Installation | Remark42

System Requirements

Remark42 is designed to be lightweight and efficient. Based on production usage statistics from busy installations:

CPU: Minimal usage (typically under 0.1%)
Memory: ~80MiB RAM (less than 4% of 2GB)
Network: Moderate bandwidth requirements
Disk: Small footprint (under 200MB for a 5-year-old installation with regular activity)

These requirements make Remark42 suitable for running on small VPS instances, shared hosting environments, or even on Raspberry Pi and similar devices.

Setup Remark42 Instance on Your Server

Installation in Docker

This is the recommended way to run Remark42

copy provided docker-compose.yml and customize for your needs
make sure you don't keep ADMIN_PASSWD=something... for any non-development deployments
pull prepared images from the Docker Hub and start - docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
alternatively, compile from the sources - docker compose build && docker compose up -d

Installation with Binary

download archive for the stable release
unpack with gunzip (Linux, macOS) or with zip (Windows)
run as remark42.{os}-{arch} server {parameters...}, i.e., remark42.linux-amd64 server --secret=12345 --url=http://127.0.0.1:8080
alternatively compile from the sources - make OS=[linux|darwin|windows] ARCH=[amd64,386,arm64,arm]

Installation as a systemd Service

For a clean persistent setup without lengthy command line parameters:

Create an environment file /etc/remark42.env:

SECRET=12345
REMARK_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080

Create a systemd service file /etc/systemd/system/remark42.service:

[Unit]
Description=Remark42 Commenting Server
After=syslog.target
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
EnvironmentFile=/etc/remark42.env
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/remark42 server
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/remark42       # directory where data files are stored and automatic backups will be created
Restart=on-failure
User=nobody                              # another good alternative is `www-data`
Group=nogroup                            # another good alternative is `www-data`

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl enable remark42.service
sudo systemctl start remark42.service

To update configuration, edit the environment file and restart the service:
```
sudo systemctl restart remark42.service
```

Setup on Your Website

Add config for Remark on a page of your site (here is the full reference):

REMARK_URL – the URL where is Remark42 instance is served, passed as REMARK_URL to backend
YOUR_SITE_ID - the SITE that you passed to Remark42 instance on start, remark by default.

<script>
	var remark_config = {
		host: "REMARK_URL",
		site_id: "YOUR_SITE_ID",
	}
</script>

For example:

<script>
	var remark_config = {
		host: "https://demo.remark42.com",
		site_id: "remark",
	}
</script>

After that place the code snippet right after config.

<script>!function(e,n){for(var o=0;o<e.length;o++){var r=n.createElement("script"),c=".js",d=n.head||n.body;"noModule"in r?(r.type="module",c=".mjs"):r.async=!0,r.defer=!0,r.src=remark_config.host+"/web/"+e[o]+c,d.appendChild(r)}}(remark_config.components||["embed"],document);</script>

Put the next code snippet on a page of your site where you want to have comments:

<div id="remark42"></div>

After that widget will be rendered inside this node.

For more information about frontend configuration please learn about other parameters here
If you want to set this up on a Single Page App, see the appropriate doc page.

Quick installation test

To verify if Remark42 has been properly installed, check a demo page at ${REMARK_URL}/web URL. Make sure to include remark site ID to the ${SITE} list.

Build from the source

to build Docker container - make docker. This command will produce container ghcr.io/umputun/remark42
to build a single binary for direct execution - make OS=<linux|windows|darwin> ARCH=<amd64|386>. This step will produce an executable remark42 file with everything embedded