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Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes
- kristerv 10y agoI have many informational websites like http://www.krister.ee http://www.krister.ee and sometimes I register domains on a whim when I get a really good idea for a website. I decided to create a simple tool to help manage these microsites and in addition to buying a domain I can immediately fill it with demo-content using markdown. Before I get into feature creep (hero image, forms, analytics) I'd like to work on reaching an audience. Problem is, I'm not sure who would appreciate it. I know it's a useful tool so any tips on how to spread the word is greatly appreciated.
- getup8 10y agoCan you give a quick summary of how it works? Who are you using to host? Didn't see any info in the About section. Realize you're saying you don't want to add any features but some quick mobile optimization to make the links more readable / clickable on a small screen would go a long way.
- kristerv 10y agoSure. It's a meteor.js app with React.js at the front. Namecheap to buy domains and Braintree to handle payments. Hosting on Scalingo (awesome service btw). Hmm.. what else.. the chat plugin is tawk.to - be sure to check that out. I'll be sure to improve the mobile view soon, thanks for the comment!
- yatsyk 10y agoThank you for technical details! Why do you use braintree but not use namecheap for everything? Avoiding lock-in or some technical reasons?
- kristerv 10y agoI can't recall the exact details, but I did try to use as few services as possible. I think the problem was something about how namecheap's pricing model worked. Or was it the site that didn't have a customizeable paying popup. Not sure, tried quite many different services many months ago.
- xchaotic 10y agoI think there is some overlap with Jekyll. Personally, Jekyll works better for me atm, as it produces static content, can be hosted for free on github or cheaply on s3 and has a bigger community and backing of github engineering. So perhaps, it's worthwhile to try and figure out jekyll-lite or something like that? For me setting up jekyll was a pain, I had to get ruby, rubygems, jekyll itself and then a manual config intervention to make it work for me. If this could be simplified that would be a huge improvement.
- fredley 10y agoI've been working on a Jekyll-like system for fun over the past couple of weeks. I've tried to make it as painless to install as possible, but it does require Python 3. https://github.com/fredley/mirage https://github.com/fredley/mirage Was planning on doing a Show HN if/when I'd made it a bit more robust. It makes sites that look like this: http://mirage.mamota.net http://mirage.mamota.net
- scrollaway 10y agoDo you cater only to blogs or to static website in general? I tried both Hugo and pelican but neither really supported general purpose websites. For example, https://hearthstonejson.com https://hearthstonejson.com uses Jekyll and I haven't been able to move it.
- fredley 10y agoOnly blogs, I primarily build this for my own use.
- scrollaway 10y agoI will look at it anyway, but the #1 issue with hugo/pelican is that they essentially force you into the "you have posts and you have a homepage that embeds posts" logic. It's super annoying. Jekyll has a ton of issues but it gets it right at least: any page you make becomes a page on the site.
- notahacker 10y agoYour target market is somebody that wants to create lots of minimalist websites quickly. (those creating one personal website whose priority is getting things done likely skip the "evaluate best alternatives" step and go straight to Tumblr/Wordpress or their favourite social network.) Unfortunately, apart from polymaths that just want to share their expertise on as many discrete subjects as possible which I'm not convinced is the biggest target market, it's probably blogspammers and astroturfers...
- kristerv 10y agothanks for the input. You may be right on this one. We'll see.
- frozenport 10y agoAlso troll websites, for example, http://www.makecppgreatagain.com http://www.makecppgreatagain.com, or http://opisaflag.com http://opisaflag.com
- albahk 10y agoSome legitimate use cases: - Single page property websites/subdomains created by brokers (www.123mainstreet.com) - parked domain landing pages
- blunte 10y agoMy first thought was Github Pages + Jekyll + a Jekyll template. And then it's been wrapped in a script that has the domain name bonus. Not saying what you're doing isn't a good idea; I'm just not quite sure where the big distinction (and attraction) is. Is it that the process is more shrink-wrapped?
- kristerv 10y agoyeah the idea is just to be as simple as possible.
- dalbasal 10y agoMostly-text websites that aren't a blog. That's quite a lot of categories of things people might like to put on the web that fit that.
- shanecleveland 10y agoI've always thought something like this would be useful if properly narrowed to a particular niche, where creating a simple, informational site quickly and easily is useful (i.e. local restaurant menu). Would likely want to include templating of some kind.
- giarc 10y agoFYI - When you check a site, there is a little blue pop up in the bottom right corner. It is hidden by the green "Online" chat bar.
- kristerv 10y agohmm, i'm not sure what blue popup you're talking about. Can you screenshot maybe?
- kevincennis 10y agoIt's the thing that tells you to save before you can check the availability of a domain
- kristerv 10y agoriiiight.. fixed! thanks for the report. pretty nasty bug :)
- devsmt 10y agoBeautiful idea, you are heading in a crowded market and at the moment the app is not too differentiated, I hope you the best.
- mholmes680 10y agojust a heads up, the site was marked by my company's net filter as containing malware.
- leemac 10y agosame here. perhaps it's a domain use previously for a bad purpose? "Site is blocked for a Security Threat"
- kristerv 10y agointeresting. Do you know where your company get's its filter data from? I wouldn't be surprised if this domain was used dor something else before.
- mholmes680 10y agoopenDNS malware
- milge 10y agoI run uBlock and got a message saying the site is down. Disabled it and got it to work. I think one way to differentiate yourself in this kinda area is making it run without any backend tech like jekyll, python, etc. Make it run client-side only. Just my 2 cents.
- kristerv 10y agogood point. it's something I myself would also like. I'll have a think about this. I'll also have a look at ublock. I also use it, haven't had problems. Maybe you tried exactly when the site was down. Had overload problems for a few minutes.
- Yenrabbit 10y agoIt loaded fine for me, ublock in chrome on Linux. Nifty tool you've made - thanks for sharing :)
- kristerv 10y agothank you :)
- milge 10y agoI dunno if it will help, besides maybe for some ideas, but when I created my blog a year or so ago, I wanted something like a site generator without running anything on the backend.[1] I ended up doing everything in CSS/HTML/JS/JSON. JSON is used to store posts. I write a post normally using HTML, then use a tool to format it for JSON. Doing it this way allows my static site to run amazon for dirt cheap. Updating the site is just uploading a new JSON file. I wish I would've developed it further to allow for markup to be used, but other projects always come up. [1] https://github.com/milge/lilblog https://github.com/milge/lilblog
- wodenokoto 10y agoComing from wordpress to a website that uses markdown for posts I have run into a few problems or inconvenience that I haven't seen addressed. There's a lot of boiler-plate in markdown posts. Author, date, etc. Wordpress does all this for you. My editor doesn't know which categories, authors or tags already exists. I can't remember if I use the category "car" or "cars". I haven't found a nice way of handling inline images.
- ryanSrich 10y agoThat's not a markdown problem. Its a consequence of using markdown within a framework, generator, etc that uses frontmatter or an equivalent to define meta data. Several frameworks and tools allow for markdown and static site rendering that also support an admin UI where one can define this data more easily.
- iamdave 10y agoalso support an admin UI where one can define this data more easily. I'm looking for one such or a couple, can you enumerate?
- ryanSrich 10y agoNot all of these fit the bill exactly, but they all have their own advantages. - prose.io - siteleaf.com - statamic.com - getkirby.com - github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin - github.com/netlify/netlify-cms - federalist.18f.gov You can also always build your own on top of whatever generator you want to use (example: http://willschenk.com/building-a-gui-for-managing-middleman-blogs/ http://willschenk.com/building-a-gui-for-managing-middleman-...). My favorite setup though is middleman + contentful + codeship. Static site generation happens with middleman. Content management happens with Contentful. Publishing happens with codeship.
- daviddumenil 10y agoThat's interesting in that it suggests why more blogs don't follow Daring Fireball's style.
- jamesgeck0 10y agoReminds me of Aaron Swartz's Jottit application: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/sweatsmall http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/sweatsmall
- daddykotex 10y agoThanks for sharing that!
- PlugTunin 10y agoWhile Jottit is great and representative of yet another cool thing Aaron contributed to the world, it occasionally goes down for days, or even weeks at a time.
- jamesgeck0 10y agoOh, yeah. It's also currently incredibly slow to load for me. I wouldn't recommend that anyone use it at this point. Just pointing out an example of a similar service for comparison. It doesn't do much, but the UI has some serious polish.
- PlugTunin 10y agoCurrent usability aside, like another poster said, thank you for sharing that, James.
- evincarofautumn 10y agoAnd don’t forget Infogami. I used to host my development journal there, early in my programming life.
- tammer 10y agoThere's no greater metaphor for the detachment of the tech-elite from the average user than the pervasiveness of Markdown. Its a poor answer to a problem that exists solely because of lack of coordination among the very tech-elite who rely on MD. An open spec for efficient binary encoding of formatted text is the thing we've needed for 20 years - not more MD tools.
- gkya 10y agoNobody wants another binary encoding, and there's HTML already.
- desireco42 10y agoI in general share your sentiment about standardization and fidelity of tools. I disagree on this completely, here is why: It is simple format and users can figure it out and it will empower them. Some will know very basic things, but others can learn and do more.
- jplahn 10y agoI have two questions: 1) What's the problem that's being solved? 2) And what's a good answer? I'm genuinely curious because I've never considered Markdown anything more than a way to more easily render text -- which it seems to do fine. But, maybe I've just exposed myself as an average user..
- tammer 10y ago1) See here[1] - problem very specifically being solved is lack of readability of HTML (and HTML being the only open portable spec for formatted text). 2) A good answer is another, more efficient open spec for encoding formatted text - meaning I can use any app to format my text, then open it in another app and be sure I have full fidelity. This fidelity would be constrained by a requirement of HTML output. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosophy https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosop...
- hayd 10y ago
- joe-mccann 10y agodillinger.io
- kristerv 10y agointeresting. i'll try reach the author see how they are doing.
- arikr 10y agoThis is excellent. There has been a lack of tools to solve this exact problem - wanting to get a basic site up very quickly and cheaply. Previously the best alternative was a free Firebase/Google account, and then setting up a HTML/CSS site, and deploying it. This is much faster. Thank you for building it! And please, don't be dissuaded by the other commenters. Sure, the market is much smaller than the market that Squarespace et al are targeting, but you're solving your own problem, and there are at least a few others that share that same problem! Problem this solves: People who want to quickly register a domain and get a text landing page up. Side note: I wish Medium.com could set up a specific blog post as the home page for a publication with a custom domain Or I wish I could get a custom domain for Quip.com notes
- kristerv 10y agoThanks for the encouraging words. HN is a technical forum, so the critical responses are understandable. Not that I don't take them seriously :)
- bigge 10y agoSounds like you're looking for something similar to what i just released today. It's a service called Idnty and let's you create a simple and clean personal page in no time. No custom domains yet but it's in the pipeline. Please have a look, https://idnty.me https://idnty.me
- kristerv 10y agowow that's awesome.
- bigge 10y agoThanks! Really like your project as well. We're kinda trying to solve the same problem, but with totally different approaches :)
- arikr 10y agoNice. Timeline on custom domains? And yes, this looks good for me. I won't use it for a personal homepage, I'll use it for other sites, but seems easy to use it for non-personal homepage sites too.
- RockyMcNuts 10y agoMaking a modern, responsive, mobile-aware website seems like a huge learning curve right now. It would be great if there was a tool that let you use simple markdown, took a few options, and generated beautiful static pages like e.g. Medium with a minimum of hassles. I guess a lot of people use WordPress with themes, or Weebly, SquareSpace but it still seems pretty complicated.
- ricardobeat 10y agoIf you want Medium, why not use Medium?
- jhpaul 10y agomedium is blog focused, a medium post is a post on your account. this is a standard single webpage
- thenomad 10y agoGreat idea, but the design would have to be significantly more attractive for me to use it for most of the things that would immediately spring to mind. That's a solvable problem, though - grab some top-flight themes with appropriate licenses and you're probably good to go!
- kristerv 10y agoCould you perhaps point out some specific details that you find annoying?
- agentgt 10y agoMy major critique is that the generated sites are needlessly javascript powered. Right when I saw the "Loading" I thought oh no how many assets are going to be downloaded... for just markdown content. I guess I'm just an old web 1.0 guy but I just don't see and understand why everything must be done in a super dynamic way. Hell sometimes I like clicking on a link and watching the browser do the loading as it is confirmation for me the thing actually got loaded. Particularly when buying/shopping for stuff (ie traditional POST).
- zackify 10y agoI think it's completely fine to use JavaScript here. It would be nice to have instant page pushes. But it should be rendering the site without a loading indicator. There's no reason that should be displayed
- gkya 10y agoWhat is a page push?
- jakobegger 10y agoI think in this case "page push" means that changes get sent automatically to the client via javascript (as opposed to "pulling" changes by pressing refresh. Completely useless for static sites, but nice to have while authoring.
- agentgt 10y ago> I think it's completely fine to use JavaScript here. It would be nice to have instant page pushes. I'm not sure I follow on the instant page pushes. Are you talking about a little dialog that pops up and "says a new version of the page" kind of thing? Second is there features you saw that required Javascript (as it appeared to me most could be done with CSS)? And no I don't think it is "completely fine" to use JavaScript particularly if you are trying to spread the word as quickly as possible and don't care about looks (ie most devices, loads fast, low power). There are also a growing amount of people that have Javascript disabled in general.
- silentrob 10y agosurge.sh
- hyperhopper 10y agosurge.sh + emacs org mode is how Ive taken to doing most of my static web hosting now; works like a charm
- tatotato 10y agoI like to make a markdown as well as a site. It's usually different each time, which keeps things interesting. This isn't a problem for me as the number of sites I make is limited by the number of domains I have.
- tantalor 10y agoIs any group working on standardizing and implementing native support for markdown in the browser? What are the major obstacles?
- Someone1234 10y agoWhat is the value in that? Markdown has two substantial benefits: Easy to store format that is easy to convert into HTML. All native support would do is lot in a specific Markdown feature set, specific markdown styling, and specific Markdown syntax. If you then tried to make a browser supported subset of Markdown that you then allowed to be customised, you'd wind up with so much goop that nobody would be happy. Also, this: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- ne01 10y agoAt SunSed we are working on v3 of our CMS. V3 is very similar (in concept) to what you have built. I believe that there is huge market for tools designed only for developers. Like Weebly but for developers.
- kyledrake 10y agoCongrats on the launch! I had an initial thought of coming up with a site like this, but decided that providing an open HTML platform was best (hence, https://neocities.org https://neocities.org). But I'm happy someone finally scratched the itch. Random thoughts: You're going to want to use subdomains for the sites, otherwise all sites are sharing the same domain security model, and you're going to run into problems when (not if, when) a site gets reported for abuse/phishing/spam/ect issues. Path origin security support is years out. While you're on subdomains, get a wildcard SSL cert and default to it. Neocities started without SSL, and next month I'm paying the price for that sin - we're switching to default SSL and unfortunately it's likely going to break a lot of sites. It's not really a choice anymore, given the political climate and the upcoming pagerank dock from Google. If the site explodes in popularity, I'm happy to give advice. There's a lot of problems I've solved relating to running a massive web hosting service for a lot of people. Some of it required months of research and some serious firehose drinking to figure out. Lastly, don't be afraid to ask for money - at least $5/mo, if you go lower you're just crop sharing for the credit card companies. At a bare minimum, throw up a PayPal donation button. I've learned that if you provide a useful service, people will pay you, even if there's an excellent free option. I'd rather pay a small amount to help sustain a service than have it fall apart from lack of funds and/or dev interest. That's a good thing and it's worth something. To illustrate the importance of at least a donation button: HN users donated over $4000 to us on launch, and I ran the site on that budget for almost two years. Site possibly wouldn't exist today without HN support. Sometimes the comment sections betray this (I'm including myself in this statistic), but kind hearted, wonderful people lurk here. Good luck.
- desireco42 10y agoThis part about HN people is heart-warming :).
- kristerv 10y agoincredible response. Thank you for the effort. Quite an eye opener. Like didn't think about subdomains that way - valuable insight. SSL is top3 on my todo list. Currently I charge extra for the domain - seems to be a simple way of doing it. Donations? Wow didn't think that could be so supportive. I'll be sure to contact you as soon as the need comes again. You seem to be a valuable resource indeed :)
- Rabidgremlin 10y agoIf you want to roll your own, I have a Docker image that pulls Markdown out of git, runs Hugo over it and pushes the site to an S3 bucket. Also works with Bitbucket pipelines so you can get a site rebuild with a simple git push: https://github.com/rabidgremlin/hugo-s3 https://github.com/rabidgremlin/hugo-s3
- Symbiote 10y agoNow I feel old. I have a very small server running Apache, with mod_markdown installed. .md files are rendered as HTML by Apache, and there's a CSS file to tweak if I feel like it. https://github.com/hamano/apache-mod-markdown https://github.com/hamano/apache-mod-markdown
- jedimastert 10y agoI had no idea that existed. It had honestly never occurred to me to render markdown in the server
- Rabidgremlin 10y agoThat's similar to how I used to do it it but I got tired of paying for servers.... plus this approach let me play some "buzzword bingo" BTW my first Internet facing thing was a CGI-BIN Perl script delivering call records for telcos, way back in 1995. I've been cutting code for 35+ years. Never feel old!
- Symbiote 10y agoI have several almost-zero-traffic sites running from an Odroid (ARM board) at home. The largest site has only 30k requests in the Apache log for October, but it's a photo gallery, so there's 150GB of pictures behind it. There's also a backup of my desktop, which is another 2TB or so. I set its ancestor up when I was about 16, using Debian -- and invested a fair amount of time in it, learning a lot. When I bought it in 2013, the cost of cloud storage for a few years was far greater than the cost of the board + a hard drive, but setting up the obscure hardware took more effort than I expected. Nevertheless, I have no plan to switch to cloud services. I like owning my own stuff, and keeping the flexibility to add whatever service I need on the network at home is very useful. For example, I can SSH into it, and control my fancy central heating system, and a while back I added a UPNP media server, which can stream to a Chromecast.
- sgslo 10y agoAwesome project! Anything to get faster deployments out is a great tool. Hate to be 'that guy', but it would be nice if you served this over HTTPS, given that you are accepting credit card details.
- kristerv 10y agofor sure, top3 issue to work on.
- falsedan 10y ago> Extension not supported when trying to add my personal domain. What DNS extension is it trying to use?
- fiatjaf 10y agoLet me suggest Classless Themes[1][2] and its approach to theming that only switches a CSS file to transform the same HTML into multiple different themes. It's ideal for setups like that, where your user want themes, but you can't allow him to touch the HTML templates. [1]: https://websitesfortrello.github.io/classless/ https://websitesfortrello.github.io/classless/ [2]: https://github.com/websitesfortrello/classless https://github.com/websitesfortrello/classless
- fiatjaf 10y agoI'm interested in that domain part. How can I buy a domain through this thing? Will it own my domain or will I be able to move the domain and use it for different things in the future? How?
- kidlj 10y agoIt's good.
- sirtimbly 10y agomdwiki is the best take on this idea I've seen: http://dynalon.github.io/mdwiki/#!index.md http://dynalon.github.io/mdwiki/#!index.md
- corobo 10y agoWhy does it flicker "Loading" before it displays the content? Can't something be cached somewhere to avoid that whenever I click something? Not displaying any change until it's rendered might make it feel more seamless