30 ms·

Blot – a blogging platform with no interface

391 points by firloop 8y ago

2fifty3 8y ago
Super reasonable cost, looks easier than dealing with my own Jekyll or something similar. Plan on giving this a spin!
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  If you use a static site generator like Jekyll, you can host a site for free on github pages. (Blot looks as easy to use as other static site generators)
edhu2017 8y ago
would like to see mathjax support
- ryanianian 8y ago
  It supports TeX formatting/notation for math. https://blot.im/formatting#math https://blot.im/formatting#math It uses mathjax under the covers.
bordercases 8y ago
Beautiful API.
ryanianian 8y ago
I signed up for this the other day and so far really love it. Write a markdown/text file in Dropbox and within 30 seconds or so it's published as a nicely-rendered blog post. As someone who used Jekyll for years and got tired of running hosting and doing rsyncs etc, this is really nice for personal blogging. The usability of the blot.im site itself is a bit lacking. You get a totally different UI when you're logged in, and the links to documentation on how to format your posts and what the different dropbox folders mean are gone. I had to open an Incognito window to find the documentation (spoiler: https://blot.im/help https://blot.im/help). The service is dead-simple to use and supports a wide variety of posting styles and formats.
- dmerfield 8y ago
  Glad to hear you like it so far. I’m working on a redesign of the dashboard to bring it in line with the front-facing site. I know it’s not good enough as it is and I promise it’ll be fixed. p.s. I recently added support for git if you’d rather not use Dropbox (https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968 https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968). And as a point of trivia, Blot launched just under four years ago here on HN in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183498
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - robotkdick 8y ago
    Thanks for posting the link to the previous thread. And congratulations! Blot is a marvel in simplicity.
- gabcoh 8y ago
  If you like Jekyll, GitHub pages has first class support for it. All you have to do is commit a new file for github pages to rebuild your site.
  - lloeki 8y ago
    GitLab Pages is only slightly more involved in the setup but the end result is the same, with the added bonus that you can completely customise the pipeline, including not using Jekyll but e.g Hugo (sample[0]) or whatever else you fancy as a generator. [0]: https://gitlab.com/pages/hugo https://gitlab.com/pages/hugo
- jacquesm 8y ago
  That's how medium started. And look where that got us.
- atom_arranger 8y ago
  I switched to using Netlify for Jekyll. So much easier. Just push to github and it'll build and update the site. It also handles Let's Encrypt.
michaelmior 8y ago
"no interface" is nice marketing, but of course there still is an interface. It just happens to be different from what we usually think of as an interface, but documents placed in Dropbox is still an interface.
- robotkdick 8y ago
  It's dead simple, but you're right everything has an interface. Still I love how simple it is.
  - michaelmior 8y ago
    Definitely not bashing the simplicity. It's not a product for me, but I can certainly imagine this would be a great solution for many.
  - a_d 8y ago
    a simple blogging site — i never found anything more minimal than this. http://adombic.appspot.com/ http://adombic.appspot.com/ I don’t expect anyone to use it, just wanted to show for fun since we are talking about simplicity :)
- Angostura 8y ago
  No separate interface of its own. You use your existing tools.
Sonnie 8y ago
502, Deathhug.
- dmerfield 8y ago
  Should be fixed now. One of the servers went down and was struggling to restart under the increased load.
jxy 8y ago
You can actually use http://ix.io for blogging too.
- moviuro 8y ago
  No formatting though. Just plaintext. Could be a big drawback (even my stupid blog has a short CSS file, so that it doesn't look too ugly: https://try.popho.be/simple.css https://try.popho.be/simple.css)
ValentineC 8y ago
One bonus which isn't obvious on the website: the code's open source [1], and released under the CC0 licence. [1] https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Doesnt Creative Commons actively discourage the use of their licenses for code? I seem to recall seeing something to that effect on their website.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    CC0 is a special case, it's a release into the public domain, plus a fully permissive license for countries where you can't release into the PD.
  - sirn 8y ago
    Yes, CC0 has not yet been approved as an open source license by OSI.[1][2] FSF on the other hand, do consider CC0 to be compatible with GPL.[3] [1]: https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero [2]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC... [3]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0
- prepend 8y ago
  Cool, thanks. This seemed like a good service, but I want to run the daemon myself (and not pay $20). I’ll contribute to the project or figure out some way to get money to the project team if I like it.
  - codazoda 8y ago
    $20 per YEAR Just a note for others who see this comment as high up as I did.
petepete 8y ago
Fantastic, so simple and powerful. Great work.
firloop 8y ago
No affiliation but all of my email exchanges with the creator have been surprisingly helpful and pleasant.
blt 8y ago
This is a good idea, could be really popular with semi-technical users.
p1necone 8y ago
This is really cool but it kinda sucks that it's tied to Dropbox - I would like to be able to do something like point it at a git repo URL instead. Off topic: it would be really nice if there was a common open API for file sync/share services like Dropbox.
- projectramo 8y ago
  My first thought was the same. My second thought was: github and Gitlab both have pages which will do this for you. This is even easier for people who want to do less.
  - dmerfield 8y ago
    Blot recently added support for git, I just haven’t updated the homepage to reflect this: https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968 https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      While you are updating things. I think it would be good to re-enable the YouTube controls-bar on the video. I had to drop out of your site and go to YouTube directly, to be able to watch the video on mute with closed captioning.
      - dmerfield 8y ago
        Have fixed this, not sure what I was thinking.
- fiatjaf 8y ago
  Take a look at my https://sitios.xyz/ https://sitios.xyz/ (the interface is very rough yet, but I'm slowly integrating more stuff and making everything better).
- pests 8y ago
  dmerfield posted below he recently added support for git. His comment has details and a link.
fiatjaf 8y ago
All the 7 themes could have been written using pure CSS with the https://classless.alhur.es/ https://classless.alhur.es/ standard.
whistlerbrk 8y ago
PSA: You can run Wordpress headlessly, there are libraries in a few languages which consume its API to help you render how you want. You can hate PHP but Wordpress is king for non-technical users.
- acangiano 8y ago
  There are also plugins that generate a static version of WordPress, so you can run it locally as a site generator and deploy static files anywhere you like. Agreed on WordPress. In fact, I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging, and I will still recommend WordPress despite my audience being highly technical. (Of course, I'll discuss the alternatives as well.)
  - reificator 8y ago
    I'm much more likely to continue to update a site in my spare time if it's a static site on a managed service than if I have to keep on top of security updates for a web server and a CMS and a backing database and the operating system(s) underneath it all. It's just too much administration for something I mildly enjoy doing in the first place. But your insistence that Wordpress (possibly as a static gen) is worth it has me interested. Where would you recommend I pick up a DRM-free copy of the first edition?
    - acangiano 8y ago
      I definitely hear your concern and will be upfront on the pros and cons of each platform. The DRM-free first edition is here: https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging
  - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
    > I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging Great news! I read your book in (I think 2012), and found it very useful. I suspect I'll be buying the second edition.
BjoernKW 8y ago
One cannot not communicate. One cannot not design. Dropbox is the interface in this case.
soared 8y ago
Octopress is similar to this for google drive but I don't think its been updated in years - no support for custom domains, themes, etc but the idea is great. http://octopress.org/ http://octopress.org/
loudandskittish 8y ago
I seem to recall Dropbox-powered static blog generators being all the rage a few years back...then they all shut down.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Right you are. Amusingly their about page lists a graveyard of 'em: https://blot.im/about https://blot.im/about 13 out of 22 are dead.
Endy 8y ago
$20 per year seems steep enough to count as outrageous. Especially when compared to other hosted blog options like WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, Tumblr, etc. Heck, if I get a free ".tk" website, with maybe free 5GB web hosting with WP.org installed and a free 5GB CDN from Cloudinary, I can "self-host" WordPress for free. So am I missing a major value-add over any of the above options that makes the $20 a reasonable cost?
- SeriousM 8y ago
  This dev created a service that is hosted by himself. There is no "steep" in $20 if you think about server costs and support. Heck, think about how less $20 is, in terms of a whole year! I don't know this guy and I don't need his service but I'm sorry for him that our "every must be cheap or free" dev-culture will make his product less attractive by not making the customer to the product instead.
- Angostura 8y ago
  > I can "self-host" WordPress for free. If your time is worth nothing
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  You are not paying for the hosting, but for the convenience.
  - Endy 8y ago
    Okay, but then I have to ask - how is this more convenient than Wordpress.com or Tumblr?
    - bg0 8y ago
      It's cleaner, you have version controlled dropbox files, edit seamlessly on your computer using any editor. All the pain points/features are listed on the site.
mortenjorck 8y ago
This looks really nice. Elegantly simple, and very reasonably priced. I could easily see Blot carving out a niche with customers for whom the likes of Squarespace or Wix is total overkill.
omeid2 8y ago
Please add an option to pay with Paypal or Stripe Checkout. I don't think I am the only person who is uncomfortable typing in my credit card details on various website, even if you're using Strip APIs.
- dmerfield 8y ago
  Understood. It's on the list → https://blot.im/updates https://blot.im/updates (under payment methods)
kreetx 8y ago
The website's design doesn't work well on mobile (just trying to be helpful).
bhaak 8y ago
How is that different than any other static website generator that started way back with Blosxom and has now grown to a dozens of different generators? Github pages is also really simple to use, unless you have problems with git.
- retor 8y ago
  I couldn't find an easy way to edit textfiles stored on github from my iPhone or iPad. But if you use Dropbox, there are several apps that were made specifically to write posts and content in Markdown. When you tap into the Dropbox ecosystem, you gain a lot in ease of use.
dorian-graph 8y ago
https://getkirby.com/ https://getkirby.com/ is a a good file-based CMS too that might be of interest to people looking at this.
- ArlenBales 8y ago
  The attraction of Blot appears to be that it's not a CMS. It has no GUI, just drag-and-drop into Dropbox synced folders.
randerer 8y ago
It looks like all the blogusername.blot.im blogs get no https, as opposed to the main blot.im site/page.
- dmerfield 8y ago
  You are correct and it will be fixed. The rate limit on LE certificates for subdomains was too low for my usage. Since LE have recently released support for wildcard certs, I will be enabling HTTPS traffic on Blot subdomains as soon as I can. https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-environment-wildcards/55578 https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-envir...
manemobiili 8y ago
I recently got a gemini PDA, and i started to look at blogging on this thing. (basically android phone with physical keyboard) Two biggest contenders were wordpress and blogger. I don't want a cms for my blog so blogger made sense, unfortunately it's tied up to google. Ghost seems compelling, but 20$/month or 5-10$ on other hosting companies is too much, i won't spend hundred(s) every year on my blog. For now at least. There is markdown editors on F-droid, and static site generators are viable. I will definitely look into Blot.
- spockz 8y ago
  Blot is actually only $20/y so 12 times cheaper than ghost. Also be aware that you can get free hosting using github pages, or netlify.
- mxuribe 8y ago
  How have I never heard of this Gemini PA!?! I took a look and it really seems awesome! It's a tad pricey (I'm referring to the model with wifi only at $499 USD)...but admittedly I am a cheapskate, and I'm sure prices will go down with increased adoption, economies of scale, etc. ;-) Nevertheless, it really seems to be an amazing form factor. I could absolutely see this as being my laptop for the road. Thanks for sharing this!
  - fenwick67 8y ago
    Yeah I'm also pretty stoked about this thing, if only it weren't so pricy.
- s09dfhks 8y ago
  You can self host ghost though
  - e12e 8y ago
    From upthread: https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I see a lot of people complaining this doesn't support Git. To me this is an advantage. Source control is essential for managing code but for handling a few text files on a blog it's probably unnecessary overhead. Also most people aren't programmers, there is a large audience who could edit a markdown file but have no idea what Git is. I'm sure I could teach my mum markdown in an hour or so but there is no way she could ever grasp Git.
- kchr 8y ago
  What do you mean by "git support"? Surely you could just store the markdown sources in whatever repo if you need to, and skip that part if you don't. There is no reason to put that feature/requirement in the blog tool, as with any other static site generators.
- nickjj 8y ago
  I stopped using git to track my blog (about 175 posts) because a blog tends to have a lot more than just text files. There's over 300 jpgs just in blog post related images. Then I also have a photo gallery where there's about 500x 1920x1080 jpgs. The .git/ folder ended up taking up gigs upon gigs of space.
  - kilovoltaire 8y ago
    You could .gitignore your images folder (or store it outside of the repo) and still get the benefits of tracking text changes.
  - e12e 8y ago
    > 500x 1920x1080 jpgs. > > The .git/ folder ended up taking up gigs upon gigs of space. Sounds very big for 500 small (IE not 10/20 mega pixel) jpegs? Even at a generous 500k that should be just ~250 mb of that, unless you have on average four or more "versions" of each image? But I'm assuming the 1080p jpegs are "prints" and so doesn't change much?
    - nickjj 8y ago
randerer 8y ago
All the blog subdomains.blot.im seem to get no https; I have no idea how that is attractive. Perhaps something to implement, there. Before people consider to sign up for this.
_nrvs 8y ago
Feels like the spiritual successor to Indexhibit [indexhibit.org], which is great!
c12 8y ago
As an author of my own static site generator, I quite like how this one has progressed. It's good to see some activity in this field :)
rthomas6 8y ago
Don't forget about Netlify coupled with Hugo/Gatsby. It's coupled with Git but it's really really seamless. Uses markdown, free https, built in CDN, large community. Just push to master/whatever and your site gets updated. Also for a blog it's free.
- rojobuffalo 8y ago
  What functionality does Netlify add to a Gatsby project?
  - ratsimihah 8y ago
    Hosting, if I understand the stack correctly.
    - rojobuffalo 8y ago
      Ok. You can also host a Gatsby project using github-pages.
      - ratsimihah 8y ago
        From Netlify homepage: * Deploy to a redundant network of servers with built‑in continuous integration and HTTPS. * Manage user identity, HTML forms, and even AWS Lambda functions with ease. * Use your favorite tools for search, payments, commenting, or content management. I don't think you can do all that using github-pages. Then again I'd need hands-on experience to compare further. Let me try it right now :)
        rojobuffalo 8y ago
        GitHub pages does have HTTPS. I can do HTML forms, search, payments, commenting, and content management without making my project complicated and without Netlify. I was just curious, not trying to argue. For my use case I don't need any of that other stuff from Netlify, but thanks for the details.
- 8y ago
StanAngeloff 8y ago
The _Account and billing_ section is very refreshing, congratulations. It somehow answered every question I knew I'd eventually have. Pricing is predictable, Dropbox permissions are not invasive (no, I wouldn't want to share my family photos with just about any service out there) and the subscription renewals process is fair.
mxuribe 8y ago
This is really great; so simple yet elegant, and quite inexpensive! While I'm all good for my own personal blogging, I can definitely see me recommending this to others - especially the less tech-savvy bloggers. And, yes, strangely enough I get asked more times than one would expect about "Which blogging platform should I use". I usually tell people to pay for the cheapest wordpress.com plan or something similar (so i don't have to do "free tech support" for them). Well, I now have a good alternative for these bloggers. Kudos to the developers!!
japanuspus 8y ago
Started setting something like this up several years ago[1], but never had the time to get it properly off the ground. There are a few existing alternatives including dropsite.com and paperplane.io, but I always end up missing some feature. [1]: https://github.com/Japanuspus/Site-in-a-Dropbox https://github.com/Japanuspus/Site-in-a-Dropbox
Jugurtha 8y ago
Nice. Wrote something similar a couple of years ago: a shop where products and categories are folders and files. https://github.com/jhadjar/boutique https://github.com/jhadjar/boutique No real features. I wanted to set it up not to forget about it and was also curious about Google Datastore.
darkstar999 8y ago
Is there a static blog generator with a UI for non-tech people?
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  Isn't that what movable type is?
  - darkstar999 8y ago
    $500/year...
- kayamon 8y ago
  Uh... that's what the linked post is.
  - darkstar999 8y ago
    No it isn't. By "non tech", I mean not manually fiddling with html and all that.
blotimisatrick 8y ago
The final case is spoken. If there's no https for the subdomainusers.faggotspot.im then there's no deal. The fuckers are trying to https the main page, but won't https your individual blogs, people. Put your money where your banhammer is.
blotimisatrick 8y ago
The faggots are even downvoting serious replies. No https means no service. Who else than these faggots would dovnvote such serious replies. No 20 usd from me.
johnchristopher 8y ago
I used to run something like that at some point. It basically was a Dropbox account for syncing to a Pi, a python script that monitored changes in a folder hosted on that Pi and would recompile a harp.js website that would then be gitted to Heroku. I still have some sticky fingers from all that glue but it was good time.
_bxg1 8y ago
Seems like it would be easier to set up a basic Node or Python server that just renders markdown documents from a given directory, then check in your blog posts as part of your repo and push the whole thing to Heroku whenever you want to update
- ovao 8y ago
  This seems substantially much more complex than "connect your Dropbox account and choose a theme".
- soared 8y ago
  >Node >server >directory >repo >heroku Compared to >dropbox text document >choose a theme
macintux 8y ago
I switched to Blot when Calepin and Scriptogr.am, similar free services where I had my blog hosted, were both folding. It was a welcome change to pay for such a service in hopes it too wouldn't shut down. Regrettably as is always the case with Markdown-driven services there were some migration pains, and even more regrettably I haven't actually done anything with my blog, but I will say that David was great to deal with, gave thoughtful replies that indicated he recognized the value of my suggestions, and seems to take a lot of pride in the service. I think I'm about ready to ditch Facebook after a year's experiment, and I've been inactive on Twitter for quite some time, so maybe it's time to go old-school again.
ArlenBales 8y ago
I was just looking for a simple blog to log my wilderness backpacking trips. This workflow is very convenient for phone-only blogging in the wilderness when Internet is on and off. 1. Write blogs posts offline and save to Dropbox on mobile. 2. When you have Internet, sync Dropbox.
bitcoinisqueen 8y ago
I think they meant to say no visual interface. If something cannot be interfaced with, then it is non existant
nvr219 8y ago
Extremely slick.
ams6110 8y ago
Would be interested if you plan to support Google Drive for the source files at some point?
Goosey 8y ago
The 'what I'm working on' page was a fun show. I feel like you are honest about everything on your plan in public which is great. I laughed when I saw this hidden in the middle: "Increase price for new customers to $30 a year. This will not affect existing customers." Great looking service, I like the use case this enables for blogging from my phone. Does it render videos in the folder? It would be amazing if it could sync with a YouTube account and auto upload videos there too (and embed YouTube in the blog)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

391 points by firloop 8y ago

2fifty3 8y ago

Super reasonable cost, looks easier than dealing with my own Jekyll or something similar. Plan on giving this a spin!

asdsa5325 8y ago
If you use a static site generator like Jekyll, you can host a site for free on github pages. (Blot looks as easy to use as other static site generators)

edhu2017 8y ago

would like to see mathjax support

ryanianian 8y ago
It supports TeX formatting/notation for math. https://blot.im/formatting#math https://blot.im/formatting#math It uses mathjax under the covers.

bordercases 8y ago

Beautiful API.

ryanianian 8y ago

I signed up for this the other day and so far really love it. Write a markdown/text file in Dropbox and within 30 seconds or so it's published as a nicely-rendered blog post. As someone who used Jekyll for years and got tired of running hosting and doing rsyncs etc, this is really nice for personal blogging. The usability of the blot.im site itself is a bit lacking. You get a totally different UI when you're logged in, and the links to documentation on how to format your posts and what the different dropbox folders mean are gone. I had to open an Incognito window to find the documentation (spoiler: https://blot.im/help https://blot.im/help). The service is dead-simple to use and supports a wide variety of posting styles and formats.

dmerfield 8y ago
Glad to hear you like it so far. I’m working on a redesign of the dashboard to bring it in line with the front-facing site. I know it’s not good enough as it is and I promise it’ll be fixed. p.s. I recently added support for git if you’d rather not use Dropbox (https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968 https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968). And as a point of trivia, Blot launched just under four years ago here on HN in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183498
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- robotkdick 8y ago
  Thanks for posting the link to the previous thread. And congratulations! Blot is a marvel in simplicity.
gabcoh 8y ago
If you like Jekyll, GitHub pages has first class support for it. All you have to do is commit a new file for github pages to rebuild your site.
- lloeki 8y ago
  GitLab Pages is only slightly more involved in the setup but the end result is the same, with the added bonus that you can completely customise the pipeline, including not using Jekyll but e.g Hugo (sample[0]) or whatever else you fancy as a generator. [0]: https://gitlab.com/pages/hugo https://gitlab.com/pages/hugo
jacquesm 8y ago
That's how medium started. And look where that got us.
atom_arranger 8y ago
I switched to using Netlify for Jekyll. So much easier. Just push to github and it'll build and update the site. It also handles Let's Encrypt.

michaelmior 8y ago

"no interface" is nice marketing, but of course there still is an interface. It just happens to be different from what we usually think of as an interface, but documents placed in Dropbox is still an interface.

robotkdick 8y ago
It's dead simple, but you're right everything has an interface. Still I love how simple it is.
- michaelmior 8y ago
  Definitely not bashing the simplicity. It's not a product for me, but I can certainly imagine this would be a great solution for many.
- a_d 8y ago
  a simple blogging site — i never found anything more minimal than this. http://adombic.appspot.com/ http://adombic.appspot.com/ I don’t expect anyone to use it, just wanted to show for fun since we are talking about simplicity :)
Angostura 8y ago
No separate interface of its own. You use your existing tools.

Sonnie 8y ago

502, Deathhug.

dmerfield 8y ago
Should be fixed now. One of the servers went down and was struggling to restart under the increased load.

jxy 8y ago

You can actually use http://ix.io for blogging too.

moviuro 8y ago
No formatting though. Just plaintext. Could be a big drawback (even my stupid blog has a short CSS file, so that it doesn't look too ugly: https://try.popho.be/simple.css https://try.popho.be/simple.css)

ValentineC 8y ago

One bonus which isn't obvious on the website: the code's open source [1], and released under the CC0 licence. [1] https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot

nerdponx 8y ago
Doesnt Creative Commons actively discourage the use of their licenses for code? I seem to recall seeing something to that effect on their website.
- icebraining 8y ago
  CC0 is a special case, it's a release into the public domain, plus a fully permissive license for countries where you can't release into the PD.
- sirn 8y ago
  Yes, CC0 has not yet been approved as an open source license by OSI.[1][2] FSF on the other hand, do consider CC0 to be compatible with GPL.[3] [1]: https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero [2]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC... [3]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0
prepend 8y ago
Cool, thanks. This seemed like a good service, but I want to run the daemon myself (and not pay $20). I’ll contribute to the project or figure out some way to get money to the project team if I like it.
- codazoda 8y ago
  $20 per YEAR Just a note for others who see this comment as high up as I did.

petepete 8y ago

Fantastic, so simple and powerful. Great work.

firloop 8y ago

No affiliation but all of my email exchanges with the creator have been surprisingly helpful and pleasant.

blt 8y ago

This is a good idea, could be really popular with semi-technical users.

p1necone 8y ago

This is really cool but it kinda sucks that it's tied to Dropbox - I would like to be able to do something like point it at a git repo URL instead. Off topic: it would be really nice if there was a common open API for file sync/share services like Dropbox.

projectramo 8y ago
My first thought was the same. My second thought was: github and Gitlab both have pages which will do this for you. This is even easier for people who want to do less.
- dmerfield 8y ago
  Blot recently added support for git, I just haven’t updated the homepage to reflect this: https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968 https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    While you are updating things. I think it would be good to re-enable the YouTube controls-bar on the video. I had to drop out of your site and go to YouTube directly, to be able to watch the video on mute with closed captioning.
    - dmerfield 8y ago
      Have fixed this, not sure what I was thinking.
fiatjaf 8y ago
Take a look at my https://sitios.xyz/ https://sitios.xyz/ (the interface is very rough yet, but I'm slowly integrating more stuff and making everything better).
pests 8y ago
dmerfield posted below he recently added support for git. His comment has details and a link.

fiatjaf 8y ago

All the 7 themes could have been written using pure CSS with the https://classless.alhur.es/ https://classless.alhur.es/ standard.

whistlerbrk 8y ago

PSA: You can run Wordpress headlessly, there are libraries in a few languages which consume its API to help you render how you want. You can hate PHP but Wordpress is king for non-technical users.

acangiano 8y ago
There are also plugins that generate a static version of WordPress, so you can run it locally as a site generator and deploy static files anywhere you like. Agreed on WordPress. In fact, I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging, and I will still recommend WordPress despite my audience being highly technical. (Of course, I'll discuss the alternatives as well.)
- reificator 8y ago
  I'm much more likely to continue to update a site in my spare time if it's a static site on a managed service than if I have to keep on top of security updates for a web server and a CMS and a backing database and the operating system(s) underneath it all. It's just too much administration for something I mildly enjoy doing in the first place. But your insistence that Wordpress (possibly as a static gen) is worth it has me interested. Where would you recommend I pick up a DRM-free copy of the first edition?
  - acangiano 8y ago
    I definitely hear your concern and will be upfront on the pros and cons of each platform. The DRM-free first edition is here: https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  > I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging Great news! I read your book in (I think 2012), and found it very useful. I suspect I'll be buying the second edition.

BjoernKW 8y ago

One cannot not communicate. One cannot not design. Dropbox is the interface in this case.

soared 8y ago

Octopress is similar to this for google drive but I don't think its been updated in years - no support for custom domains, themes, etc but the idea is great. http://octopress.org/ http://octopress.org/

loudandskittish 8y ago

I seem to recall Dropbox-powered static blog generators being all the rage a few years back...then they all shut down.

Reedx 8y ago
Right you are. Amusingly their about page lists a graveyard of 'em: https://blot.im/about https://blot.im/about 13 out of 22 are dead.

Endy 8y ago

$20 per year seems steep enough to count as outrageous. Especially when compared to other hosted blog options like WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, Tumblr, etc. Heck, if I get a free ".tk" website, with maybe free 5GB web hosting with WP.org installed and a free 5GB CDN from Cloudinary, I can "self-host" WordPress for free. So am I missing a major value-add over any of the above options that makes the $20 a reasonable cost?

SeriousM 8y ago
This dev created a service that is hosted by himself. There is no "steep" in $20 if you think about server costs and support. Heck, think about how less $20 is, in terms of a whole year! I don't know this guy and I don't need his service but I'm sorry for him that our "every must be cheap or free" dev-culture will make his product less attractive by not making the customer to the product instead.
Angostura 8y ago
> I can "self-host" WordPress for free. If your time is worth nothing
quickthrower2 8y ago
You are not paying for the hosting, but for the convenience.
- Endy 8y ago
  Okay, but then I have to ask - how is this more convenient than Wordpress.com or Tumblr?
  - bg0 8y ago
    It's cleaner, you have version controlled dropbox files, edit seamlessly on your computer using any editor. All the pain points/features are listed on the site.

mortenjorck 8y ago

This looks really nice. Elegantly simple, and very reasonably priced. I could easily see Blot carving out a niche with customers for whom the likes of Squarespace or Wix is total overkill.

omeid2 8y ago

Please add an option to pay with Paypal or Stripe Checkout. I don't think I am the only person who is uncomfortable typing in my credit card details on various website, even if you're using Strip APIs.

dmerfield 8y ago
Understood. It's on the list → https://blot.im/updates https://blot.im/updates (under payment methods)

kreetx 8y ago

The website's design doesn't work well on mobile (just trying to be helpful).

bhaak 8y ago

How is that different than any other static website generator that started way back with Blosxom and has now grown to a dozens of different generators? Github pages is also really simple to use, unless you have problems with git.

retor 8y ago
I couldn't find an easy way to edit textfiles stored on github from my iPhone or iPad. But if you use Dropbox, there are several apps that were made specifically to write posts and content in Markdown. When you tap into the Dropbox ecosystem, you gain a lot in ease of use.

dorian-graph 8y ago

https://getkirby.com/ https://getkirby.com/ is a a good file-based CMS too that might be of interest to people looking at this.

ArlenBales 8y ago
The attraction of Blot appears to be that it's not a CMS. It has no GUI, just drag-and-drop into Dropbox synced folders.

randerer 8y ago

It looks like all the blogusername.blot.im blogs get no https, as opposed to the main blot.im site/page.

dmerfield 8y ago
You are correct and it will be fixed. The rate limit on LE certificates for subdomains was too low for my usage. Since LE have recently released support for wildcard certs, I will be enabling HTTPS traffic on Blot subdomains as soon as I can. https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-environment-wildcards/55578 https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-envir...

manemobiili 8y ago

I recently got a gemini PDA, and i started to look at blogging on this thing. (basically android phone with physical keyboard) Two biggest contenders were wordpress and blogger. I don't want a cms for my blog so blogger made sense, unfortunately it's tied up to google. Ghost seems compelling, but 20$/month or 5-10$ on other hosting companies is too much, i won't spend hundred(s) every year on my blog. For now at least. There is markdown editors on F-droid, and static site generators are viable. I will definitely look into Blot.

spockz 8y ago
Blot is actually only $20/y so 12 times cheaper than ghost. Also be aware that you can get free hosting using github pages, or netlify.
mxuribe 8y ago
How have I never heard of this Gemini PA!?! I took a look and it really seems awesome! It's a tad pricey (I'm referring to the model with wifi only at $499 USD)...but admittedly I am a cheapskate, and I'm sure prices will go down with increased adoption, economies of scale, etc. ;-) Nevertheless, it really seems to be an amazing form factor. I could absolutely see this as being my laptop for the road. Thanks for sharing this!
- fenwick67 8y ago
  Yeah I'm also pretty stoked about this thing, if only it weren't so pricy.
s09dfhks 8y ago
You can self host ghost though
- e12e 8y ago
  From upthread: https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

I see a lot of people complaining this doesn't support Git. To me this is an advantage. Source control is essential for managing code but for handling a few text files on a blog it's probably unnecessary overhead. Also most people aren't programmers, there is a large audience who could edit a markdown file but have no idea what Git is. I'm sure I could teach my mum markdown in an hour or so but there is no way she could ever grasp Git.

kchr 8y ago
What do you mean by "git support"? Surely you could just store the markdown sources in whatever repo if you need to, and skip that part if you don't. There is no reason to put that feature/requirement in the blog tool, as with any other static site generators.
nickjj 8y ago
I stopped using git to track my blog (about 175 posts) because a blog tends to have a lot more than just text files. There's over 300 jpgs just in blog post related images. Then I also have a photo gallery where there's about 500x 1920x1080 jpgs. The .git/ folder ended up taking up gigs upon gigs of space.
- kilovoltaire 8y ago
  You could .gitignore your images folder (or store it outside of the repo) and still get the benefits of tracking text changes.
- e12e 8y ago
  > 500x 1920x1080 jpgs. > > The .git/ folder ended up taking up gigs upon gigs of space. Sounds very big for 500 small (IE not 10/20 mega pixel) jpegs? Even at a generous 500k that should be just ~250 mb of that, unless you have on average four or more "versions" of each image? But I'm assuming the 1080p jpegs are "prints" and so doesn't change much?
  - nickjj 8y ago

randerer 8y ago

All the blog subdomains.blot.im seem to get no https; I have no idea how that is attractive. Perhaps something to implement, there. Before people consider to sign up for this.

_nrvs 8y ago

Feels like the spiritual successor to Indexhibit [indexhibit.org], which is great!

c12 8y ago

As an author of my own static site generator, I quite like how this one has progressed. It's good to see some activity in this field :)

rthomas6 8y ago

Don't forget about Netlify coupled with Hugo/Gatsby. It's coupled with Git but it's really really seamless. Uses markdown, free https, built in CDN, large community. Just push to master/whatever and your site gets updated. Also for a blog it's free.

rojobuffalo 8y ago
What functionality does Netlify add to a Gatsby project?
- ratsimihah 8y ago
  Hosting, if I understand the stack correctly.
  - rojobuffalo 8y ago
    Ok. You can also host a Gatsby project using github-pages.
    - ratsimihah 8y ago
      From Netlify homepage: * Deploy to a redundant network of servers with built‑in continuous integration and HTTPS. * Manage user identity, HTML forms, and even AWS Lambda functions with ease. * Use your favorite tools for search, payments, commenting, or content management. I don't think you can do all that using github-pages. Then again I'd need hands-on experience to compare further. Let me try it right now :)
      - rojobuffalo 8y ago
        GitHub pages does have HTTPS. I can do HTML forms, search, payments, commenting, and content management without making my project complicated and without Netlify. I was just curious, not trying to argue. For my use case I don't need any of that other stuff from Netlify, but thanks for the details.
8y ago

StanAngeloff 8y ago

The _Account and billing_ section is very refreshing, congratulations. It somehow answered every question I knew I'd eventually have. Pricing is predictable, Dropbox permissions are not invasive (no, I wouldn't want to share my family photos with just about any service out there) and the subscription renewals process is fair.

mxuribe 8y ago

This is really great; so simple yet elegant, and quite inexpensive! While I'm all good for my own personal blogging, I can definitely see me recommending this to others - especially the less tech-savvy bloggers. And, yes, strangely enough I get asked more times than one would expect about "Which blogging platform should I use". I usually tell people to pay for the cheapest wordpress.com plan or something similar (so i don't have to do "free tech support" for them). Well, I now have a good alternative for these bloggers. Kudos to the developers!!

japanuspus 8y ago

Started setting something like this up several years ago[1], but never had the time to get it properly off the ground. There are a few existing alternatives including dropsite.com and paperplane.io, but I always end up missing some feature. [1]: https://github.com/Japanuspus/Site-in-a-Dropbox https://github.com/Japanuspus/Site-in-a-Dropbox

Jugurtha 8y ago

Nice. Wrote something similar a couple of years ago: a shop where products and categories are folders and files. https://github.com/jhadjar/boutique https://github.com/jhadjar/boutique No real features. I wanted to set it up not to forget about it and was also curious about Google Datastore.

darkstar999 8y ago

Is there a static blog generator with a UI for non-tech people?

wodenokoto 8y ago
Isn't that what movable type is?
- darkstar999 8y ago
  $500/year...
kayamon 8y ago
Uh... that's what the linked post is.
- darkstar999 8y ago
  No it isn't. By "non tech", I mean not manually fiddling with html and all that.

blotimisatrick 8y ago

The final case is spoken. If there's no https for the subdomainusers.faggotspot.im then there's no deal. The fuckers are trying to https the main page, but won't https your individual blogs, people. Put your money where your banhammer is.

blotimisatrick 8y ago

The faggots are even downvoting serious replies. No https means no service. Who else than these faggots would dovnvote such serious replies. No 20 usd from me.

johnchristopher 8y ago

I used to run something like that at some point. It basically was a Dropbox account for syncing to a Pi, a python script that monitored changes in a folder hosted on that Pi and would recompile a harp.js website that would then be gitted to Heroku. I still have some sticky fingers from all that glue but it was good time.

_bxg1 8y ago

Seems like it would be easier to set up a basic Node or Python server that just renders markdown documents from a given directory, then check in your blog posts as part of your repo and push the whole thing to Heroku whenever you want to update

ovao 8y ago
This seems substantially much more complex than "connect your Dropbox account and choose a theme".
soared 8y ago
>Node >server >directory >repo >heroku Compared to >dropbox text document >choose a theme

macintux 8y ago

I switched to Blot when Calepin and Scriptogr.am, similar free services where I had my blog hosted, were both folding. It was a welcome change to pay for such a service in hopes it too wouldn't shut down. Regrettably as is always the case with Markdown-driven services there were some migration pains, and even more regrettably I haven't actually done anything with my blog, but I will say that David was great to deal with, gave thoughtful replies that indicated he recognized the value of my suggestions, and seems to take a lot of pride in the service. I think I'm about ready to ditch Facebook after a year's experiment, and I've been inactive on Twitter for quite some time, so maybe it's time to go old-school again.

ArlenBales 8y ago

I was just looking for a simple blog to log my wilderness backpacking trips. This workflow is very convenient for phone-only blogging in the wilderness when Internet is on and off. 1. Write blogs posts offline and save to Dropbox on mobile. 2. When you have Internet, sync Dropbox.

bitcoinisqueen 8y ago

I think they meant to say no visual interface. If something cannot be interfaced with, then it is non existant

nvr219 8y ago

Extremely slick.

ams6110 8y ago

Would be interested if you plan to support Google Drive for the source files at some point?

Goosey 8y ago

The 'what I'm working on' page was a fun show. I feel like you are honest about everything on your plan in public which is great. I laughed when I saw this hidden in the middle: "Increase price for new customers to $30 a year. This will not affect existing customers." Great looking service, I like the use case this enables for blogging from my phone. Does it render videos in the folder? It would be amazing if it could sync with a YouTube account and auto upload videos there too (and embed YouTube in the blog)

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