Comentario ‣ 3.7.0 Armagh

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The new version Comentario 3.7.0 Armagh is out.

Comentario is a fast and powerful free comment server for web pages, written in Go.

Comentario against the backdrop of the Irish Armagh. AI-generated image.

What’s new

This is the first release retouching the database layout since 3.0.0, therefore it bundles quite a few changes.

Domain-level dynamic configuration

We’ve extended the concept of a dynamic configuration, which previously applied to the whole system, to include domain-level settings. Its main feature is that it’s, well, dynamic, that is:

It allows changing the values on-the-fly, with immediate effect.
It’s flexible and doesn’t require any database changes when a new parameter is introduced, greatly simplifying adding new features.
Every item has a default value, which facilitates configuration management.

The new configuration items are spread over two tabs on the Edit domain page: General and Authentication:

Most of them may sound familiar, and rightly so: they originate from the same-named global (instance) settings, which serve as defaults when adding a new domain:

Items marked with an asterisk (*) on the screenshot above are those providing defaults for new domains.

Named unregistered commenters

What was previously known as simply Anonymous is now called Commenting without registration (see the Authentication tab pictured above). The main difference is that unregistered users, should they be allowed to write comments, don’t have to stay anonymous anymore — although they can if they choose to. There is a new field labelled Your name in the Sign in dialog the commenter can fill in before choosing to proceed without signing up:

Log in dialog with the commenter name field.

Comment status notifications

Every user has got a new setting — configured independently for each domain — for enabling comment status notifications:

When it’s on, which is also the default, you’ll receive an email every time your comment gets approved or rejected by a moderator.

Comment metadata improvements

Edited and deleted comments display the metadata more clearly now, indicating who did that, and when:

Tip: hovering with your mouse over the time spec (such as just now) will display the exact time in a tooltip.

When a user (or someone trying to impersonate them) fails to provide the correct password, this will now be recorded. And once the failed login attempt counter exceeds the configured value, that user will be locked out of Comentario.

The superuser can see the related properties:

New properties related to authentication.

The failed login counter will reset to zero on a first successful login.

As you can see on the screenshot above, Comentario now also registers the moment of the last password change, which will allow to enforce regular password changes in the future.

User session list

The superuser is now also able to see all sessions by a specific user, and to make them expired so that the user will have to log in again:

When you try to login via SSO or a social provider (such as Facebook or Google), Comentario will try open a popup window allowing you to do that. As it turns out, Safari and Firefox seem to impede that by default; we’ve added an in-page popup that explains what happened and how it can be resolved:

Other changes

Support IPv6 addresses (#69), more robust user IP handling (#76)
Embed: add auto-non-interactive-sso attribute of <comentario-comments> tag (#81)
Embed: optimise Comentario startup by getting rid of separate config API call
Fix unmasked IP registered with pageview (#77)