8 ms·

This isn't self-hosted? I'm interested in a self-hosted solution that uses local markdown files and directories to manage content.

PKop 8y ago
But they're trying to run a business, so why ask the question as if it's surprising?
- egeozcan 8y ago
  Why would running a business prevent them from offering a self-hosted solution? Look at Confluence, if you need examples.
  - geekamongus 8y ago
    Or MS Office :-B
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Or every software product before about 2005.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  Business is not synonymous with 'subscription model.' It's good for people to express their desire for on-prem, one-time payment products. Maybe the market can find a middle rather than the utter domination of subscription services.
- Spivak 8y ago
  It's surprising that I (for personal use) and my company (commercial use) would be willing to pay good money for the ability to run this app on-prem? Personal data notwithstanding we have data we put in our company wiki that is simply not allowed to be hosted on cloud services without lots of red tape and compliance certifications. Offering a on-prem option, at least for us, pushes all that responsibility onto our ops team, and Notion gets paid about the same but without the hosting costs.
  - kjksf 8y ago
    The problem is that what you consider "good money" is probably not even close to making such a product a viable business. Their personal plan is $4/month. Maybe one in a few hundred people (let's say 500 for easy math) would want self-hosted version. Are you willing to pay $2000/month for a note-taking application? I doubt it. Not to mention the support burden of trying to figure out why something doesn't work on your self-hosted installation. That economic reality is why on-prem, self-hosted software is almost exclusively a very expensive, enterprise software. Companies can justify paying a few thousand a year for installation and a salary of an in-house employee to manage and maintain it. Individuals can't.
    - Spivak 8y ago
      I'm not sure I understand your math. The support burden is very real but why would the pricing be anything other than $premium/user/month with tiers based on support requirements? Self-hosting nerds like myself would be able to get by on a no-support 'community edition' for like $10-15/mo.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      But that’s fine. My company can easily afford a few tens of thousands per month for the on-prem version. If the on-prem version does not exist, I’ll never even try to convince them to switch, since we aren’t going to store anything sensitive on someone elses infrastructure. So we stick with Confluence. Which everyone hates, but is still the best solution around.
sephoric 8y ago
This is one thing I've wanted. A local app that lets me store all my data with markdown syntax, syntax highlighting, in local files and directories, specifically for macOS although a cross platform app would be fine. One that doesn't require an account or the internet at all for it to work. I've wanted this kind of app for many years (and wouldn't be opposed to making it if no existing solution is all that great at it).
- acemarke 8y ago
  Perhaps Boostnote? https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/ Been using it for a work journal for a while, and it's pretty reasonable. I used to use RedNotebook before that, but I finally got fed up with the lack of Markdown syntax.
  - techntoke 8y ago
    Bootsnote and Joplin works great for notes, but Joplin was less than ideal last time I checked. Hugo is really the tool I think will get me closest to what I'm looking for.
    - trishmapow2 8y ago
      Could you expand on why it's less than ideal? I'm considering moving, so far it looks good.
      - techntoke 8y ago
        Because the way it backs up your files isn't symbolic with the file system. The Hugo template I'm working on does this for you. Their are some minor annoyances, but it is the most powerful tool that I know of to get setup quickly. Wish there was some more standardization around Templates though, and the ability to do custom output templates for section lists that create paginated sections of content based on grouping, custom parameters and more. Best thing is it is all managed in a logical folder (section) and file (page) hierarchy and so far I've just about got a infinitely nested template setup with paginated sections and pages throughout, with the ability to add custom paginated sections using specific layouts for custom sections. It's a bit less than ideal, overall. I would like to see you be able to assign a custom output format, so for each index and section kinds it would be nice to automatically create paginated sections that you want for specific layouts. I've tried this and it only sort of works, but expects them to be the pages as your lists.html or index.html, and can't paginate a path. Also, built in client-side search. I'm working on Mermaid.js, Chart.js and Reveal.js short-code integration next.
dvtrn 8y ago
Same, I tinkered around a bit and so far really like the semi-free form nature of how this looks and feels, plus the dirt simple, out of your way/distraction free interface is something that could easily line up with how I scribble down notes in my pocket journal, but am averse to signing up to another account somewhere for my obsessive checklisting and note-taking. I'd gladly pay for a desktop application of this where I kept all of my notes and todos with local persistence that I could backup, migrate and move (similar to something like Notational Velocity), I like this, but I guess so far OneNote remains my personal champ in this regard-even though I have to tie it to OneDrive across my pc and surface. Edit: Although feverishly refreshing the thread and looking at all the praise...maybe I'll give it a more thorough shot for a couple of weeks.
bnt 8y ago
(disclaimer: I'm building something similar) Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself. This clearly shows you have no understanding of the product at hand. Notion is so incredibly powerful that Markdown doesn't even scratch the surface here.
- feanaro 8y ago
  > Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself. Why not? Is there something wrong with wanting a local, self-hosted tool? Or wanting to pay for it instead of building it yourself?
  - OJFord 8y ago
    Maybe GP meant it as a call to arms? We're all here asking each other for something, but apparently none of us are building it.
- geekamongus 8y ago
  Many people care about things such as "what is this company doing with the data I store with them?" And many people don't have the time or skill to "just build it yourself," so when something awesome like this comes along that looks really appealing, you get people asking for self-hosted options.
- 13415 8y ago
  Maybe what he meant is that he wants all of the contents and databases to reside on his machine unless an item is explicitly shared with someone else. For some people like me that's a basic condition to even consider a tool.
  - techntoke 8y ago
    Exactly... I've started building something using Hugo that does all this. That way you can create a calendar section, and then use front-matter to define the calendar entries in that section. It even creates an ICS for each item and a calendar for the entire section.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Check out Fossil-scm.org which supports Markdown, Fossil's variant of Markdown and plain text.
irunbackwards 8y ago
https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable
zmmmmm 8y ago
what about a self-hosted gitlab instance? I can see it would fall short on a few elements but it has a great API that can be integrated with.
sjy 8y ago
I'm pretty happy with Gollum (https://github.com/gollum/gollum/wiki https://github.com/gollum/gollum/wiki) for this. Your data is just a Git repository containing a hierarchy of files. You run Gollum to fire up a local web server, which gives you a wiki interface to view and edit any Markdown files in the hierarchy. You can use a local Markdown editor if you prefer, as long as you commit your changes. You can choose whether to run Gollum all the time and expose the server to others, or just launch it locally when you want to browse your own repository. And you can use Git to create, push and pull branches. Gollum also seems to have powerful customisation features like macros and YAML front matter, but I have yet to make use of them. For now, Gollum suits me as a simple, free alternative to Confluence. Notion is obviously a far more powerful product.

PKop 8y ago

But they're trying to run a business, so why ask the question as if it's surprising?

egeozcan 8y ago
Why would running a business prevent them from offering a self-hosted solution? Look at Confluence, if you need examples.
- geekamongus 8y ago
  Or MS Office :-B
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Or every software product before about 2005.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
Business is not synonymous with 'subscription model.' It's good for people to express their desire for on-prem, one-time payment products. Maybe the market can find a middle rather than the utter domination of subscription services.
Spivak 8y ago
It's surprising that I (for personal use) and my company (commercial use) would be willing to pay good money for the ability to run this app on-prem? Personal data notwithstanding we have data we put in our company wiki that is simply not allowed to be hosted on cloud services without lots of red tape and compliance certifications. Offering a on-prem option, at least for us, pushes all that responsibility onto our ops team, and Notion gets paid about the same but without the hosting costs.
- kjksf 8y ago
  The problem is that what you consider "good money" is probably not even close to making such a product a viable business. Their personal plan is $4/month. Maybe one in a few hundred people (let's say 500 for easy math) would want self-hosted version. Are you willing to pay $2000/month for a note-taking application? I doubt it. Not to mention the support burden of trying to figure out why something doesn't work on your self-hosted installation. That economic reality is why on-prem, self-hosted software is almost exclusively a very expensive, enterprise software. Companies can justify paying a few thousand a year for installation and a salary of an in-house employee to manage and maintain it. Individuals can't.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your math. The support burden is very real but why would the pricing be anything other than $premium/user/month with tiers based on support requirements? Self-hosting nerds like myself would be able to get by on a no-support 'community edition' for like $10-15/mo.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    But that’s fine. My company can easily afford a few tens of thousands per month for the on-prem version. If the on-prem version does not exist, I’ll never even try to convince them to switch, since we aren’t going to store anything sensitive on someone elses infrastructure. So we stick with Confluence. Which everyone hates, but is still the best solution around.

sephoric 8y ago

This is one thing I've wanted. A local app that lets me store all my data with markdown syntax, syntax highlighting, in local files and directories, specifically for macOS although a cross platform app would be fine. One that doesn't require an account or the internet at all for it to work. I've wanted this kind of app for many years (and wouldn't be opposed to making it if no existing solution is all that great at it).

acemarke 8y ago
Perhaps Boostnote? https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/ Been using it for a work journal for a while, and it's pretty reasonable. I used to use RedNotebook before that, but I finally got fed up with the lack of Markdown syntax.
- techntoke 8y ago
  Bootsnote and Joplin works great for notes, but Joplin was less than ideal last time I checked. Hugo is really the tool I think will get me closest to what I'm looking for.
  - trishmapow2 8y ago
    Could you expand on why it's less than ideal? I'm considering moving, so far it looks good.
    - techntoke 8y ago
      Because the way it backs up your files isn't symbolic with the file system. The Hugo template I'm working on does this for you. Their are some minor annoyances, but it is the most powerful tool that I know of to get setup quickly. Wish there was some more standardization around Templates though, and the ability to do custom output templates for section lists that create paginated sections of content based on grouping, custom parameters and more. Best thing is it is all managed in a logical folder (section) and file (page) hierarchy and so far I've just about got a infinitely nested template setup with paginated sections and pages throughout, with the ability to add custom paginated sections using specific layouts for custom sections. It's a bit less than ideal, overall. I would like to see you be able to assign a custom output format, so for each index and section kinds it would be nice to automatically create paginated sections that you want for specific layouts. I've tried this and it only sort of works, but expects them to be the pages as your lists.html or index.html, and can't paginate a path. Also, built in client-side search. I'm working on Mermaid.js, Chart.js and Reveal.js short-code integration next.

dvtrn 8y ago

Same, I tinkered around a bit and so far really like the semi-free form nature of how this looks and feels, plus the dirt simple, out of your way/distraction free interface is something that could easily line up with how I scribble down notes in my pocket journal, but am averse to signing up to another account somewhere for my obsessive checklisting and note-taking. I'd gladly pay for a desktop application of this where I kept all of my notes and todos with local persistence that I could backup, migrate and move (similar to something like Notational Velocity), I like this, but I guess so far OneNote remains my personal champ in this regard-even though I have to tie it to OneDrive across my pc and surface. Edit: Although feverishly refreshing the thread and looking at all the praise...maybe I'll give it a more thorough shot for a couple of weeks.

bnt 8y ago

(disclaimer: I'm building something similar) Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself. This clearly shows you have no understanding of the product at hand. Notion is so incredibly powerful that Markdown doesn't even scratch the surface here.

feanaro 8y ago
> Why is it every time something like Notion is mentioned, there is always someone who wants "local, self-hosted, Markdown"? Just build it yourself. Why not? Is there something wrong with wanting a local, self-hosted tool? Or wanting to pay for it instead of building it yourself?
- OJFord 8y ago
  Maybe GP meant it as a call to arms? We're all here asking each other for something, but apparently none of us are building it.
geekamongus 8y ago
Many people care about things such as "what is this company doing with the data I store with them?" And many people don't have the time or skill to "just build it yourself," so when something awesome like this comes along that looks really appealing, you get people asking for self-hosted options.
13415 8y ago
Maybe what he meant is that he wants all of the contents and databases to reside on his machine unless an item is explicitly shared with someone else. For some people like me that's a basic condition to even consider a tool.
- techntoke 8y ago
  Exactly... I've started building something using Hugo that does all this. That way you can create a calendar section, and then use front-matter to define the calendar entries in that section. It even creates an ICS for each item and a calendar for the entire section.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Check out Fossil-scm.org which supports Markdown, Fossil's variant of Markdown and plain text.

irunbackwards 8y ago

https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable

zmmmmm 8y ago

what about a self-hosted gitlab instance? I can see it would fall short on a few elements but it has a great API that can be integrated with.

sjy 8y ago

I'm pretty happy with Gollum (https://github.com/gollum/gollum/wiki https://github.com/gollum/gollum/wiki) for this. Your data is just a Git repository containing a hierarchy of files. You run Gollum to fire up a local web server, which gives you a wiki interface to view and edit any Markdown files in the hierarchy. You can use a local Markdown editor if you prefer, as long as you commit your changes. You can choose whether to run Gollum all the time and expose the server to others, or just launch it locally when you want to browse your own repository. And you can use Git to create, push and pull branches. Gollum also seems to have powerful customisation features like macros and YAML front matter, but I have yet to make use of them. For now, Gollum suits me as a simple, free alternative to Confluence. Notion is obviously a far more powerful product.