add a readme

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+# Chatter
+
+Chatter is a statically generated comment engine for embedding on any website. Being statically
+generated means no database is needed, which makes it very lightweight.
+
+Running on AWS lambda makes it incredibly cost effective for small sites, and leaning on
+[Zappa](https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa) makes management simple.
+
+<a href='https://joealcorn.github.io/chatter/' target='_blank'>
+    <p>See an example</p>
+    <img width="540" alt="Example comment box" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1097349/35779514-1fa29c60-09c6-11e8-8ab8-570a4bb042c9.png">
+</a>
+
+## How it works
+
+New comments are submitted to an API endpoint running inside [AWS Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/),
+which writes the comment to an S3 bucket. A second lambda function will then build a json index of the
+comments, which is what will be read by the user's browser.
+
+At the moment it's up to you to submit and render comments, but there's some example code on the gh-pages
+branch.
+
+## Getting started
+
+### Authentication
+
+You must [set up an AWS credentials file](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/a-new-and-standardized-way-to-manage-credentials-in-the-aws-sdks/).
+
+### Installation
+
+Install the dependencies using [pipenv](http://pipenv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
+
+`$ pipenv install`
+
+Go inside the virtualenv pipenv created so Zappa recognises it as a venv
+
+`$ source $(pipenv --venv)/bin/activate`
+
+### Configuration
+
+- Change the bucket in the top of chatter.py. This is where we'll store comments and indexes.
+- Change `arn` in `zappa_settings.json` to match the input bucket so zappa can register an event handler.
+- Change `s3_bucket` in `zappa_settings.json`. This is where zappa will build the packages for lambda.
+- Add the url of the websites you're going to be creating new comments on to the `CORS` call under
+  `app = Flask(__name__)` so we can set HTTP headers appropriately
+
+### Deployment
+
+`$ zappa deploy dev`

chatter.py

@@ -23,6 +23,9 @@
 
 @app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
 def submit_comment():
+    '''
+    Hit by a user's browser to add a new comment
+    '''
     # slug should be something like a url
     slug = request.form.get('slug')
     comment_text = request.form.get('comment')