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Show HN: HexoPress – a blog that syncs with your Google Docs
- shakkeel 10y agoSo where will my blogs be published?
- lewisjoe 10y agoOnce you sign up, you'll have your blog served at hexopress.com/@<the_username_you_choose>
- asaddhamani 10y agoAny plans on allowing subdomains so people can use their own domains? Wouldn't mind a hexopress footer (similar to how PostHaven would do it) on the site in exchange.
- lewisjoe 10y agoYes, certainly. I'm short of prior experience generating dynamic subdomains. That's probably why I didn't put it in the first cut.
- relaxitup 10y agoYeah, if you could support custom domains, I'd definitely use this. Also, looks like we could self-host from your github code? By the way, you've come up with quite a brilliant, simple, and efficient idea.
- lewisjoe 10y agoI'll figure how to get that done! The README there, isn't complete. I'll pack the README with more details on getting it to work on dev/prod machines. Hopefully, by evening :)
- jclos 10y agoIt looks quite cool. How do you plan to monetize it into surviving?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lewisjoe 10y agoThanks! Regarding monetizing it, I have no plans yet. On doing the math, looks like it can take up to a 1000 users, before it costs me anything significant. If at all it goes north of thousand users(which is a really long way!), I'd give it a thought :)
- iamdave 10y agoHrm. You have my attention. Is there a demo blog up somewhere I could look at and does this support custom blog themes and post templating yet?
- krptos 10y agoThanks! Here's mine - http://hexopress.com/@joe http://hexopress.com/@joe. Nope, I haven't started concentrating on making it all that customizable, except for a few basics. It's in the roadmap.
- webwanderings 10y agoWordpress also recently came up with the add-on to have your Google Docs saved up as blog posts. I see parallel here. Interesting idea.
- lewisjoe 10y agoYes. Comparatively speaking, there's this tiny little difference in perspective. HexoPress offers a complete sync between a folder on your Google Drive and your blog. Wordpress doesn't. It just takes a given post from Google Docs, when you are done with it and puts it into its database. That's pretty much it.
- webwanderings 10y agoMakes sense. I'm not sure why I would use "your service" to do this (blog on my Google, only to have the document show up somewhere else). I see value in a service if such connector is available within Google for me to keep it within Google. Nothing wrong with your service, and it is a fantastic idea, but just saying. I think this idea is more feasible if it is available as an independent entity. I find it strange that neither Microsoft, nor Google cared to think about it, given that a word processor is a natural fit.
- lewisjoe 10y ago
- jmpz 10y agoThis is great! Is there any way to update the stylesheet?
- lewisjoe 10y agoGlad that you liked it. Updating stylesheet is not possible as of now. But, I'll be working on making a lot of it customizable, going forward :)
- ksvarma 10y agoThis is great. I just published my first post. Its been about 15 minutes. So far haven't seen it coming through. Is there a process that kicks every sometime?
- MrQuincle 10y agoI think you've something bigger here than you realize. :-) If you would indeed: 1) introduce some opportunity for others to write stylesheets; 2) support custom domains, then I would expect something like this to really take off. I see many advantages: Not all kind of Wordpress plugins that have to be checked or maintained. Not explaining what can be adjusted, what not. Having a very simple user interface for people (Google docs) that just works. I foresee also some disadvantages, especially about customization: from SEO, to footers, contact page, etc.
- lewisjoe 10y agoThank you! Regarding customizations, things like SEO, custom footers & pages are in fact very much possible. It's just that I didn't want to put in a lot of effort, with my itch being the only validation :) I'll keep working on it, focussing on customization options :)
- vhn 10y agoThe name is similar to the Hexo blog platform what may cause some confusion. [1] [1] https://hexo.io/ https://hexo.io/
- misterhtmlcss 10y agoI agree. It was in fact my first thought that it was associated with Hexo.
- lewisjoe 10y agoDidn't see that coming! I was about to buy a domain named - http://hexo.press http://hexo.press, which would have been a bigger bummer.
- philamonster 10y agoAny support for inserted images in docs? Just seeing placeholders currently with image dimensions.
- unfocused 10y agoVery neat idea. Btw, don't forget to add .DS_Store to your .gitignore file.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lewisjoe 10y agoOops! Thanks. Will add it.
- nbcesar 10y agoGreat idea - if I could change the style and some additional customizations, I would probably pay a couple bucks a month. Actually looking to start up a blog soon and starting to look around at the options.