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Bear Blog – A privacy-first, fast blogging platform
- janandonly 4y agoAnother honorable mention goes to: https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph
- bayindirh 4y agohttps://smol.pub https://smol.pub and https://mataroa.blog https://mataroa.blog are also nice examples. I host my blog in Mataroa, and love the experience so far.
- Groxx 4y agoOn https://mataroa.blog/ https://mataroa.blog/ Pricing - Premium — all features - $9/year A blog hosting price that's actually reasonable! The trend of everything being $5-10/month is ridiculous, this is nice to see.
- dunefox 4y agoI need images and code blocks + formulas. Is that doable with mataroa? I'd be happy to pay 9€ for that.
- bayindirh 4y agoMataroa supports markdown, with images (and you can store your images on Mataroa servers), and syntax highlighted code blocks (which is something they don't openly say). I normally don't use formulae in my blog posts, so I don't know that part. In every case, Mataroa has a free tier, so you can always try before you buy. If you want to see, my blog is at https://blog.bayindirh.io https://blog.bayindirh.io.
- bayindirh 4y agoYes, Mataroa is a great service, and https://smol.pub https://smol.pub is $5, one time, for now.
- qudat 4y agoFor a terminal based workflow, https://prose.sh https://prose.sh is pretty great. Authentication happens via SSH so all you need is a key-pair to register. Uploading posts is as simple as `scp hello-world.md prose.sh:/`. This also means that you can bring your own editor and you control the source files. Coming from hugo, prose.sh has been much easier to publish content since I pretty much live in the terminal anyway.
- AnonC 4y agoI recall trying this a few years ago using my Telegram account, but I could never figure out how to edit a published post or delete it. There were also some other drawbacks that I don't recall now.
- tyingq 4y ago>no stylesheets Well, there is a fair amount of css wrapped in <style> tags. Not sure I understand the upside of not putting it in a separate file. Though the look is reasonably pleasant. Edit: The example blog also loads js, despite the "no javascript" claim. Like: <script src="https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js" data-site="WKWMFTPV" defer></script>. Perhaps that's not a default thing, but it seems odd to link to an example blog that doesn't match the sales pitch.
- twohaibei 4y agoDepending on the styles inside of that style tag it can be faster because of lack of separate http request to fetch it.
- kabirgoel 4y agoYep, although on HTTP/2 this shouldn't be an issue anyway.
- Kaze404 4y agoInline CSS has the benefit of not making a second HTTP request, as well as (if I recall correctly) rendering the page styled from the get go, as opposed to once unstyled and once again when the CSS has finished downloading.
- treve 4y agoThe issue you're describing only happens when JavaScriptis used to render the CSS.
- julianlam 4y agoThe fact that this needed to be said is concerning. There's no FOUC if you add a stylesheet to <head>, and it concerns me that people seeing that flash have come to expect it as a fault of CSS, when it's really these frameworks making a decision to load the stylesheet via javascript.
- indymike 4y agoNo stylesheets is untrue. There is a <style> tag in the head that contains a stylesheet.
- akmittal 4y agoI think they mean no user customized stylesheets.
- tyingq 4y agoIt seems to have user customized stylesheets: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/issues/152 https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/issues/152
- HermanMartinus 4y agoI think this is being pedantic. There are styles in a <style> tag (cause it turns out pure HTML doesn't read so well). It doesn't have external stylesheets, however.
- indymike 4y agoIt is a false marketing claim.
- HermanMartinus 4y ago
- indymike 4y ago
- janandonly 4y agoPrevious post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312339
- numlock86 4y ago> no stylesheets > uses stylesheets anyway I don't get this part.
- HermanMartinus 4y agoIt uses styling in a style tag and doesn't make a second call to an external stylesheet. So it has styling (although very little of it), not stylesheets.
- hownottowrite 4y agoThe privacy-first platform that cannot be self-hosted. So many contradictions.
- Stampo00 4y agoMaybe not directly, but if you like the style, you have some options: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/#can-bear-blog-be-self-hosted https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/#can-bear-blog-be...
- hownottowrite 4y agoWhat style?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Stampo00 4y agoIf you like the style of the blog, there's a theme available for Hugo and a Go-based clone available for self-hosting. Links in the project README.
- HermanMartinus 4y agoCreator here. You can technically self-host it, you'd just be self-hosting a blogging platform instead of a blog. There are options to self-host other tools with the same theme as other commenters have stated. Also, "privacy-first" and "self-hosted" are not mutually exclusive concepts. By your logic all software you don't host yourself isn't privacy respecting, which is a fair belief on your part, but opinionated at best.
- hownottowrite 4y agoSo what you’re saying is that you are offering a blogging service that happens to have an open source platform behind it that one could self-host if desired.
- bearzdev 4y agoI can't bear the contradictions. - "No trackers, no javascript, no stylesheets" - inline js. - inline stylesheets. - uses favicon which can be used for tracking. - not self hosted. - requires an account to sign up - "TOS" > "Bear may disclose personally identifiable information under special circumstances, such as to comply with subpoenas or when your actions violate the Terms of Service." - can't be bothered to indent the html. - payment system could require real identity.
- popcorncowboy 4y agoI suspect what he means is "this is a safe space" in contrast to the open/hostile internet "out there", i.e. there is no nefarious intent. As you point out, this is really mostly virtue signalling (and probably well-meant). The fact that actually there is JS, there are trackable signals, your PII can and will be disclosed etc is sorta beside the point of sites like this.
- IshKebab 4y agoHow do you expect them to not comply with subpoenas? Or collect payment without a real identity. As far as I understand bitcoin is mostly useless for actual payment these days.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoBitcoin works fine for payments, just hope you didn’t put your life savings into it at the top of the bubble.
- bearzdev 4y agoIf an organization or person is selling a product focused on privacy and there is a TOS that focuses on the org or person avoiding liability but lacks documentation or links to resources to help users to lower their liability and increase privacy, its a red flag to me. Their servers are located in the Netherlands. Its good that they list that. It would be better to hoist information into something that is less policy/legal oriented and perhaps provide an overview of the laws of that region. Other things that should be listed is how is the data stored, transferred, how is it protected, are there any steps to anonymize the data, hash the data, or provide a way to bring your on key for data encryption. Is there any telemetry gathered or stored by the server? Is the code in the github project the same that is deployed in production or is there a private repo that augments the code?
- recroad 4y agoI actually am looking to migrate raptorsrepublic.com off Wordpress to something simpler, but the lack of Home Page customization makes this a no-go.
- Geee 4y agoThis would be excellent with LNURL-auth for better privacy and UX.[0] [0] https://lightninglogin.live https://lightninglogin.live
- orliesaurus 4y agoI use bearblog for my .dev website [1]. It's a one pager and works great for me. I inject some CSS to make it work for me, i.e. fonts - and simple colors and I removed most of the "extra" pages because I wanted to keep it as a one pager. It's a great platform and I wish there was a version where I could self host it like `hexo.js` Thanks for your work herman! [1] orlie.dev - Currently using it behind Cloudflare!
- Abishek_Muthian 4y agoHow is Google treating your website? I run a couple of pure/majority text only websites & I've noticed that Google favors websites with images/videos in them even if they copy your text content.
- tarr11 4y agoNot quite a blog, but Obsidian Publish has been scratching the “easy publish” itch for me. https://obsidian.md/publish https://obsidian.md/publish
- julianlam 4y agoI ended up building my own blog hosted atop Github Gist. It's pretty quick once the data is cached, and uses almost no resources. https://devnull.land/github-gist-blog https://devnull.land/github-gist-blog I only feel sort of bad that I basically use Gist as my data store.
- staindk 4y agoWhy not host it for free through Github Pages? They only host static sites so it's technically quite different to your blog... but if you are only going to be blogging it may as well be a static site IMO. Edit: I do like how neat it sounds to just query a user's public Gists though. https://pages.github.com/ https://pages.github.com/
- julianlam 4y agoI opted not to use GH pages because I wanted to stay open to the possibility of adding some dynamic elements (e.g. comments integration)
- staindk 4y agoAh that's fair enough. I've actually been thinking about different ways of adding exactly that to a static site - technically you could have something like a comments form that just writes to a text file somewhere (perhaps updating a Gist with the API you mentioned[1]), which the static site reads from upon page reload. Sounds a bit inelegant I guess, but could be interesting to implement. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/rest/gists/gists#update-a-gist https://docs.github.com/en/rest/gists/gists#update-a-gist
- lmas 4y agoI've encountered https://github.com/utterance/utterances https://github.com/utterance/utterances, which relies on github issues for providing a blog comments system of a sort. Alternatively there's https://github.com/giscus/giscus https://github.com/giscus/giscus, which instead uses github discussions. Haven't used either so can't comment (heh) on their "performance".
- __mp 4y agoHugo in combination with the Congo Theme (see https://github.com/jpanther/congo https://github.com/jpanther/congo) has scratched this itch for me. The theme is well thought out and has all the features I need. There's the usual youtube and vimeo integration, but also - integration with Flowcharts through mermaid https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/diagrams-flowcharts/ https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/diagrams-flowcharts... - charts through Chart.js https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/charts/ https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/charts/ - and even LaTeX support: https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/mathematical-notation/ https://jpanther.github.io/congo/samples/mathematical-notati...
- kirillbobyrev 4y agoThanks a lot for posting it! I wanted to blog for quite a while but am too lazy to finish some basic blog setup with my "own theme". Bear looked great and I was upset none of the Hugo themes I looked at were exactly what I wanted. This one does!
- sureglymop 4y agoAll of that's great... but wouldn't it be much better to render the latex, mermaid etc server side? I'm a bit baffled that apparently Hugo can't do that.
- __mp 4y agoSure, there's certainly interest in doing this. See this post for more details: https://misha.brukman.net/blog/2022/04/writing-math-with-hugo/#server-side-rendering https://misha.brukman.net/blog/2022/04/writing-math-with-hug... (I'm not the author of this post) Client-side rendering works well enough for me, and has been for years (as a visitor). I don't see a benefit to integrate a custom Hugo patch to get server-side rendering for my simple personal blog.
- vorpalhex 4y agoI do this for my mermaid charts but it's a manual process for the moment. I need to dockerize it and add in a hook.
- drakonka 4y agoThis looks really cool. No reason to switch from my self-hosted Hugo setup, but if I was just starting out with blogging I'd be happy to have this available vs the bloated Wordpress site I started out with in the beginning.
- sureglymop 4y agoWell.. can i self host it?
- podviaznikov 4y agohttp://montaigne.io http://montaigne.io - made this one for myself. Just publishes website from Apple Notes. Every time time I update note on my laptop or iPhone the site is updated automatically.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoThis is great. After getting burned out of blogging after maintaining my own platform (instead of just writing), something like this is appealing to me.
- podviaznikov 4y agohad the same problem with previous platforms so made this new tool. I think I've road 6 posts in the past month. So hopefully it will help me to write more too.
- dannyphantom 4y agoThis is fantastic.
- podviaznikov 4y agothank you! still WIP
- janandonly 4y agoThat sounds extremely useful. Is it possible for others to use this as well ?
- podviaznikov 4y agoIt's still early stages. So I have like 5 sites build with it so far. Eg my personal site https://podviaznikov.com https://podviaznikov.com But try to signup. It should work for other people too now. It just not polished yet.
- 4y ago
- muglug 4y agoThe easiest part of a blog is figuring out a hosting platform (or building it yourself). I have spent many (fruitful) hours down rabbit holes. The hardest part of a blog is actually filling it with compelling content — research, writing and editing.
- amelius 4y agoThis is like how many PhD students spend 80% of their time learning LaTeX and only 20% on thinking what to write.
- johndhi 4y agoI needed a blogging platform for my hyper simple website and I may have found it. Was annoyed I'd have to pay to have a custom domain but seeing it's a one time payment and not a subscription, I am probably on board. Personally the minimalism is what drew me more than privacy stuff.
- trykondev 4y agoThe simplicity of this is awesome. I've vaguely wanted to start blogging for many years, but suffered from analysis paralysis on where/how to get started. This was so simple -- took me less than 2 minutes to get set up and start writing. Thanks for making this!
- Barrera 4y agoI like the idea, but to echo another comment, the hardest part of running a blog is not selecting the blogging engine or how to host it. The hardest part is keeping new posts flowing through the engine. What blogging platforms focus on this side of things? Which ones help solve the "What do I write next?" problem?
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoIf you have nothing to write about, you should not write; Not write about nothing. You should write about nothing though, it's a good writing exercise. Just maybe don't publish it? Publish what you write after that, when you know what to write about.
- hsn915 4y agoIMO a blog without comments is almost useless. Comments on blogs is the whole point of posting things on the internet. That and forums and chat.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vorpalhex 4y agoI went down this rabbithole. Comment systems suck and you will get an amazing amount of spam. I keep a Contact page with various ways to reach me if you really want to chat about something. It's rare when folks chat me up but it's always a good convo when it happens.
- HermanMartinus 4y agoCreator of Bear here. It was actually a design decision to not add comments as commenting on blogs is generally useless (the comments happen on the places where you post your content like HN, or social media). It is also very easy to be exploited by spammers so requires constant attention.
- spicybright 4y ago> Built to last forever The hard part of forever isn't picking the right technology, it's keeping the content available online. You can't self-host this. So unless your bank account is designed to pay for the URL, hosting, and keeping the project up to date forever, you're just lying to lock people into your platform.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago> lying to lock people into your platform Besides being exceedingly, aggressively negative and paranoid, this also doesn’t make sense at all. Why would they build this niche thing, make it explicitly privacy-focused, and target it to an audience who surely will notice any abuse?
- ksec 4y ago>Built to last forever Even if the software development cost and labour were free, we still need to figure out revenue generation for hardware and network in order for it to last forever. I expected custom domain to be paid feature, but that doesn't seems to be the case here. So do we have a business model for it to last forever, or even if it is something like 50 years.
- fariszr 4y agoIt looks to be using Cloudflare, Cloudflare Pages free tier is very good, I suspect its using it with workers, and maybe getting very small bills or its under the free limit.
- shevis 4y ago> I expected custom domain to be paid feature, but that doesn't seems to be the case here. Custom domain is a paid feature. It appears to cost $29 as of now.
- willswire 4y agoBig fan of Bear Blog. I'm just starting my own, and decided to modify some of the default Bear styles/web components by using Cloudflare Workers: https://blog.willswire.com https://blog.willswire.com
- fyrn- 4y agoFailing to load in web view was an instant fail for me :/
- biztos 4y agoThis is presumably unrelated to the Bear writing app: https://bear.app/ https://bear.app/ I have mixed feelings about generic names like this, but naming a blogging service “Bear Blog” when there is a pretty well known Bear app for writing, seems to be inviting confusion. Or maybe someone will make a Bear theme for Bear? Or a Bear to Bear integration?
- donio 4y agoNot as snappy as I would have expected considering the 5KB pages. Not sure where it comes from but there is a very noticeable delay before the individual blog pages are rendered.