Comments

Configure comments from the Flowershow dashboard under Site Settings → Features, or using config.json if you prefer to version-control your settings or manage them via an automated workflow.

Note

Comments require a public GitHub repository — but it doesn't have to be the one your site content lives in. See Using a dedicated comments repository if you publish without GitHub integration or your content repo is private.

Requirements

Your repository must be public
GitHub Discussions enabled in your repository
Giscus GitHub App installed in your repository

Getting your Giscus IDs

Visit giscus.app:

Enter your repository name
Select your preferred discussion category
Find the Repository ID (R_…) and Category ID (DIC_…) in the script snippet at the bottom of the page.

Enabling comments

Go to Settings → Features → Comments and toggle it on. Once enabled, two additional fields appear:

Giscus Repository ID — the ID of your GitHub repository (starts with R_)
Giscus Category ID — the ID of the discussion category (starts with DIC_)

Note

By default, comments are shown on all pages once enabled. Individual pages can override this with showComments in their frontmatter.

Using a dedicated comments repository

There are a few situations where you need or want a dedicated public repository just for discussions:

No GitHub integration (publishing via Obsidian, CLI, or direct upload) — there is no content repository connected to your site, so Giscus has nowhere to point without one.
Private content repository — Giscus requires a public repository, so if your content repo is private you need a separate public one for comments.
Preference for separation — you simply want to keep discussions in a dedicated repo, independent of where your content lives.

Create a new public GitHub repository (e.g. username/my-site-comments)
Enable GitHub Discussions in that repository
Install the Giscus GitHub App on that repository
Visit giscus.app to get the Repository ID and Category ID for that repository

Then enable comments in the dashboard (Settings → Features → Comments) and add giscus.repo to your config.json. This is required — without it, Flowershow has no repository to point Giscus at and comments will not appear. The dashboard has no field for this, so it must be set in config.json:

{
  "giscus": {
    "repo": "username/my-site-comments",
    "repoId": "R_xxx",
    "categoryId": "DIC_xxx"
  }
}

Controlling comments per page

Hide comments on a specific page

Add showComments: false to that page's frontmatter:

---
title: Page Without Comments
showComments: false
---

Using config.json

If you want to version-control your configuration, or have your editor's AI agent manage settings without touching the dashboard, you can define everything in config.json instead. Values set in config.json take precedence over dashboard settings.

config.json also exposes advanced Giscus options not available in the dashboard:

{
  "showComments": true,
  "giscus": {
    "repo": "username/repo",
    "repoId": "R_xxx",
    "categoryId": "DIC_xxx",
    "theme": "transparent_dark",
    "lang": "en",
    "mapping": "title",
    "strict": "0",
    "reactionsEnabled": "1",
    "inputPosition": "top"
  }
}

showComments: true to enable comments site-wide, false to disable
giscus.repo: GitHub repository in username/repo format. Required if your site has no GitHub integration (e.g. publishing from Obsidian or CLI); optional otherwise, where it defaults to your connected content repository.
giscus.repoId: Repository ID (starts with R_)
giscus.categoryId: Discussion category ID (starts with DIC_)
giscus.theme: Giscus theme (e.g. light, dark, transparent_dark)
giscus.lang: Language code (e.g. en, fr)
giscus.mapping: How pages are mapped to discussions (pathname, title, url, etc.)
giscus.strict: Strict title matching ("0" or "1")
giscus.reactionsEnabled: Enable reactions ("0" or "1")
giscus.inputPosition: Comment box position ("top" or "bottom")