How to Add Comments to a Hugo Site (Without a Backend)

Hugo is wonderful for performance and terrible for anything stateful — including comments. If you want readers to talk back, you need a third-party widget that runs in the browser. Here's the shortest path to threaded comments on a Hugo site, using EchoThread (privacy-first, no ads, no tracking, under 15 KB gzipped, free during beta). 1. Get an API key Sign up at echothread.io , add your domain, copy the key. 2. Add the embed to layouts/_default/single.html {{ define "main" }} <article> <h1>{{ .Title }}</h1> {{ .Content }} </article> <section class="comments"> <div id="echothread" data-api-key="{{ .Site.Params.echothreadApiKey }}"></div> <script src="https://cdn.echothread.io/widget.js" defer></script> </section> {{ end }} 3. Add the key to hugo.toml [params] echothreadApiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY" Or use an env var: HUGO_PARAMS_ECHOTHREADAPIKEY=... hugo . Hugo maps HUGO_PARAMS_* automatically. 4. (Optional) Make a shortcode layouts/shortcodes/echothread.html : <div class="echothread-wrapper