7 ms·

This is one of the main reasons I tried garnering interest around a blogging app idea I had: If you blog with a third party service, eventually your blog will g

by chubs 6y ago

This is one of the main reasons I tried garnering interest around a blogging app idea I had: If you blog with a third party service, eventually your blog will go away due to an acquihire, company shutdown, merger, or whatever happened in this instance (google forgot to renew a domain?). If you want to write seriously with a multi-decade perspective, you need to host it yourself, and I wanted to make that easy to manage for an average Joe. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck gathering interest! Technical people understand the idea but just roll their own using eg Jekyll; and Non-technical people don't get the idea, or dont seem to care. The idea is here: http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/ http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/ Anyway if anyone has advice i'm all ears :)

onli 6y ago
I wouldn't do this as desktop app. That way you are fighting the existing ecosystem. Instead have a webservice that eats the RSS feed of an existing blog and mirrors it, also keeping track of uploaded images, and then when need be spins up a blog instance on digitalocean. Wouldn't know how to price that, and with RSS often containing just a few items you'd need to think about that when setting up the blog. Though maybe blogspot supports range requests for RSS?
netsharc 6y ago
The other day I followed an HN link and downloaded https://www.zettlr.com/ https://www.zettlr.com/ . It's "basically" a manager of Markdown files, and its syntax highlighting was compatible with the Hugo Markdown syntax. For a minute I wondered if I could take the source code of the editor and make it understand my Hugo-specific shortcodes (I put up a lot of pictures so I have homebrew {{ <gallery> }} and {{ <figure> }} shortcodes), but that's in my ever-extending "To Do Someday" list. The idea would be: it would read the Markdown as I write it, let Hugo render it, and return the HTML to be rendered in the editor window. Looking at your editor, it really looks like Zettlr (I'm guessing they're both Electron apps). I guess you have 2 almost separate problems: the editor and the hosting. On the topic of hosting, I guess if a "blogger" can get his own domain name, the actual infrastructure can be swapped under it (and the data republished from the local machine), as long as the reader can load the blog using the known URL, it's fine.
- chubs 6y ago
  Yes, my app would be a lot like Zettlr but tailored specifically to blogging, with the publishing built-in; it appears to me that Zettlr is more a generic .md editor. FWIW: my app isn't Electron, it'd be native macOS, that's just my skillset. Maybe i should just use Electron so it could run on windows/linux to be honest. Yes, the plan would be for the blogger to get their own domain. Bloggers generally already do that when setting up with Wordpress so i don't think that's a problem.
- fsflyer 6y ago
  Hugo 0.62 added Markdown rendering hooks so you can do custom processing of a standard markdown image. I was able to use this to get rid of my <figure> shortcodes. The render hook generates the figure tag and also uses Hugo image processing to generate multiple image sizes for srcset. This way I'm able to keep the markdown completely standard which makes it easier to move to a new platform in the future.
Ndymium 6y ago
Wouldn't this mean that you just become another blogging service to trust? Even if the users have their own domains, if you close up shop, their blogs will close since you have all the contracts with AWS/whatever. How will you manage the transfer of them to the users? Or is the idea that the tool registers an account to a server provider for the user? So the user has to pay both you (for the tool) and the server provider (for the server). Maybe I have misunderstood the aim? In any case, due to what you mentioned, I think it's a difficult niche, since technical people can set up their own and I'd guess most non-technical people don't really care enough.
- chubs 6y ago
  The idea is that there's no trust required: My app handholds people through the process of setting up on AWS/Azure, then it uploads to their account via their API key. So if i close up shop, they wouldn't even notice (although they might notice a lack of new features after a while). So yes they'd be paying me and the server. However the server fees would be cents a month. I would aim to present this as a strength to the user: you get billed direct by AWS/Azure because you're not at ransom to me - you hold the keys to the kingdom. I suspect you're right though: Technical people will DIY, and nontechnical won't care, and will simply use Wordpress (it's the IBM of blogging: "nobody got fired for buying Wordpress")
- pier25 6y ago
  > Wouldn't this mean that you just become another blogging service to trust? Indeed. At some point the desktop app will need updates too. If the developer stops updating it it will be as good as dead.
  - chubs 6y ago
    You're spot on right, especially with the pace of change in macOS. I was thinking that i could angle this as a good reason to charge for the product: "If you want this app to stick around for the long term, paying will ensure that". Combined with some sort of code escrow perhaps, plus a hugo or jekyll export as an 'offramp', i think it could be presented as reasonably 'safe-enough'.
lifty 6y ago
This is a great idea and a desktop app is the right fit for a product that aims to give sovereignty to the user. The app should be able to generate HTML files and then upload them to one of the supported providers (netlify, private vps, etc), and at the same time it should also support a list of DNS providers so that it can point the user owned domain to the correct hosting provider. That way the user maintains ownership of the domain and can switch hosting providers at the click of a button. This means that you as the app developer would be out of the loop and couldn't easily sell the user out. You would only be there to provide updates, include more providers etc. edit: reading the description of you software better, I think this is what you are going for. The thing you haven't added yet is domain management.
- chubs 6y ago
  Thanks for reading my idea! Yes i think you understand the concept pretty well. I'd like to be 'out of the loop' as much as possible: Write what you like! As for domain management, I think my app could help with that but I suspect that since it's a once-off thing, a couple of tutorial videos for how to do it yourself with amazon or azure would hopefully do the trick.
preommr 6y ago
If the problem is longevity, then they should just be able to easily export the contents to a format that can easily be archived and then turned back into a working blog with another platform. Most blogs are as simple as markdown files, with maybe some complexity in referring to other media files like images, and a key/value map in the form of front matter. That's not very difficult to serialize.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  Regarding longevity. Here is a nice setup that should last well until after you are dead: Write your articles as plain .txt when you don't need images. Or as handwritten html when you do (use relative links and dump the images into a subfolder) You can simply have pre-made templates for this that you copy and paste manually. Create an account at archive.org Upload your writings root folder. As suggested here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23650600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23650600 your writings can live on in a url like https://archive.org/download/test_blog_2020/test/blog/ https://archive.org/download/test_blog_2020/test/blog/ You can even add custom metadata so that it is searchable in some future incarnation of archive.org (doubt they will ever break the existing metadata even if at some decades down the line someone decides to redesign the whole thing) archive.org is becoming such an important "ark" of knowledge that in theory there will be a very high chance a copy is preserved somewhere for decades to come. (barring some large scale digital societal collapse)
- chubs 6y ago
  I was thinking about that issue too! My idea was that my app would have an 'export to Hugo' option so at any time you've got that as an 'escape hatch' or upgrade path, so no risk.
camhart 6y ago
Check out https://posthaven.com/ https://posthaven.com/
- chubs 6y ago
  Thanks for the pointer! Yes, that's the concept that i'm aiming for, except that the user would bring their own hosting for even more chance of longevity (i assume posthaven has a bus-factor of 1 or maybe 2).
- wccrawford 6y ago
  That doesn't sound like his idea. Posthaven says they plan to exist long-term, but they aren't doing it in a way that if they do fail, you don't lose your blog.
  - chubs 6y ago
    Exactly: All your eggs are still in posthaven's basket (and i'm sure they have all the best intentions in the world!).
blocked_again 6y ago
(deleted)
- lifty 6y ago
  No need to be snarky. I think his idea is quite good, even if not 100% unique.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chubs 6y ago
    Lack of uniqueness can be a good thing: It proves there's a market out there for your idea. Thanks for the kind words :)
anonymfus 6y ago
The most famous still maintained offline blog editor is Open Live Writer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer , previously known as Windows Live Writer). It's Windows-only, which is a big improvement on average-joe-managability and multi-decade-perspectivity fronts to your idea of macOS-only app.
MrGilbert 6y ago
This reminds me of the now-obsolete "Windows Live Writer"[1], where you could write everything on your Windows machine and "push" it to Sharepoint, Blogger, LiveWriter, Wordpress and much more. Ultimately, it got an open-source fork called "Open Live Writer"[2]. It sounds like a nice idea - a "Live Writer on steroids". Could be neat. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer
- chubs 6y ago
  Thanks a lot! Yes, Open Live Writer sounds very similar to what I'd be making. To be honest I hadn't heard of it.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    Honestly it doesn't sound like what you're describing. It's an editor and publisher for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, etc. Basically MarsEdit but for Windows. What you're describing seems to be bundling an editor, a static site generator, an S3 syncing service and an S3/Cloudflare onboarding guide.
    - chubs 6y ago
      Thanks, yes you describe my concept quite well. Admittedly i'm not very familiar with OLW so made some assumptions. So perhaps it could be said that if i developed my idea, there's more 'value' in it than OLW in that sense.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  For anyone wanting to take it for a spin, openlivewriter.org seems to be down since at least May, but .com works, and is also maintained by the same people. https://openlivewriter.com/ https://openlivewriter.com/ https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issues/911 https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issues/911
worble 6y ago
I seem to remember someone trying to build a blogging service on top of Matrix. I don't really understand the specifics but I assume since it's decentralised and federated, any other home server could then connect to your home sever and also host it/mirror it?
quickthrower2 6y ago
Have you tried https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/?
- chubs 6y ago
  No i haven't - having just had a brief look at it, it seems to be exactly what i was proposing (except it's not a native app, which is probably neither here nor there for most users).
badsectoracula 6y ago
There used to be several desktop blogging programs at the past, both commercial and free/open source, but they died because apparently putting everything in the browser is sexier or something. Anyway, here is one i found out recently and seems to be able to do the job: https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ And a blog i made with it myself: http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ Having said that, the first thing a friend of mine (who has managed a few blogs professionally) asked when i mentioned it to him was "can you make posts from your mobile?". Of course the answer is "no" since this runs as a desktop application, manages everything locally and just generates HTML files that can optionally upload/sync to your server for you. But apparently every single non-technical client he had wanted to use their phone to write blog posts way more often than their computer. And yes, i know this also explains the "because apparently putting everything in the browser is sexier or something" part i wrote at the top, but, dammit, i do not care about mobiles at all, do not go and kill stuff i (might) like. (though TBH there are several things i dislike about Publii, e.g. the themes are both ugly and too overcomplicated to work with and modify and the program is written in Electron with for real benefit - it doesn't do real WYSIWYG, just a rich text editor almost with the same capabilities as the one you could find even in Visual Basic 4 and it doesn't even preview the site inside it but launches your browser instead, but there isn't really any other alternative that i know of and at the end it seems to work... though i'm itching to go and write my own :-P)
- chubs 6y ago
  Ok first up, i think your blog title is hilarious "Yet Another Dev Blog That I Will Abandon After a While" :) And very excited to see some love for Paint Shop Pro! Ah memories. As for Publii, yes it really does appear to be everything I was thinking of making. Except it's Electron and I was thinking native - which users wouldn't notice likely. Really interesting to hear that people want to post from mobile. I must be in a developers' bubble - i assumed this kind of thing would be done from a desktop! You've really got me thinking there. I guess you could totally do it from mobile. But then you have to fight the app store's distribution/marketing model. Which isn't appealing - at some point you have to ask yourself 'would I just make an easier living as an electrician than do this?'. Again, interesting to hear your shortcomings with Publii. I think the killer feature would be doing it all from mobile. Which is fine I guess, but then how do you get your data to desktop, backups, etc etc. Lots to consider! Thanks again for the food for thought :)
shalmanese 6y ago
How do you ensure your domain name still remains registered after you're dead? Registrars only allow 10 years worth of registration at once and all the solutions I've seen generally rely on you putting details in your will and trusting family members to continue maintaining. In 50 years time, I have much more faith in google.com still resolving than my custom, boutique domain. I wish there was a service where you could just buy like, a $1000 US 100 year T-Bill and use the payments from that to guarantee your domain remains alive/hosted for at least 100 years.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Presumably you could set things up through lawyers, trusts, and so forth. But that's obviously not a casual (or cheap) undertaking.
- chubs 6y ago
  Oh that's not really the problem I'm trying to solve here. Mainly my concern is 'i want to have a blog that spans my entire career' which has been personally difficult due to posterous dying, wordpress upgrades and hacks, etc etc. Static has really stabilised things over the last decade for me.
pier25 6y ago
I'm actually working on one of those third party services :) (see my signature). IMO it makes more sense to have a CMS in the cloud which takes care of backups, etc, and can be accessed from any device. I agree about the risk of the blog going away in the future which is something that simply cannot be avoided if you're relying on someone else to publish your content. Anyway, we're going to offer an easy way to export your data (maybe markdown files or HTML files or something like that). If you want full independence and have the skills then yeah a static site is probably the best option. But even for people with technical skills it's a hassle to setup, design/buy a template, figure out the best hosting, no CMS, etc.
- chubs 6y ago
  Good luck with pluma! I agree CMS in the cloud has strengths such as backups etc. Just in my experience that cloud projects seem to have a half-life of around 5 years :) I was thinking the same as you: Having an export to some format (i was thinking Hugo or Jekyll) to give people that assurance that there's a plan B if things go bad. As for the hassle to setup etc, I totally agree! That's a large part of what my idea would solve. And even with technical skills it's a hassle, i agree - which is why i initially thought posing this at devs would be good. But now i think they tend to DIY these things so perhaps not a great target market.
  - pier25 6y ago
    Thanks! Hopefully it will last longer than 5 years! :)
fluential 6y ago
How about Hugo+cms editor on netlify https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/hugo/ https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/hugo/

by chubs 6y ago

onli 6y ago

I wouldn't do this as desktop app. That way you are fighting the existing ecosystem. Instead have a webservice that eats the RSS feed of an existing blog and mirrors it, also keeping track of uploaded images, and then when need be spins up a blog instance on digitalocean. Wouldn't know how to price that, and with RSS often containing just a few items you'd need to think about that when setting up the blog. Though maybe blogspot supports range requests for RSS?

netsharc 6y ago

The other day I followed an HN link and downloaded https://www.zettlr.com/ https://www.zettlr.com/ . It's "basically" a manager of Markdown files, and its syntax highlighting was compatible with the Hugo Markdown syntax. For a minute I wondered if I could take the source code of the editor and make it understand my Hugo-specific shortcodes (I put up a lot of pictures so I have homebrew {{ <gallery> }} and {{ <figure> }} shortcodes), but that's in my ever-extending "To Do Someday" list. The idea would be: it would read the Markdown as I write it, let Hugo render it, and return the HTML to be rendered in the editor window. Looking at your editor, it really looks like Zettlr (I'm guessing they're both Electron apps). I guess you have 2 almost separate problems: the editor and the hosting. On the topic of hosting, I guess if a "blogger" can get his own domain name, the actual infrastructure can be swapped under it (and the data republished from the local machine), as long as the reader can load the blog using the known URL, it's fine.

chubs 6y ago
Yes, my app would be a lot like Zettlr but tailored specifically to blogging, with the publishing built-in; it appears to me that Zettlr is more a generic .md editor. FWIW: my app isn't Electron, it'd be native macOS, that's just my skillset. Maybe i should just use Electron so it could run on windows/linux to be honest. Yes, the plan would be for the blogger to get their own domain. Bloggers generally already do that when setting up with Wordpress so i don't think that's a problem.
fsflyer 6y ago
Hugo 0.62 added Markdown rendering hooks so you can do custom processing of a standard markdown image. I was able to use this to get rid of my <figure> shortcodes. The render hook generates the figure tag and also uses Hugo image processing to generate multiple image sizes for srcset. This way I'm able to keep the markdown completely standard which makes it easier to move to a new platform in the future.

Ndymium 6y ago

Wouldn't this mean that you just become another blogging service to trust? Even if the users have their own domains, if you close up shop, their blogs will close since you have all the contracts with AWS/whatever. How will you manage the transfer of them to the users? Or is the idea that the tool registers an account to a server provider for the user? So the user has to pay both you (for the tool) and the server provider (for the server). Maybe I have misunderstood the aim? In any case, due to what you mentioned, I think it's a difficult niche, since technical people can set up their own and I'd guess most non-technical people don't really care enough.

chubs 6y ago
The idea is that there's no trust required: My app handholds people through the process of setting up on AWS/Azure, then it uploads to their account via their API key. So if i close up shop, they wouldn't even notice (although they might notice a lack of new features after a while). So yes they'd be paying me and the server. However the server fees would be cents a month. I would aim to present this as a strength to the user: you get billed direct by AWS/Azure because you're not at ransom to me - you hold the keys to the kingdom. I suspect you're right though: Technical people will DIY, and nontechnical won't care, and will simply use Wordpress (it's the IBM of blogging: "nobody got fired for buying Wordpress")
pier25 6y ago
> Wouldn't this mean that you just become another blogging service to trust? Indeed. At some point the desktop app will need updates too. If the developer stops updating it it will be as good as dead.
- chubs 6y ago
  You're spot on right, especially with the pace of change in macOS. I was thinking that i could angle this as a good reason to charge for the product: "If you want this app to stick around for the long term, paying will ensure that". Combined with some sort of code escrow perhaps, plus a hugo or jekyll export as an 'offramp', i think it could be presented as reasonably 'safe-enough'.

lifty 6y ago

This is a great idea and a desktop app is the right fit for a product that aims to give sovereignty to the user. The app should be able to generate HTML files and then upload them to one of the supported providers (netlify, private vps, etc), and at the same time it should also support a list of DNS providers so that it can point the user owned domain to the correct hosting provider. That way the user maintains ownership of the domain and can switch hosting providers at the click of a button. This means that you as the app developer would be out of the loop and couldn't easily sell the user out. You would only be there to provide updates, include more providers etc. edit: reading the description of you software better, I think this is what you are going for. The thing you haven't added yet is domain management.

chubs 6y ago
Thanks for reading my idea! Yes i think you understand the concept pretty well. I'd like to be 'out of the loop' as much as possible: Write what you like! As for domain management, I think my app could help with that but I suspect that since it's a once-off thing, a couple of tutorial videos for how to do it yourself with amazon or azure would hopefully do the trick.

preommr 6y ago

If the problem is longevity, then they should just be able to easily export the contents to a format that can easily be archived and then turned back into a working blog with another platform. Most blogs are as simple as markdown files, with maybe some complexity in referring to other media files like images, and a key/value map in the form of front matter. That's not very difficult to serialize.

glaberficken 6y ago
Regarding longevity. Here is a nice setup that should last well until after you are dead: Write your articles as plain .txt when you don't need images. Or as handwritten html when you do (use relative links and dump the images into a subfolder) You can simply have pre-made templates for this that you copy and paste manually. Create an account at archive.org Upload your writings root folder. As suggested here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23650600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23650600 your writings can live on in a url like https://archive.org/download/test_blog_2020/test/blog/ https://archive.org/download/test_blog_2020/test/blog/ You can even add custom metadata so that it is searchable in some future incarnation of archive.org (doubt they will ever break the existing metadata even if at some decades down the line someone decides to redesign the whole thing) archive.org is becoming such an important "ark" of knowledge that in theory there will be a very high chance a copy is preserved somewhere for decades to come. (barring some large scale digital societal collapse)
chubs 6y ago
I was thinking about that issue too! My idea was that my app would have an 'export to Hugo' option so at any time you've got that as an 'escape hatch' or upgrade path, so no risk.

camhart 6y ago

Check out https://posthaven.com/ https://posthaven.com/

chubs 6y ago
Thanks for the pointer! Yes, that's the concept that i'm aiming for, except that the user would bring their own hosting for even more chance of longevity (i assume posthaven has a bus-factor of 1 or maybe 2).
wccrawford 6y ago
That doesn't sound like his idea. Posthaven says they plan to exist long-term, but they aren't doing it in a way that if they do fail, you don't lose your blog.
- chubs 6y ago
  Exactly: All your eggs are still in posthaven's basket (and i'm sure they have all the best intentions in the world!).

blocked_again 6y ago

(deleted)

lifty 6y ago
No need to be snarky. I think his idea is quite good, even if not 100% unique.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chubs 6y ago
  Lack of uniqueness can be a good thing: It proves there's a market out there for your idea. Thanks for the kind words :)

anonymfus 6y ago

The most famous still maintained offline blog editor is Open Live Writer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer , previously known as Windows Live Writer). It's Windows-only, which is a big improvement on average-joe-managability and multi-decade-perspectivity fronts to your idea of macOS-only app.

MrGilbert 6y ago

This reminds me of the now-obsolete "Windows Live Writer"[1], where you could write everything on your Windows machine and "push" it to Sharepoint, Blogger, LiveWriter, Wordpress and much more. Ultimately, it got an open-source fork called "Open Live Writer"[2]. It sounds like a nice idea - a "Live Writer on steroids". Could be neat. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer

chubs 6y ago
Thanks a lot! Yes, Open Live Writer sounds very similar to what I'd be making. To be honest I hadn't heard of it.
- oefrha 6y ago
  Honestly it doesn't sound like what you're describing. It's an editor and publisher for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, etc. Basically MarsEdit but for Windows. What you're describing seems to be bundling an editor, a static site generator, an S3 syncing service and an S3/Cloudflare onboarding guide.
  - chubs 6y ago
    Thanks, yes you describe my concept quite well. Admittedly i'm not very familiar with OLW so made some assumptions. So perhaps it could be said that if i developed my idea, there's more 'value' in it than OLW in that sense.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
For anyone wanting to take it for a spin, openlivewriter.org seems to be down since at least May, but .com works, and is also maintained by the same people. https://openlivewriter.com/ https://openlivewriter.com/ https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issues/911 https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issues/911

worble 6y ago

I seem to remember someone trying to build a blogging service on top of Matrix. I don't really understand the specifics but I assume since it's decentralised and federated, any other home server could then connect to your home sever and also host it/mirror it?

quickthrower2 6y ago

Have you tried https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/?

chubs 6y ago
No i haven't - having just had a brief look at it, it seems to be exactly what i was proposing (except it's not a native app, which is probably neither here nor there for most users).

badsectoracula 6y ago

There used to be several desktop blogging programs at the past, both commercial and free/open source, but they died because apparently putting everything in the browser is sexier or something. Anyway, here is one i found out recently and seems to be able to do the job: https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ And a blog i made with it myself: http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ Having said that, the first thing a friend of mine (who has managed a few blogs professionally) asked when i mentioned it to him was "can you make posts from your mobile?". Of course the answer is "no" since this runs as a desktop application, manages everything locally and just generates HTML files that can optionally upload/sync to your server for you. But apparently every single non-technical client he had wanted to use their phone to write blog posts way more often than their computer. And yes, i know this also explains the "because apparently putting everything in the browser is sexier or something" part i wrote at the top, but, dammit, i do not care about mobiles at all, do not go and kill stuff i (might) like. (though TBH there are several things i dislike about Publii, e.g. the themes are both ugly and too overcomplicated to work with and modify and the program is written in Electron with for real benefit - it doesn't do real WYSIWYG, just a rich text editor almost with the same capabilities as the one you could find even in Visual Basic 4 and it doesn't even preview the site inside it but launches your browser instead, but there isn't really any other alternative that i know of and at the end it seems to work... though i'm itching to go and write my own :-P)

chubs 6y ago
Ok first up, i think your blog title is hilarious "Yet Another Dev Blog That I Will Abandon After a While" :) And very excited to see some love for Paint Shop Pro! Ah memories. As for Publii, yes it really does appear to be everything I was thinking of making. Except it's Electron and I was thinking native - which users wouldn't notice likely. Really interesting to hear that people want to post from mobile. I must be in a developers' bubble - i assumed this kind of thing would be done from a desktop! You've really got me thinking there. I guess you could totally do it from mobile. But then you have to fight the app store's distribution/marketing model. Which isn't appealing - at some point you have to ask yourself 'would I just make an easier living as an electrician than do this?'. Again, interesting to hear your shortcomings with Publii. I think the killer feature would be doing it all from mobile. Which is fine I guess, but then how do you get your data to desktop, backups, etc etc. Lots to consider! Thanks again for the food for thought :)

shalmanese 6y ago

How do you ensure your domain name still remains registered after you're dead? Registrars only allow 10 years worth of registration at once and all the solutions I've seen generally rely on you putting details in your will and trusting family members to continue maintaining. In 50 years time, I have much more faith in google.com still resolving than my custom, boutique domain. I wish there was a service where you could just buy like, a $1000 US 100 year T-Bill and use the payments from that to guarantee your domain remains alive/hosted for at least 100 years.

ghaff 6y ago
Presumably you could set things up through lawyers, trusts, and so forth. But that's obviously not a casual (or cheap) undertaking.
chubs 6y ago
Oh that's not really the problem I'm trying to solve here. Mainly my concern is 'i want to have a blog that spans my entire career' which has been personally difficult due to posterous dying, wordpress upgrades and hacks, etc etc. Static has really stabilised things over the last decade for me.

pier25 6y ago

I'm actually working on one of those third party services :) (see my signature). IMO it makes more sense to have a CMS in the cloud which takes care of backups, etc, and can be accessed from any device. I agree about the risk of the blog going away in the future which is something that simply cannot be avoided if you're relying on someone else to publish your content. Anyway, we're going to offer an easy way to export your data (maybe markdown files or HTML files or something like that). If you want full independence and have the skills then yeah a static site is probably the best option. But even for people with technical skills it's a hassle to setup, design/buy a template, figure out the best hosting, no CMS, etc.

chubs 6y ago
Good luck with pluma! I agree CMS in the cloud has strengths such as backups etc. Just in my experience that cloud projects seem to have a half-life of around 5 years :) I was thinking the same as you: Having an export to some format (i was thinking Hugo or Jekyll) to give people that assurance that there's a plan B if things go bad. As for the hassle to setup etc, I totally agree! That's a large part of what my idea would solve. And even with technical skills it's a hassle, i agree - which is why i initially thought posing this at devs would be good. But now i think they tend to DIY these things so perhaps not a great target market.
- pier25 6y ago
  Thanks! Hopefully it will last longer than 5 years! :)

fluential 6y ago

How about Hugo+cms editor on netlify https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/hugo/ https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/hugo/