Tecnoblog's Experience With Discourse Comments

Falco · May 15, 2026, 5:09pm

Thiago_Mobilon:

5. Login Friction

The current flow is a bit of a conversion killer: User clicks login → New tab opens → Login happens → User is left on the community homepage. Back on the blog post, the iframe still looks logged out until the user manually refreshes the whole page. It’s a confusing loop that makes people give up and leave before commenting.

Since we activated the new embed, our daily registrations have more than doubled, which is great. However, our engagement metrics haven’t moved at all. In fact, our DAU/MAU dropped – we have more logged-in users, but they aren’t interacting. Metrics like “Daily Engaged Users,” “New Contributors,” and “Postings” haven’t seen any increase.

This proves that people want to join the conversation, but they’re getting lost in the login loop and abandoning the post before they can actually comment.

This is now fixed, please update to get the new login flow.

github.com/discourse/discourse

FEATURE: Add in-iframe sign-in flow for full app embed mode (#39756)

main ← embed-full-app-signin-flow

merged 04:07PM - 15 May 26 UTC

xfalcox

+644 -4

Previously, full app embeds loaded on a third-party domain could not see the for…um's session cookie, leaving users effectively logged out, and `showLogin` only opened a dead-end `/login` tab the iframe never reacted to. This adds an `embed_full_app_signin_flow` site setting (on by default, gated to full app embed mode) that intercepts logged-out actions inside the iframe with a guided flow: bridge storage access if the iframe's cookie jar is partitioned, then either reload (if the user is already signed in elsewhere) or open a top-level sign-in tab and watch the session via polling. ## Flow 1. User clicks an auth-gated action (Reply CTA, Like, etc.). `showLogin` / `showCreateAccount` and the embed-topic-footer reply CTA route into the new `embed-auth-flow` service. 2. **If `document.hasStorageAccess()` is `false`** — Safari ITP, Firefox Total Cookie Protection, Chrome's 3p cookie phaseout — an in-iframe modal asks the user to share their session. Confirming calls `requestStorageAccess()` (synchronously inside the click handler so user activation is preserved). 3. Once we have access, the service probes `/session/current.json`. If the user is already signed in elsewhere (common Firefox ETP scenario), the iframe reloads to pick up the session — no popup. 4. Otherwise, a sign-in modal opens a top-level `/login?embed_signin_callback=1` (or `/signup`) tab and shows a waiting state with a spinner. The iframe polls `/session/current.json` every 3s for up to 5 min. 5. When polling sees a logged-in response, the iframe reloads. The popup self-closes once it has a session, driven by the `embed_signin_callback` query param + sessionStorage flag. ## Why polling instead of `postMessage` The popup-side callback originally posted a success message back to the opener. Discourse's default `Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy` (`same-origin-allow-popups`) typically mismatches an embedding host's (`unsafe-none`), which severs `window.opener` on the popup's very first load — and any OAuth provider redirect amplifies this. Polling sidesteps the whole opener relationship and works regardless of COOP, OAuth, or the user opening the link in a new tab. ## Setting - `embed_full_app_signin_flow` (boolean, default `true`, in the `embedding` area). - The flow assumes the iframe can receive its cookies after popup sign-in — true when the embed is **same-site to the host page** (any SameSite setting) or when `same_site_cookies = "None"` is configured for cross-site embeds. We trust the admin to enable this only on a compatible deployment. ## Implementation notes - **Browser-agnostic storage access.** `hasStorageAccess()` is the single signal — `true` on same-site/same-origin embeds (no prompt needed), `false` whenever the iframe's cookie jar is partitioned. No browser sniffing. - **User activation preserved.** The modal uses native `<button {{on "click" handler}}>` rather than `service:dialog`, so `requestStorageAccess()` and `window.open()` see a live activation token in the click handler. - **No reload after storage access.** `requestStorageAccess()` grants access for the current document; we chain directly into the next step in the same execution. Reloading would put the iframe back in partitioned mode in most browsers. - **Popup self-close is param-driven, not opener-driven.** The callback initializer keys off `?embed_signin_callback=1` alone — `window.opener` is unreliable thanks to COOP. - **API-unsupported fallback.** Without `document.requestStorageAccess`, the service opens a plain top-level login tab (no callback param) instead of trapping the user in a popup that cannot bridge cookies. - **Storage access denial is a dead-end on purpose.** The catch handler does not chain to a sign-in popup, since a sign-in tab cannot help an iframe that lacks storage access. The user retries the action to be re-prompted. - **Waiting modal.** While polling, the iframe shows a spinner and "Waiting for sign-in" message. Cancel stops the poll and closes the popup; the modal auto-dismisses on timeout. ## Tests `tests/unit/services/embed-auth-flow-test.js` covers gating, the partitioned vs. non-partitioned split, the storage-access → sign-in chain, the already-signed-in → reload path, denial behaviour, popup URL routing, and the API-unsupported fallback.

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