What is a distributed commenting system? An HTML script tag to load a static file that will ping an api that will serve you comments.

What is django? A framework with strong routing, OR-mapping, templates and admin modules.

You need none to build it. Your main concern shouldn't be a coding framework, but load balancing, caching, failover control, more sysadmin stuff than code.

Any language could do. Framework? not needed.

Now, for the backend system to control that monster, then yes, you may use django.

So, use django for complex apps that need routing, data management and UI presentation, plus a powerful admin module.

* I am a python/django developer.

> What is a distributed commenting system? An HTML script tag to load a static file that will ping an api that will serve you comments.

This is how Disqus works. Something still has to power the API that serves the data for it and we happen to like Django a lot so that's what we use. There are also a lot of parts of Disqus that are not the embed (moderation panel, account management, etc.)

Exactly, that's my point. Not meant to demerit your great work.

The admin/crud stuff, moderation panel, account management, etc, that's what django was developed for. Great choice.

If you ask me to start Disqus from scratch again, I'd probably use django too, for the admin part, but for the API I'd go commando, closer to the metal, without framework at all. No need to load a 100MB routing/modeling/templating monster just to perform an invisible API call.

Highly optimized plain python scripts would work better.

Sometimes frameworks are more like handcuffs. Just sometimes.

We have never ever used the Django admin, and I would choose Django any day of the week for a project that is web on the web and using a database.

(In fact almost every single project I've ever built has used Django, and there's never been a limiting factor of that choice)

It's pretty easy to implement yourself but Django's middleware helps a lot too even with APIs.