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 comprehensive solutions for integrating comment sections into your application, offering two distinct styles to match your platform’s needs: Social Comments and Threaded Comments. 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.

Comment Styles Overview

Replyke offers two comment system styles, each optimized for different use cases and user experiences:

Social Comments (Instagram/TikTok Style)

• Visual Style: Clean, social-media inspired design
• Nesting: Maximum 2 levels (comments and replies)
• Interactions: Heart/like system
• Best For: Social platforms, content sharing, quick interactions
• Package: @replyke/comments-social-react-js (React) / @replyke/comments-social-react-native (React Native)

Threaded Comments (Reddit Style)

• Visual Style: Discussion-focused with clear threading
• Nesting: Unlimited levels with visual indentation
• Interactions: Upvote/downvote system
• Best For: Forums, detailed discussions, complex conversations
• Package: @replyke/comments-threaded-react-js (React only - React Native coming soon)

Both styles share the same core functionality and can be customized extensively to match your app’s design and behavior requirements.

Three Approaches to Comments

Both comment styles offer the same three implementation approaches, giving you flexibility in how you integrate comments into your application:

1. Drop-In Comment Section

The fastest way to add a comment section is by using the complete comment section components:

• Social Style: SocialCommentSection component
• Threaded Style: ThreadedCommentSection component

These components encapsulate 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 Components:

• 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 & Interactions – Supports nested replies with either likes (social style) or upvotes/downvotes (threaded style), 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 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:

• Social Comment Section
• Threaded Comment Section

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, both styles provide dedicated hooks:

Social Style - The useSocialComments hook provides access to:

• CommentSectionProvider
• CommentsFeed
• NewCommentForm
• SortByButton

Threaded Style - The useThreadedComments hook provides access to:

• CommentSectionProvider
• CommentsFeed
• NewCommentForm

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:

• Social Hook and Provider
• Threaded 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, interactions, and mentions
• Integrate their own authorization and moderation logic
• Extend the comment system with additional features specific to their app

This approach works with both social and threaded styles, as they share the same underlying core hooks and functionality.

Learn more: Comment Hooks Documentation

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 for both social and threaded styles.

Over time, the goal is to expand the library of components to support a variety of interaction styles and use cases, potentially including additional comment system variations.

Get involved here: GitHub Repository

What’s Next?

In the upcoming sections, we’ll cover how to integrate both social and threaded comment systems into your app effortlessly:

• Social Comments: Perfect for social platforms and quick interactions
• Threaded Comments: Ideal for forums and detailed discussions

If you prefer to build your own comment system, refer to the Hooks/Comments section for detailed guidance on the underlying APIs that power both styles.

Regardless of the approach and style you choose, Replyke ensures that your platform fosters rich, meaningful interactions while simplifying the complexities of comment system development.