    identifier={post.id}
    title={post.title}
    url={post.url}
    category_id={post.category_id}
    onNewComment={() => alert('new comment available!'}
/>

To lazy-load the widget in Gatsby/React, you can use the react-lazy-load library:

import LazyLoad from 'react-lazy-load';

...

<LazyLoad offsetTop={400}>
    <ReactDisqusComments
        shortname="your_short_name"
        identifier={post.id}
        title={post.title}
        url={post.url}
        category_id={post.category_id}
        onNewComment={this.notifyAboutComment}
    />
</LazyLoad>

This will initialize the comments section once it is scrolled to.

Questions? Comments?

Post in the [Disqus] comments section below and I'll do my best to help you out!

If you found this useful, check out our guide on how to disable ads on Disqus for a clutter-free Disqus experience.