Isso on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | cloudimg

Isso is a lightweight, open source, self hosted commenting server. Embed it in any page with a single script tag: readers get threaded discussions, replies, markdown and voting, and you get a moderation dashboard to edit, approve and remove content.

It is deliberately small. The server is a Python application and the entire data tier is one SQLite file, so there is no separate database server, no cache tier, and no third party service holding your readers' conversations or profiling them for advertising. It suits blogs, documentation sites and publishers replacing a hosted comment widget with a discussion layer they fully own.

This cloudimg image runs Isso 0.14.0, installed from the pinned upstream release and verified against its published SHA256 checksum. Isso runs under gunicorn bound to loopback behind nginx on port 80, so there is no second public listener to secure, and the appliance serves a live demo of the comment widget on its own front page.

Secure by default: Isso's own shipped configuration contains a published default admin password, and this image never ships it. Every VM generates its own 32 character admin password and its own email hash salt on first boot, into a root only file, and Isso refuses to start until they exist. The image also ships no database, which is what gives every VM its own admin session signing key rather than one shared across every deployment of the image.

Isso is MIT licensed and free to use; the cloudimg charge covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 support. This image is provided by cloudimg and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Isso project.