Comments: Bringing Social Interactions to Life
Once your content is live and ready for engagement, adding a robust comment system transforms your platform into a dynamic, interactive space. Comments enable users to share their thoughts, provide feedback, and spark meaningful conversations. A well-implemented comment system fosters a sense of community and enhances user experience.
Replyke provides a comprehensive solution for integrating a social-media-style comment section into your application. Whether you want a fully-featured, plug-and-play component or the flexibility to build a custom solution using powerful hooks, Replyke gives you the tools you need.
Three Approaches to Comments
1. Drop-In Comment Section
The fastest way to add a comment section is by using the SocialCommentSection component. It encapsulates the entire comment system with minimal setup required. This approach is ideal for developers who want a fully functional and styled comment section without having to build or manage individual parts.
Key Features of the Drop-In Component:
- Mentions – Users can mention others by their username, triggering notifications (if enabled). Mentions are clickable, allowing users to navigate directly to the mentioned user’s profile.
- Replies & Likes – Supports nested replies and likes, with built-in notifications for interactions.
- Highlighted Comments – Pass a comment or reply ID to highlight a specific comment, useful when directing users from a notification.
- GIF Support – Add an API key in the dashboard to enable users to include GIFs in their comments.
- Built-in Authorization – Ensures only authorized users can delete their comments and prevents duplicate likes or interactions.
- Reporting & Moderation – Includes a reporting system and an admin back office for managing reports, removing inappropriate comments, and banning users.
- Customizability – Developers can fine-tune behavior and appearance using props, including styling, visibility control, and interaction callbacks.
Minimal setup is required—just pass an entity identifier and optionally customize styles and behavior. This is the recommended approach for most use cases.
Learn more: Using the SocialCommentSection
2. Compose with Comment Building Blocks
For developers who want more control over the layout and structure of the comment section while still using Replyke’s core logic, the useSocialComments hook provides access to the four key components:
CommentSectionProviderCommentsFeedNewCommentFormSortByButton
This allows you to:
- Control the exact layout and positioning of each element
- Style each component independently
- Retain all the functionality provided in the drop-in version
This option is ideal if you want the full power of the pre-built comment system, but require a custom layout or need to integrate the comment section into a more complex page structure.
Learn more: Using the Hook and Provider
3. Build Your Own Comment System with Hooks
For developers who require complete control over their comment implementation, Replyke provides a set of powerful hooks. These hooks expose all necessary data and functionality, allowing you to build a fully customized comment system tailored to your needs.
All available hooks can be found in the Hooks/Comments section of the documentation. This approach gives developers the freedom to:
- Design a unique UI/UX for the comment section
- Implement custom behaviors for replies, likes, and mentions
- Integrate their own authorization and moderation logic
- Extend the comment system with additional features specific to their app
Learn more: Using the SocialCommentSection
Open Source and Community Contributions
All comment components and hooks are open source. Developers are encouraged to contribute, whether by submitting features, UI variations, or fixes.
Over time, the goal is to expand the library of components to support a variety of interaction styles and use cases.
Get involved here: GitHub Repository
What’s Next?
In the upcoming chapters, we’ll cover how to integrate the Replyke comment component into your app effortlessly. If you prefer to build your own comment system, refer to the Hooks/Comments section for detailed guidance.
Regardless of the approach you choose, Replyke ensures that your platform fosters rich, meaningful interactions while simplifying the complexities of comment system development.