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Hi HN. primo is an IDECMSCLSSG (short for IDE, CMS, Component Library, Static Site Generator) I’ve been working on for a few months. The idea came from wanting
by mmmateo 6y ago
Hi HN. primo is an IDECMSCLSSG (short for IDE, CMS, Component Library, Static Site Generator) I’ve been working on for a few months. The idea came from wanting to host a Notion page at a domain name and not being able to. Once I made the initial version - a basic text editor - the rest of the features just came naturally (except for the SSG, which came from not wanting to deal with hosting).
I’d written off freelance web development a couple years ago after yet another spontaneously-combusting WordPress project, but primo’s enabled me to get back into it and it’s been A+ so far. primo kind of looks like a page builder, but it’s totally the opposite - instead of abstracting away the code it makes it more accessible.
It’s free forever, and I’ll be open-sourcing it soon (built in Svelte - beautiful framework). Ideas & critiques super appreciated.
Cheers
- httgp 6y agoThis looks fantastic. Will the components have to be written in Svelte too? Or would it be possible to bring our own React/Vue components?
- mmmateo 6y agoThanks! And no not at all, just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Although yes, I have it on the roadmap to be able to plop in React/Vue/Svelte components instead.
- o_____________o 6y agoI would love to migrate from headless Wordpress + Gatsby to this when you start supporting React. Wordpress has a new editor I was hopeful for, but it's a nightmare.
- distrill 6y agoI've only used it very briefly, but I thought it was nice to use. What do you dislike about it?
- o_____________o 6y agoThe developer experience and infrastructural decisions are insane. Things may have changed since last year, but WP would throw user-level exceptions if the layout from any react component changed, and the components are expected to output an array of deprecated and current output. Meaning if your React component changes one CSS class, the user sees an unrecoverable error, and your component needs to emit the previous and current markup to satisfy the renderer. There wasn't even a developer mode to disable this. Then the component-level user input is stored as an HTML comment inside the markup. So many other problems, plus all of the existing WP issues with plugin security and a bloated, inelegant managed service. One of my teams implemented everything thinking these were rough edges that would eventually be ironed out, but realized too late that WP is making terrible decisions and is stuck in a 2005~ mindset. Github issues are filled with the poor souls tasked with enterprise implementations meeting Automattic's (presumably overwhelmed) indifference. It's frustrating because to my knowledge there aren't any enterprise grade WYSIWYG CMSes that let you freeform edit/rearrange React in-place – this is or was the closest as far as UX is concerned.
- est31 6y agoThis is really impressive! I think there is a big market for Wordpress replacements.
- shash7 6y agoI hope you keep at it. This is a very ambitious project.
- mmmateo 6y agoThanks a bunch!
- rawoke083600 6y agoLooks amazing ! +1 on Svelte ! My new goto tool and very refreshing :)
- atarian 6y agoI can't swipe forward / back using the touchpad on your site. Looks like this rule that you set on the html element is causing it: overscroll-behavior-x: none;
- odomojuli 6y agoI'm impressed by how thoughtful the design and implementation is. Good work! I look forward to seeing this grow. What's the idea behind calling it Primo?
- tootie 6y agoThis feels like such a ludicrous concept, but also I love it. I've recently fallen back into the world of building static marketing sites and the tooling is now so sophisticated, cheap and undifferentiated. We're solving the same problem over and over in very similar ways. I generally despise all-in-one solutions, but this use case actually makes a lot of sense at this point.
- derefr 6y agoI don't know about ludicrous — this is essentially the same USP you get from Squarespace, Wix, etc., but just without the "and we host the resulting site for you" part. In trade for not doing the hosting, it becomes just a native app you can own, rather than a subscription service. Just need a commodity web host to slap it up on.
- joaomacp 6y ago> Just need a commodity web host to slap it up on. I suggest NearlyFreeSpeech. It has an outdated UI and it's very DIY, but the pricing is very good. They have an option for static sites, with a lower price.
- mmmateo 6y agoI'm not sure I'd say the SSG is the only difference. Squarespace et al target non-technical users directly, so most of the code is abstracted away (which makes anything outside of the rails virtually impossible to edit). primo is first and foremost about enabling developers to build a static site without having to do the Tailwind/PostCSS/etc. setup while also getting a CMS so they can hand it off to a non-technical user.
- ptman 6y agohttp://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/ http://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/ Or Oracle free VM. (I made a comparison of some free stuff in the beginning of this article: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/free-small-matrix-server https://matrix.org/docs/guides/free-small-matrix-server )
- dandare 6y agoI am probably not the target group because have no idea what your project does. IDE like Visual Studio or Eclipse? What language is supported? CMS like WordPress, right? Component Library - you mean UI components? Like Material Design or React components? SSG is the only one that makes sense :)
- mmmateo 6y agoBasically! You could think of it as just being the code-editing part of Visual Studio (but in a browser), an easier WordPress (but less robust, naturally), and a place to put html/css/js components to reuse them elsewhere.
- seddin 6y agoFree, but why do I need to login with GitHub to even try it?
- yobert 6y agoI think they're just using it as a simple login solution so they don't have to use Google or Facebook for now. Since most developers have a GitHub account, it seems reasonable to me. Also it looks pretty heavily integrated with GitHub pages, which would require a GitHub account to work anyways.
- jadbox 6y agoThis looks amazing, and a shining example of Svelte and Tailwind. I'm really looking forward to this being open-sourced- please make it happen soon! I'll be more than willing to pay for a hosted version as long as there's always a way for me to host it myself (having the open-source self-hosting as an option). Cheers mate!
- victoriasun 6y agoI've never used Svelte so would love to know what attracts you to it :)
- aiibe 6y agoSvelte's built-in reactive store is my favorite feature. The output bundle size too.
- mmmateo 6y agoIt just rides the line between simple and powerful incredibly well. It's amazing how much you can do with it out of the box before needing to reach for additional tools. The main pull for me is dev experience, but on top of that, the final product knocks everything else out of the water because it compiles down to vanilla JS.
- ghego1 6y agoThis looks amazing! I'm currently building my CV website has a static website with a homemade static site generator, which is sort of working but not as I wish, and I do not have time to improve it. For various reasons existing static site generators do not fit my use case, including that I like to code it myself for fun. So I will surely investigate how I can use your system. As a general suggestion, if the intended users for your system are also not technical people, I would suggest to give some templates or a library of pre-made components, so that non tech savvy people can build their website with your tool. You could even sell premium components :-)
- P4wl0w 6y agoAwesome idea. I am looking forward to checking it out once it is open sourced. Thank you for sharing!
- dathinab 6y agoLooks rally nice. Easy enough for non tech people to change small thinks (like text). But lets you get "down to business" for all the more complex changes. I mean it's 2020 toady even kids learn how to code and most companies hire some tech savy people anyway to do the general work in setting up a CMS even if they use one which "should" not need it.
- mmmateo 6y agoExactly. One of the ideas with this is that someone with “just” HTML/CSS/JS could make/sell a usable, CMS backed site without having to jump through all the hoops the modern web demands of them, while at the same time not being limited by the rigidity all the page builders seem to have.
- molsongolden 6y agoMateo, have you thought about adding an email signup for people who would like to receive occasional development/feature updates?
- mmmateo 6y agoI hadn't, but there's one up now. Thanks for the suggestion.
- divbzero 6y agoYour terms mention possible “paid products” for Primo. What sort of products do you have in mind? I’m curious to hear how, like WordPress, Primo could be financially sustainable while building a strong open-source ecosystem.
- mmmateo 6y agoWhoops, forgot to take that off from an earlier version that was intended to be paid. But I do have a couple ideas for getting funding without artificially limiting the product - the most immediate being corporate sponsors & enterprise support.
- robertlagrant 6y agoThis is very cool. When you say "CMS", do you have (or look to have) CMSey features such as language translation support and approval workflows?