avel's comment section is made from independent pieces. If your site is built with Zola, you can add the same no-JS comment block even when you use another theme.

If you already use avel, follow the comment settings article. This article is for sites that want only the comment component.

This page also has a comment section at the bottom, so you can see the result in place.

Prerequisites

Nostalgic is free and requires no account sign-up. Choose any 8-16 character string as your token.

Step 1 - Copy the script

Copy scripts/sync-nostalgic-bbs.mjs into your site's scripts/ directory. Then run the script before zola build.

node scripts/sync-nostalgic-bbs.mjs && zola build

Cloudflare Pages and other CI builds can use the same command.

The script scans content/posts/ by default. If your articles live elsewhere, set NOSTALGIC_CONTENT_DIR.

NOSTALGIC_CONTENT_DIR=content/articles node scripts/sync-nostalgic-bbs.mjs && zola build

Step 2 - Put the token in an environment variable

The script reads process.env.NOSTALGIC_TOKEN. Do not commit this token.

export NOSTALGIC_TOKEN=your-token-here

If the token is missing, existing BBS ids are kept and new BBS creation is skipped.

Step 3 - Add config

Only nostalgic_bbs = true is required. The other keys have template defaults.

[extra]
nostalgic_bbs = true
nostalgic_bbs_limit = 3
nostalgic_bbs_width = 760
nostalgic_bbs_label = "Comments"
nostalgic_bbs_hint = "Click to comment"

Step 4 - Add the template block

Override your theme's templates/page.html and place avel's Nostalgic BBS block after the article body. For the full version, see avel's own templates/page.html.