15 ms·

Dropbox is my publish button

90 points by siglesias 15y ago

hnsmurf 15y ago
I get a blank page when I click that link, so maybe a better publish button is in order.
- jerrya 15y ago
  I get a blank page when I use opera, a blog post when I use chrome, firefox, safari, and ie. Is a better browser in order!?
  - joehewitt 15y ago
    The server was down initially until I upgraded my EC2 instance from micro to small. Now it's running, but yeah, I didn't test in Opera so I'm not surprised.
    - jerrya 15y ago
      Opera is better than Chrome on one and only one point: Opera will load multiple pages in multiple tabs swiftly, while Chrome gets bogged down in some known and unfixed race condition. I find that reading news aggregator content like Google Reader or Hacker News is much easier and faster in Opera than in Chrome. Apart from that, Opera seems to have many bugs where pages that other browsers load just fine, load incorrectly. But yeah, even now, Opera won't display your site.
      - FrankBooth 15y ago
        Race condition?
        jerrya 15y ago
        Well, I can't find the right report now, but yes, if you google thinks like chrome slow multiple tabs, or chrome freezes multiple tabs, you'll find lots of reports that chrome is almost unusable when opening multiple tabs at the same time (like clicking on a series of HN links). About a month ago, I was researching this, and I found then, (but cannot find now), some threads that said this was a long outstanding problem created by some race condition. Another said it was caused by too much priority given to processing the Chrome spinner in each tab. I don't know what the case really is. I do know that Opera does a much better job of opening multiple tabs at the same time as Chrome, so I use Opera when working with feed readers and the like. All else, I default to Chrome.
    - lurker19 15y ago
      EC2 Micro... Was your blog hosting free up until the moment HN showed up?
jinushaun 15y ago
Snap! Never thought to install Dropbox on my web server! I already have a folder in Dropbox symlinked to my main local web directory. There must be some big gotcha that I'm missing...
- lurker19 15y ago
  Security?
zerostar07 15y ago
An odd thing about all these technologies is that they are severely dumbed down versions of unix software that exists for decades. How is it "cooler" to write markdown instead of troff? "Dropbox" instead of <strike>nfs</strike> rsync? Text files instead of a database? Node.js instead of "insert generic server here"? Maybe people consider that 'hip', but I don't see how any of these 'trends' have any viability for more than, say, 12 months[1]? [1]: http://fashion.about.com/od/latesttrends/a/trendover.htm http://fashion.about.com/od/latesttrends/a/trendover.htm
- sneak 15y ago
  You had me with troff, but then lost me with Dropbox vs NFS. rsync or unison would have been more appropriate.
  - zerostar07 15y ago
    I was thinking "rsync -auvz ftw", but the crontab addition would make the sentence too long
- msbarnett 15y ago
  I agree with where you're coming from, and I'd certainly rather use, say, rsync to move content to a server than Dropbox (which, given their security track-record, is just asking for trouble), but troff doesn't really solve the "perfectly readable formatted plain text even before processing" niche that Markdown does. Markdown has also been around since 2004, so it's outlived the 12 month "just a trend" horizon by quite a bit.
  - zerostar07 15y ago
    But isn't it by definition impossible to expect that plaintext can replace a markup? (I just wanted to use a strikethrough; can markdown do that?). That's just a niche for developers. Also i believe markdown just started its hype cycle: http://www.google.com/trends?q=markdown http://www.google.com/trends?q=markdown
tyler_ball 15y ago
So that means you're working with an unsaved, untitled file until you're completely satisfied with the post? That doesn't seem very safe. Unless you're saving your drafts in another location and copying them into your "site", but if so, how is that any harder than just "git commit -a"?
- YooLi 15y ago
  "Nerve uses Markdown's level-one header to demarcate the posts. It then looks for a bracketed timestamp in the header to distinguish posts that are public from ones that are still drafts. A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published."
Titanous 15y ago
Git works for publishing content too. No dependencies on external services, and it's very easy to use over SSH.
- joehewitt 15y ago
  I could never have gotten my non-technical girlfriend to use this system if she had to go to a command line and type "git commit" and "git push" for ever new post. She's become quite prolific with it since there are no tools she has to use to publish, other than a text editor.
  - tedsuo 15y ago
    Obviously this is working for you, but what about an icon that triggers a git shell script? Clicky clicky?
sneak 15y ago
FFS, it's like you whippersnappers have never heard of rsync or makefiles. Dropbox requires the mouse, and therefore means that you should get off my lawn. Seriously though, a Makefile in your web directory with a default target that rsyncs your content up to your webserver via ssh solves this problem much more elegantly, without relying on a third party service. Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency. PS: Put your remote username and remote port (if custom) for a given host in your ~/.ssh/config file, along with any necessary 'ProxyCommand's to allow direct "rsync ./ $hostname:public_html/" or such in your makefile.
- sthulbourn 15y ago
  I wrote that exact script earlier, except I used Rake.
  - sneak 15y ago
    Why are there no pirates in asia? They're all already too busy frying the pranes.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency. And compile markdown files to static HTML to be served directly on the target machine.
- jerrya 15y ago
  Using dropbox is problematic for security reasons, but Joe's solution offers a benefit (over rsync, etc.) he doesn't mention in his post, which is that it places his blog source in the cloud as well, and makes it amenable to editing from virtually any desktop/laptop/android/iphone/ipad out there. I suspect it's easier to go to a new client and set up dropbox on it and link it in, than it is to set up rsync and any necessary keys or firewall holes or if you are using windows, the cygwin system to support rsync. There's a lot to be said about simplicity and ubiquity, especially if it's to encourage making a blog post, and not discourage it. That said, using dropbox for this is terribly problematic in terms of security.
joehewitt 15y ago
Perhaps I didn't stress enough in the blog that this system was designed with non-technical users in mind. My girlfriend uses it on her blog and she is savvy enough to understand Markdown, but if I asked her to run a command-line script every time she wanted to publish something it would be a non-starter.
- eric-hu 15y ago
  This could actually be a pretty neat feature to install on a server for clients so that they can change/add text content on the server without having to contact a dev (and without having command line access). Once set up, it could be as simple as sharing folders with them.
- _delirium 15y ago
  I've set that kind of stuff up before by just having a .bat file with an icon on the desktop to run whatever script is needed. No need to actually type into a command line.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Blog systems for non-technical users: Wordpress.com, Blogger.com. I'm not trying to be flippant Joe, but I'm not sure what demographic this really serves. Someone who's technical enough to understand markdown and dropbox but not technical enough to understand running a script (which can be done in GUI). I guess that's a sliver of a demographic, but what reason does that person have for wanting to do something like this (what do they gain IN THEIR EYES, not in your eyes). This just feels to me like "popular webservice of 2011" + "popular markup syntax of 2011" = "a trendy blog platform that will be a pain in the ass in 5 years when the new hotness markup language is a must-use." Things that don't go old: HTML. Exportable database-driven blog systems. Pick one.
- _frog 15y ago
  Out of curiosity, are you using this for Up On a Hill now?
bmelton 15y ago
No offense to Joe, cause I LIKE the effort, I suppose, but it seems like a really long way around to get to where you were headed. As has been listed, rsync / git / NFS shares etc would have been a really easy way to get your objectives met UNTIL I read your response that this was for your girlfriend, and asking her to do a command line would be hard. Then I read further and saw this: A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published." That part seems more complicated to me than just hitting 'publish' on a Wordpress page, but so as to keep from sounding overly negative (cause really, kudos for doing what works) here are my tips to make it even easier. 1) Set up cron to restart the dropbox service every few hours. That should be a no-brainer, and would at least save you having to explain how every now and again you have to SSH into your server to fix your 'super easy' solution. 2) From an end-user perspective, I'm thinking rip off the old email-consumption strategy. Write the code to just check a POP server every couple of hours for unread messages. If there's a message, check to see if it's from your girlfriend's email address (optional). If it's from her, then publish it. Markdown syntax would still apply, and you've now relegated blog posting to something as easy as just 'sending an email'.
- dirtyaura 15y ago
  Email won't do, you want to e.g fix typos after publishing. I also think that there's something powerful in "all posts in one file" strategy. You might revise drafts more often, read older posts again to expand on them etc. I'm going to try that
  - Terretta 15y ago
    So on the server, write the emails to a single file in Dropbox. Like .mbox with markdown level 1 instead of headers. Default input by email, revisions or alternate new via dropbox.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Simple: the system/blog replies with a confirmation of reception that includes the post text. Just hit reply, edit it and send.
alexatkeplar 15y ago
"It's Apache-licensed and hosted on Github, but I'm not recommending that anyone other than me use it at this time. You can learn from it, though." Wow, patronise much?
- Terretta 15y ago
  Author did write world's most popular iOS app. Could be something in there to learn from.
  - alexatkeplar 15y ago
    Meh, it's just standard JavaScript (not even CoffeeScript!) to build Yet Another Blogging Platform. A well-loved (467 watches, 49 forks) node.js blogging platform already exists, authored by @creationix who is actually _employed_ to build nodey things for WebOS: https://github.com/creationix/wheat https://github.com/creationix/wheat So I would recommend reading the code of that project first, rather than me-too code from someone who thinks that deploying via DropBox is cool.
jot 15y ago
http://droppages.com http://droppages.com lets you do this with very little set up. I've been very happy using it on a simple static site that I have less technical people collaborating with me on.
sucuri2 15y ago
"Internal Server Error". Cache anyone?
harisenbon 15y ago
Very nice looking. I know that Marco Arment runs his blog off of his PHP version of the same idea, dubbed "SecondCrack" http://www.marco.org/secondcrack http://www.marco.org/secondcrack I've also been looking at a simple blog updater that can update from anywhere (especially my phone or email), so I'll definitely check it out.
8ig8 15y ago
> My previous blog used Markdown also, but I had to FTP the files to my former Dreamhost server. I used ExpanDrive, which made the FTP process relatively painless, but FTP is still flaky. Come on. Really? How much transfer are we talking about to publish a blog article? And how often are we publishing. Maybe it's not FTP, but Dreamhost? The Dropbox-based system is a neat way of doing it, but blaming FTP seems to be false justification for the effort. If you want to hack, then hack. You don't need a reason to.
timjahn 15y ago
I can't understand why anybody would want to go through all this trouble when you can use something as simple as WordPress and post with ease. Then again, a lot of people can't understand why I create dancing Christmas lights every year, heh.
- jeremyswank 15y ago
  there's nothing worse, in my opinion, than writing a blog post in a wysiwyg web form when you know how to type and all you want to to is just type up a post. c'mon, it's 2011 and editing text in web forms is an execrable experience, one of the least pleasant things to do in a browser. markdown is a snap to learn and it is such a relief to be writing in your favorite text editor, without the copy-paste rigamole.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    I'll bet there's a plugin to use markdown as the default in WP?
  - timjahn 15y ago
    Maybe I'm the exception but I never have trouble writing posts in WordPress.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Who cares? It'sAllText* anyway... * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/
somecola 15y ago
Theoretically speaking, one could use Dropbox to publish to, well, anything? I'm interested in the possibilities. Nice article.
rian 15y ago
sweet this is what i use dropbox for!
consonaut 15y ago
Changing horizontal window size breaks the page (no horizontal scroll bar appears and middle mouse scrolling to the right is open ended) in chrome. With IE no scroll bar appears and I can't scroll to the right at all. This has nothing to do with his publishing technique of course, I just found it strange since he mentions adapting to screen size. Maybe the page should adapt to window size.
Zash 15y ago
Even I have made something like that! Except it's not a blog, and pretty featureless. But it can be combined with sshfs or whatever that lets you poke with the source text files. https://github.com/Zash/WikiDav https://github.com/Zash/WikiDav
nixarn 15y ago
I think this is a brilliant solution. Seems like a lot of guys here are too geeky to see what is considered easy & frictionless by the masses.

90 points by siglesias 15y ago

hnsmurf 15y ago

I get a blank page when I click that link, so maybe a better publish button is in order.

jerrya 15y ago
I get a blank page when I use opera, a blog post when I use chrome, firefox, safari, and ie. Is a better browser in order!?
- joehewitt 15y ago
  The server was down initially until I upgraded my EC2 instance from micro to small. Now it's running, but yeah, I didn't test in Opera so I'm not surprised.
  - jerrya 15y ago
    Opera is better than Chrome on one and only one point: Opera will load multiple pages in multiple tabs swiftly, while Chrome gets bogged down in some known and unfixed race condition. I find that reading news aggregator content like Google Reader or Hacker News is much easier and faster in Opera than in Chrome. Apart from that, Opera seems to have many bugs where pages that other browsers load just fine, load incorrectly. But yeah, even now, Opera won't display your site.
    - FrankBooth 15y ago
      Race condition?
      - jerrya 15y ago
        Well, I can't find the right report now, but yes, if you google thinks like chrome slow multiple tabs, or chrome freezes multiple tabs, you'll find lots of reports that chrome is almost unusable when opening multiple tabs at the same time (like clicking on a series of HN links). About a month ago, I was researching this, and I found then, (but cannot find now), some threads that said this was a long outstanding problem created by some race condition. Another said it was caused by too much priority given to processing the Chrome spinner in each tab. I don't know what the case really is. I do know that Opera does a much better job of opening multiple tabs at the same time as Chrome, so I use Opera when working with feed readers and the like. All else, I default to Chrome.
  - lurker19 15y ago
    EC2 Micro... Was your blog hosting free up until the moment HN showed up?

jinushaun 15y ago

Snap! Never thought to install Dropbox on my web server! I already have a folder in Dropbox symlinked to my main local web directory. There must be some big gotcha that I'm missing...

lurker19 15y ago
Security?

zerostar07 15y ago

An odd thing about all these technologies is that they are severely dumbed down versions of unix software that exists for decades. How is it "cooler" to write markdown instead of troff? "Dropbox" instead of <strike>nfs</strike> rsync? Text files instead of a database? Node.js instead of "insert generic server here"? Maybe people consider that 'hip', but I don't see how any of these 'trends' have any viability for more than, say, 12 months[1]? [1]: http://fashion.about.com/od/latesttrends/a/trendover.htm http://fashion.about.com/od/latesttrends/a/trendover.htm

sneak 15y ago
You had me with troff, but then lost me with Dropbox vs NFS. rsync or unison would have been more appropriate.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  I was thinking "rsync -auvz ftw", but the crontab addition would make the sentence too long
msbarnett 15y ago
I agree with where you're coming from, and I'd certainly rather use, say, rsync to move content to a server than Dropbox (which, given their security track-record, is just asking for trouble), but troff doesn't really solve the "perfectly readable formatted plain text even before processing" niche that Markdown does. Markdown has also been around since 2004, so it's outlived the 12 month "just a trend" horizon by quite a bit.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  But isn't it by definition impossible to expect that plaintext can replace a markup? (I just wanted to use a strikethrough; can markdown do that?). That's just a niche for developers. Also i believe markdown just started its hype cycle: http://www.google.com/trends?q=markdown http://www.google.com/trends?q=markdown

tyler_ball 15y ago

So that means you're working with an unsaved, untitled file until you're completely satisfied with the post? That doesn't seem very safe. Unless you're saving your drafts in another location and copying them into your "site", but if so, how is that any harder than just "git commit -a"?

YooLi 15y ago
"Nerve uses Markdown's level-one header to demarcate the posts. It then looks for a bracketed timestamp in the header to distinguish posts that are public from ones that are still drafts. A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published."

Titanous 15y ago

Git works for publishing content too. No dependencies on external services, and it's very easy to use over SSH.

joehewitt 15y ago
I could never have gotten my non-technical girlfriend to use this system if she had to go to a command line and type "git commit" and "git push" for ever new post. She's become quite prolific with it since there are no tools she has to use to publish, other than a text editor.
- tedsuo 15y ago
  Obviously this is working for you, but what about an icon that triggers a git shell script? Clicky clicky?

sneak 15y ago

FFS, it's like you whippersnappers have never heard of rsync or makefiles. Dropbox requires the mouse, and therefore means that you should get off my lawn. Seriously though, a Makefile in your web directory with a default target that rsyncs your content up to your webserver via ssh solves this problem much more elegantly, without relying on a third party service. Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency. PS: Put your remote username and remote port (if custom) for a given host in your ~/.ssh/config file, along with any necessary 'ProxyCommand's to allow direct "rsync ./ $hostname:public_html/" or such in your makefile.

sthulbourn 15y ago
I wrote that exact script earlier, except I used Rake.
- sneak 15y ago
  Why are there no pirates in asia? They're all already too busy frying the pranes.
masklinn 15y ago
> Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency. And compile markdown files to static HTML to be served directly on the target machine.
jerrya 15y ago
Using dropbox is problematic for security reasons, but Joe's solution offers a benefit (over rsync, etc.) he doesn't mention in his post, which is that it places his blog source in the cloud as well, and makes it amenable to editing from virtually any desktop/laptop/android/iphone/ipad out there. I suspect it's easier to go to a new client and set up dropbox on it and link it in, than it is to set up rsync and any necessary keys or firewall holes or if you are using windows, the cygwin system to support rsync. There's a lot to be said about simplicity and ubiquity, especially if it's to encourage making a blog post, and not discourage it. That said, using dropbox for this is terribly problematic in terms of security.

joehewitt 15y ago

Perhaps I didn't stress enough in the blog that this system was designed with non-technical users in mind. My girlfriend uses it on her blog and she is savvy enough to understand Markdown, but if I asked her to run a command-line script every time she wanted to publish something it would be a non-starter.

eric-hu 15y ago
This could actually be a pretty neat feature to install on a server for clients so that they can change/add text content on the server without having to contact a dev (and without having command line access). Once set up, it could be as simple as sharing folders with them.
_delirium 15y ago
I've set that kind of stuff up before by just having a .bat file with an icon on the desktop to run whatever script is needed. No need to actually type into a command line.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Blog systems for non-technical users: Wordpress.com, Blogger.com. I'm not trying to be flippant Joe, but I'm not sure what demographic this really serves. Someone who's technical enough to understand markdown and dropbox but not technical enough to understand running a script (which can be done in GUI). I guess that's a sliver of a demographic, but what reason does that person have for wanting to do something like this (what do they gain IN THEIR EYES, not in your eyes). This just feels to me like "popular webservice of 2011" + "popular markup syntax of 2011" = "a trendy blog platform that will be a pain in the ass in 5 years when the new hotness markup language is a must-use." Things that don't go old: HTML. Exportable database-driven blog systems. Pick one.
_frog 15y ago
Out of curiosity, are you using this for Up On a Hill now?

bmelton 15y ago

No offense to Joe, cause I LIKE the effort, I suppose, but it seems like a really long way around to get to where you were headed. As has been listed, rsync / git / NFS shares etc would have been a really easy way to get your objectives met UNTIL I read your response that this was for your girlfriend, and asking her to do a command line would be hard. Then I read further and saw this: A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published." That part seems more complicated to me than just hitting 'publish' on a Wordpress page, but so as to keep from sounding overly negative (cause really, kudos for doing what works) here are my tips to make it even easier. 1) Set up cron to restart the dropbox service every few hours. That should be a no-brainer, and would at least save you having to explain how every now and again you have to SSH into your server to fix your 'super easy' solution. 2) From an end-user perspective, I'm thinking rip off the old email-consumption strategy. Write the code to just check a POP server every couple of hours for unread messages. If there's a message, check to see if it's from your girlfriend's email address (optional). If it's from her, then publish it. Markdown syntax would still apply, and you've now relegated blog posting to something as easy as just 'sending an email'.

dirtyaura 15y ago
Email won't do, you want to e.g fix typos after publishing. I also think that there's something powerful in "all posts in one file" strategy. You might revise drafts more often, read older posts again to expand on them etc. I'm going to try that
- Terretta 15y ago
  So on the server, write the emails to a single file in Dropbox. Like .mbox with markdown level 1 instead of headers. Default input by email, revisions or alternate new via dropbox.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Simple: the system/blog replies with a confirmation of reception that includes the post text. Just hit reply, edit it and send.

alexatkeplar 15y ago

"It's Apache-licensed and hosted on Github, but I'm not recommending that anyone other than me use it at this time. You can learn from it, though." Wow, patronise much?

Terretta 15y ago
Author did write world's most popular iOS app. Could be something in there to learn from.
- alexatkeplar 15y ago
  Meh, it's just standard JavaScript (not even CoffeeScript!) to build Yet Another Blogging Platform. A well-loved (467 watches, 49 forks) node.js blogging platform already exists, authored by @creationix who is actually _employed_ to build nodey things for WebOS: https://github.com/creationix/wheat https://github.com/creationix/wheat So I would recommend reading the code of that project first, rather than me-too code from someone who thinks that deploying via DropBox is cool.

jot 15y ago

http://droppages.com http://droppages.com lets you do this with very little set up. I've been very happy using it on a simple static site that I have less technical people collaborating with me on.

sucuri2 15y ago

"Internal Server Error". Cache anyone?

harisenbon 15y ago

Very nice looking. I know that Marco Arment runs his blog off of his PHP version of the same idea, dubbed "SecondCrack" http://www.marco.org/secondcrack http://www.marco.org/secondcrack I've also been looking at a simple blog updater that can update from anywhere (especially my phone or email), so I'll definitely check it out.

8ig8 15y ago

> My previous blog used Markdown also, but I had to FTP the files to my former Dreamhost server. I used ExpanDrive, which made the FTP process relatively painless, but FTP is still flaky. Come on. Really? How much transfer are we talking about to publish a blog article? And how often are we publishing. Maybe it's not FTP, but Dreamhost? The Dropbox-based system is a neat way of doing it, but blaming FTP seems to be false justification for the effort. If you want to hack, then hack. You don't need a reason to.

timjahn 15y ago

I can't understand why anybody would want to go through all this trouble when you can use something as simple as WordPress and post with ease. Then again, a lot of people can't understand why I create dancing Christmas lights every year, heh.

jeremyswank 15y ago
there's nothing worse, in my opinion, than writing a blog post in a wysiwyg web form when you know how to type and all you want to to is just type up a post. c'mon, it's 2011 and editing text in web forms is an execrable experience, one of the least pleasant things to do in a browser. markdown is a snap to learn and it is such a relief to be writing in your favorite text editor, without the copy-paste rigamole.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  I'll bet there's a plugin to use markdown as the default in WP?
- timjahn 15y ago
  Maybe I'm the exception but I never have trouble writing posts in WordPress.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Who cares? It'sAllText* anyway... * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/

somecola 15y ago

Theoretically speaking, one could use Dropbox to publish to, well, anything? I'm interested in the possibilities. Nice article.

rian 15y ago

sweet this is what i use dropbox for!

consonaut 15y ago

Changing horizontal window size breaks the page (no horizontal scroll bar appears and middle mouse scrolling to the right is open ended) in chrome. With IE no scroll bar appears and I can't scroll to the right at all. This has nothing to do with his publishing technique of course, I just found it strange since he mentions adapting to screen size. Maybe the page should adapt to window size.

Zash 15y ago

Even I have made something like that! Except it's not a blog, and pretty featureless. But it can be combined with sshfs or whatever that lets you poke with the source text files. https://github.com/Zash/WikiDav https://github.com/Zash/WikiDav

nixarn 15y ago

I think this is a brilliant solution. Seems like a lot of guys here are too geeky to see what is considered easy & frictionless by the masses.