Migrating From Cusdis To FastComments

Cusdis is a lightweight, open-source comment system. If you've outgrown it and want features like spam filtering, votes, reactions, notifications, SSO, and a full moderation dashboard, FastComments now imports your Cusdis data directly.

Export Your Existing Comments

From your Cusdis dashboard, request a full data export. Cusdis gives you a single JSON file containing your projects, pages, and every comment, along with their threads and approval status. Depending on your Cusdis setup the export is emailed to you or downloaded straight away.

There's nothing to edit or unzip. Keep the ".json" file as-is, and our backend reads it directly.

Import Into FastComments

Once you're logged in, go here to import the file. Select Cusdis (.json) from the dropdown and upload your file.

Wait a few minutes

The FastComments import is "asynchronous". Uploading the file and processing it are separate steps. For a small file the success message appears right away. At the bottom of the import page there's a table, and each row is an import attempt. Refresh the page to watch the status and how many comments have been imported so far.

When it's done

You'll receive an email when the import finishes, whether it succeeds or not. It's safe to close the page after the upload succeeds and you see your import listed with a status of "Requested" or "Running".

Re-importing is safe. FastComments matches each comment by its original Cusdis id, so running the import again updates your existing comments instead of creating duplicates. If an import fails, reach out to us and we'll help.

What is Imported

• Threaded replies. Cusdis nests replies several levels deep, and FastComments rebuilds the full parent and child structure.
• Moderation status. Approved comments stay approved. Comments still awaiting approval land in your FastComments moderation queue so you can review them.
• Authors. Each commenter's name and email come across, and registered FastComments users are matched by email.
• Formatting. Cusdis comments are written in Markdown. FastComments renders that same Markdown, including links, images, and line breaks, so your threads read exactly as they did before.

Comments that were deleted in Cusdis are left behind, so your imported threads stay clean.

Replace the Cusdis Widget

Once your data is across, remove the small Cusdis snippet from your site and drop in our own. You can run Cusdis and FastComments side by side for a while to test the look and feel first. We support many front end frameworks, which you can find here. We can help with that.

Migrating URLs at the same time

Cusdis ties each comment to its page URL, so as long as your URLs don't change the switch is easy. If your URLs are changing too, import your Cusdis data first, then use the built-in Migrate Comments tool under Manage Data to move your comments to the new locations. You can enter a whole domain, a full URL, or a URL ID for both the old and new location, so a single "from" and "to" pair moves every matching page at once. It runs as a background job and emails you when it finishes.

If you'd rather we handle it (if you have many pages), let us know the old and new URLs.

EU

If you're in the EU, you'll probably want to create your account on eu.fastcomments.com so that your customer data stays in the EU.

Recap

1. Export your data from Cusdis as JSON
2. Upload it on the FastComments import page and select Cusdis (.json)
3. Swap the Cusdis snippet with FastComments's