Remark42 Documentation

Once authenticated as an administrator, you have access to the following management capabilities:

• Show settings: View lists of blocked and hidden users.
• Disable comments: Disable comments for a specific post (can be re-enabled at any time).
• Block users: Block users either permanently or temporarily.
• Delete comments: Remove specific comments from the system.

Remark42 is designed to be privacy-sensitive and avoids tracking or third-party analytics.

Data Handling & Security:

• Minimal Data Collection: Only user ID, username, and avatar links are kept. IDs and names are hashed, and avatars are proxied to prevent direct exposure.
• Authentication Security: Uses JWT stored in HttpOnly, secured cookies. A second cookie, XSRF_TOKEN, is used to prevent CSRF attacks.
• No Cross-Site Tracking: User behavior cannot be analyzed across independent sites running Remark42.
• Encryption: All potentially sensitive data is hashed and encrypted.
• User Rights: Users can request an export of all their information (provided as a .gz file) or use the deleteme request to trigger a complete cleanup of their activity data.
• Session Control: Cookie lifespan can be restricted to session-only.

To enable any email functionality in Remark42 (authentication or notifications), you must configure an SMTP server connection using the following environment variables:

SMTP_HOST
SMTP_PORT
SMTP_TLS
SMTP_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFY
SMTP_STARTTLS
SMTP_USERNAME
SMTP_PASSWORD
SMTP_TIMEOUT

The restore command cleans all existing comments on a site before performing a complete import from the specified file.

For security, the restore functionality is not exposed outside the server by default. The recommended method is to use docker exec to run the command inside the container. Note that ADMIN_PASSWD must be enabled on the server for this to work.

Use the following command structure: docker exec -it remark42 restore -f {backup-filename.gz} -s {your site ID}

Remark42 uses Go templates for emails and error messages. To override the default embedded templates, place files with the same name in the directory containing the Remark42 executable.

If using Docker Compose, mount the custom templates as read-only volumes:

volumes:
  - ./customised_templates/email_confirmation_login.html.tmpl:/srv/email_confirmation_login.html.tmpl:ro
  - ./customised_templates/email_confirmation_subscription.html.tmpl:/srv/email_confirmation_subscription.html.tmpl:ro
  - ./customised_templates/email_reply.html.tmpl:/srv/email_reply.html.tmpl:ro
  - ./customised_templates/email_unsubscribe.html.tmpl:/srv/email_unsubscribe.html.tmpl:ro
  - ./customised_templates/error_response.html.tmpl:/srv/error_response.html.tmpl:ro

To migrate the button component from BEM to CSS Modules, consolidate all existing BEM CSS files into a single button.module.css. In the component file, replace bem-react-helper with clsx and a local styles object. Use lookup objects to map dynamic props like kind, size, and theme to their corresponding CSS module classes.

Files to modify:

• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/button/button.tsx
• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/button/index.ts

Files to create:

• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/button/button.module.css

The memory_store package is a sample implementation demonstrating how to create custom storage plugins for Remark42. To run Remark42 using this memory store implementation via Docker Compose, follow these steps:

1. Copy the provided compose-dev-memstore.yml to your root directory.
2. Build the containers: docker compose -f compose-dev-memstore.yml build
3. Start the services: docker compose -f compose-dev-memstore.yml up

Once running, the demo site will be available at http://127.0.0.1:8080/web/.

The thread component migration consolidates BEM files into thread.module.css. The component uses clsx to handle conditional classes for indentation, nesting levels, and theme.

Implementation details:

• Use styles.root for the base class.
• Use styles.indented for margin-left adjustments.
• Use styles.level6 for specific nesting logic.
• Toggle between styles.collapse and styles.collapsed based on the component state.

Files to modify:

• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/thread/thread.tsx
• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/thread/index.ts

Files to create:

• frontend/apps/remark42/app/components/thread/thread.module.css

Because the restore command deletes all existing comments on a site, you can preserve them by merging existing data with your new import file.

Remark42 backups use a plain JSON with EOL (JSON Lines) format. To merge content (for example, from a WordPress export) while avoiding duplicate Remark42 metadata, filter out the Remark42 version lines from the source and append them to your combined file before restoring:

1. Prepare a combined JSONL file by filtering and appending data.
2. Run the restore command using the combined file.

cat wp-export.json | grep -v '{"version":1' >> combined-export.json
docker exec -it remark42 restore -f combined-export.json -s {your site ID}