8 ms·

Show HN: Postcard – Easy way to make a personal website

140 points by philip1209 4y ago

Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual users. So, I drew inspiration from social media - where all you need is a couple photos and text fields to get a great site online. So, I think I’ve about achieved a site builder that even my Mom could use. The product seems simple, but there are many under-the-hood optimizations. There's caching, CDNs, custom domain support, TLS certificate issuance + management, dynamically-generated open graph images, image optimizations, email sending, full-text RSS feed, email reputations, and more. It also uses a couple new products to make the domain connection process easy. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions! PS - Rumor is that Twitter is shutting down Revue. If you want help transferring content and subscribers over to Postcard, just email me!

dankwizard 4y ago
All examples linking off the home page are down, such as yours Phillip. Error code 520.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Oh no! I have error and uptime monitoring, and it hasn't reported anything. As I'm clicking through, everything seems to be online. So, hopefully it was just an intermittent failure! Would you mind trying again?
vehemenz 4y ago
- I can tell immediately what the product is and how much it costs. - The profile photo as the favicon is a nice touch. - Price point looks about right. How about a dark mode?
- philip1209 4y ago
  Absolutely - dark mode is high on my list! If you subscribe to https://updates.postcard.page https://updates.postcard.page, I'll post there when it's ready.
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herzigma 4y ago
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philip1209 4y ago
(Source on the Revue rumor: https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/twitter-will-shut-down-newsletter-product-revue-by-year-end https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/twitter-will-shut-d... )
fraXis 4y ago
Nice work! Account signup was fast, and the interface was very easy intuitive and easy to use. A nice feature would be for the ability to process/save the collection of email addresses to my ConvertKit account (and have the email signup confirmation sent to the user sent from ConvertKit itself). What service do you use now to handle the email signups (and send confirmations) on our Postcard page? Edit: Sorry I just realized, that the email signup is for sending out updates when I update my Postcard page.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Hey, great feedback! I plan to add a Zapier integration to Postcard so that you can connect signups to wherever you want. (And, if you want to import your Converkit account to Postcard - just email me!) I was also using Convertkit for a personal newsletter, and got tired of using a business tool for an individual use case. So, the Postcard posts do send out via email. Posts also show up on the site - so that you can share it on any other networks you want. Thanks for the feedback - seems like I can make these details more clear in the app, including how posts work!
recuter 4y ago
I clicked the 'Make Your Website' CTA immediately hit the signup form and promptly bounced. That is not to say this thing won't be successful, just that I am clearly not the target audience. It might be worth it to expose a way to try it out and explain why I should use it over the many other ones like it. Or not. Whatever converts better. But if not on the website itself at least tell us these things here in the Show HN :) My question: whom are you targeting? And how will you get at 'em?
- philip1209 4y ago
  Hey! Yeah, some site builders don't require you to create an account to try the product. I take a different approach so that the site is mostly pre-filled by the time you see it. I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard example sites on the homepage. For why to use Postcard - I'm setting out to build "dependable tech tools" [1]. I think we need more unitasker applications that just do a good job, and just stick around. And, personal websites are something that I think more people should have - but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on because it's a small market. Postcards themself are a great personal website that's well-designed and has a nicely integrated newsletter. The newsletter posts also get featured on the site, and there's features like full-text RSS built-in. [1] https://www.contraption.co/news/introducing-contraption-co https://www.contraption.co/news/introducing-contraption-co
  - recuter 4y ago
    > I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard example sites on the homepage. I think I've developed a sort of blindness to the social proof thing with <human head in a circle and positive text blurb> so it took me a bit to realize those are clickable examples of actual user websites and not just endorsements. Makes sense. > but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on because it's a small market. A ton have come and gone like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous (It even starts with a P, ha, time is a flat circle) I believe it had custom domains at some point and a built in newsletter/rss and the thing that made it popular at the time was that you could email it your posts. You should copy that feature. :) Cool, and good luck.
fraXis 4y ago
Can you talk a bit more about the tech stack you are using for this and how long it took you from the time you started working on it until you had it up and running?
- philip1209 4y ago
  Sure! Tech stack is Rails with Hotwire on the frontend. I'm hosting on Render.com, and using their custom domains support to issue certificates. It looks like I had an MVP done in May [1], then spend the Summer doing lots of testing and refinement. Speed was a big focus - I wanted sites to be ultra-quick. I do this with a mix of caching in Memcached, image optimization source sets, CDN, and more. Plus, I'm dynamically generating OpenGraph images for each page using headless Chrome. I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains: - If you already have a domain - I use https://entri.com https://entri.com to connect it, which is a new product that's like Plaid for domains - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain and automatically connect it to Postcard Let me know if you have any other questions! [1] https://www.philipithomas.com/posts/sharing-a-project-i-built-postcard https://www.philipithomas.com/posts/sharing-a-project-i-buil... [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express https://developers.google.com/domains/express
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Would you be interested in upselling users to have their own community? It’s an open source solution that supports events, shows, and services (that you can pay to book). See what I mean at https://qbix.com https://qbix.com You can click on the example apps in there to see them on mobile/desktop. Discourse is great forum software. And Wordpress is great publishing software. Qbix integrates with those too. I can see your site to eventually attract a lot of people who want to get paid for their products or services. (However, I realize they can use calendly for booking events, zoom for the actual videoconferencing, youtube for videos, stripe for selling subscriptions, and maybe a Facebook/Telegram/Discord group for customers to connect… but then they also wouldn’t need Entri since they can make a Facebook or Linktree profile.)
turtlebits 4y ago
The problem I have with these "easy"/low code/push button type of services is that they're extremely bloated and generally slow. The few I clicked on are all over 1 mb. I remember seeing some others that built static sites off Notion and were even larger.
- extr0pian 4y ago
  Agreed. Although not super normie friendly, you can make a decent one-pager with some rudimentary HTML knowledge and a few lines of CSS to make it pretty. Though I appreciate the creator's intention, encouraging people to have their own public website separate from closed social media networks like LinkedIn.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Hmm, sites shouldn't be slow! Most Postcard pages can get a score of 100 on Google's pagespeed test. I do this through a mix of caching and image optimizations. What are you seeing that's slow? I'd love to dig into it!
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
Website is totally borked for me on iPad Safari. Looks like the CSS isn’t loading.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Oh no! It's looking ok on my end. Can you try reloading?
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    Sorry for the late reply. Just tried again and it looks fine now!
e-clinton 4y ago
Looks pretty good. Congrats. You selected good examples that make it feel relatable for me. Don’t love the price. I’m a big fan of small once/year pricing which makes it an impulse purchase… to justify this at $8/month I would need to actively be doing something with it
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I opened the site and poked around quickly. I thought "Hm... simple. Kinda interesting. I wonder if hackernews comments will evaluate the utility of it." It was not until your comment that I realized it's a paid product. I never would have imagined that.
- philip1209 4y ago
  On the checkout page, there is an $80/year option. I just didn't want to complicate the marketing page, but it seems like I should add the optional yearly pricing there.
  - greentea22 4y ago
    $8 a month is ridiculously overpriced.
    - flappyeagle 4y ago
      nothing is overpriced if someone is willing to pay
    - calculated 4y ago
      I second this but at the same time the founder has a point. Since the average user can't create a blog with GH Pages or whatever else for free, he'll be willing to pay $8 for this product. The average customer won't be from the tech space and $8 would seem like "oh just $8 and I can have a personal website? easy!" so I'd say keep the price as is.
      - nprateem 4y ago
stolenmerch 4y ago
Honest, good faith question here. One stated goal of building this is because you "deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network." How does this solve that? Keeping in touch is not about the web presence, it's about the network. How does this work differently than something like about.me?
- davidbanham 4y ago
  This has an email newsletter built in. People can subscribe via the site and you can publish newsletters through their back end.
  - anthropodie 4y ago
    In India, the only thing people use email for is when they are applying for jobs or other official requirements. Email is never used for personal communication. Forget about general public even the IT crowd does not use email for anything personal.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Yes, like the other comment mentions - there's a built-in newsletter that also acts like a light blog. Check out how I use it on my personal site: https://www.philipithomas.com/ https://www.philipithomas.com/ I also custom-generate OpenGraph images for each page and post, which makes them look great when shared on social networks. My philosophy is that you should be able to write once, then share everywhere - which I chat more about in the launch post here: https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-postcard https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-postcard
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
Personal websites should be personalized tho. It's like Facebook vs Myspace. Myspace allowed you to easily personalize your page, and there were tons of really cool unique pages. Facebook killed personal expression; you get to pick a cover photo, a personal photo, make posts, and that's it. Then they dominated the world, and an entire generation grew up never knowing that the internet used to be fun.
- philip1209 4y ago
  I would like to see more personal websites in the world! And, the reality is that most site builders are not accessible. Single-digit activation rates are pretty common. And, most people won't spend thousands of dollars worth of money or time to build a personal site. So - I don't intend for Postcard to be used by everybody. But, for people who want a personal site but don't have the time or skills to customize a site - I made Postcard!
  - 7thaccount 4y ago
    I do like the concept. Thanks!
- katsura 4y ago
  I think mmm.page [0] is supposed to take care of the fun and customization loving niche. It's been on HN before [1], and you can even try it without sign up. [0] https://mmm.page/ https://mmm.page/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424
  - xhfloz 4y ago
    Creator of mmm.page here. Thank you for mentioning the project. Imo we need better, more expressive/accessible creation tools, before we can have an interesting internet filled with true variety (meaning content that isn't gate-kept by those who can code, or forced into templates). I've spent the past two years on the creation tool side, and it's nearing completion, with a beta rolling out soon. (Currently it's in alpha.) If you're interested in any part of this, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@xhfloz). A thread with some updates here: https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1590113525015674880 https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1590113525015674880 Separately, it's great to see more projects in this space. Congrats on the launch, philip1209.
cercatrova 4y ago
Interesting that I can immediately tell it's a Tailwind website, with the colors, Inter font, dot grid background etc. Regarding the content itself, looks good. Looks like it's following the classic $8/m model for hooking up a custom domain, like every other site builder.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  I mean it's a lot more Tailwind than the colors, font, and background. Some of the site is almost byte-for-byte HTML straight from Tailwind UI components such as: https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/feature-sections#component-64ac58e032276db96bf343a8d4f332a8 https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/feature... Which is the whole point of Tailwind UI, of course! It's a great product, but like Twitter Bootstrap before it is at risk of becoming a victim of its own ubiquity.
  - philip1209 4y ago
    Totally fair! I also haven't spent much time polishing the marketing page - as you start to use the app, you'll see that a lot of the dashboard components are more custom.
shahahmed 4y ago
this is cool! i've always struggled supporting custom domains. what dns wizardry does one need to do to support custom domains?
- philip1209 4y ago
  I'm using Render.com's custom domain features, which issues TLS certificates and manages them using LetsEncrypt! Two other things that have been nifty are: I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains: - Entri [1] a new product that's like Plaid for domains. So, you can normally get the domain set up without copying records into the registrar. - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain and automatically connect it to Postcard, also without copying records into the registrar. [1] https://entri.com https://entri.com [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express https://developers.google.com/domains/express
  - shahahmed 4y ago
    oh wow thank you!
madjam002 4y ago
This feels like a modern version of Matmice, anyone here remember that? :-)
- qiller 4y ago
  More like a-bit-more-recent Forrst
jaredcwhite 4y ago
Far be it for me to criticize solo startup products—any achievement in this space is immense! But in general…something that routinely irks me is the lack of truly outstanding design/typography in a lot of "start a website/blog/whatever in 5 minutes" stuff I see pop up. At least this isn't using some crappy monospaced font (that trend is so cringe), but…just a basic Tailwind theme isn't all that appealing IMHO. I think any indie project to help folks get a website online should offer something truly exciting/quirky/artistic on the design side so it's not just a clone of bland corporate media. All that aside, congrats on the launch and I hope it's the start of good things to come!
- philip1209 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I plan to offer some alternative themes. I chose to spend my time making custom color support robust. For instance, there's dynamic code that determines which label colors have highest contrast on buttons depending on the theme color. So, there's some abstracted complexity there. While the Postcard marketing page looks a little tailwind-y, I hope that the individual homepages look more polished and distinct. I've been working with a designer to tune everything, and I'll continue to make improvements.
  - jaredcwhite 4y ago
    Awesome to hear that, and again I don't wish to sound like I'm criticizing Postcard specifically, more just generically shouting into the interwebs. I look forward to seeing more themes down the road!
  - tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
    It doesn’t look just a little Tailwind-y. It IS in fact a made of unmodified (in terms of design) components from TailwindUI stacked on a Hotwire+Rails website. An example (the hero section) - https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/heroes - https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/lists/grid-lists Since I’m guessing what the OP posted is an MVP, it’s perfectly acceptable and the product seems alright, just hope they do make homepages more distinct and polished like you said starting with their own. On a more serious note, the OP might want to radically modify the design of these asap (I’m not sure if even that would make this project fall under TailwindUI’s license). The License that TailwindUI provides (https://tailwindui.com/license https://tailwindui.com/license) states: Examples of usage not allowed by the license: - Creating a "website builder" project where end users can build their own websites using components or templates included with or derived from Tailwind UI.
suprjami 4y ago
Idea for improvement: show the webpage creation interface without needing signup. I want to see what it's like to use without making an account. I won't bother with sites which immediately ask for login. This doesn't have to be an interactive demo, just screenshots are fine. I suspect I'm not the target audience anyway. I'd rather write a custom Jekyll theme and use git to publish with the GitHub Pages push hook. This sounds like it's much simpler, maybe something like the Blogger interface.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Yes, that's fair feedback! A better site editor is on my queue. Thanks for the suggestion.
  - suprjami 4y ago
    Good luck! Congrats on getting a product to market. This must feel pretty huge and exciting for you :)
- ddm379 4y ago
  I second this noting that folks reading here, specifically, probably wouldn't benefit the most from it. What I'm thinking is it'd be nice to see before referring it to a non-technical relative or friend who doesn't even know what git is.
last_responder 4y ago
Just signed up. I like the simplicity. I currently use Cloudflare pages for my personal site and I like the idea of using this in stead since I can fire up anything I have a make a quick post. Price is in a good spot for my taste. Quick question - - Do you have any plans for sub-pages? I like to keep my resume / CV handy on my personal site and don't really see a way to do this cleanly. - I don't see a way to edit or delete a post. - Posts with images see to show the raw filename like [[img111.jpg]] . Will there ever be thumbnail previews?
- philip1209 4y ago
  That's great! Sub-pages are something I'm considering. Some users have linked out to a Notion. Also, the site supports embedded files - so you could even embed a PDF on the homepage. Would you mind emailing me the formatting of the page you expect? Resumes formatting can get complex, so I want to make sure I support what you're envisioning.
  - last_responder 4y ago
    Will do ! Thank you . Wanted to let you know I am now a paying customer. Cloudflare auth worked perfectly.
    - philip1209 4y ago
      Excellent, thanks so much! The DNS integration tool is is https://entri.com https://entri.com - they're doing a great job.
      - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
        Where is there pricing?
        philip1209 4y ago
        It's "Call me" pricing :-(
creeble 4y ago
Weird -- I signed up a few months ago, from what I thought was an HN announcement. But search doesn't show anything else here. Anyway, great little website-maker!
- philip1209 4y ago
  I had mentioned it in a comment a couple months ago, which is probably how you found it! But, I hadn't submitted it yet as a Show HN yet. Here was the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869408
laurex 4y ago
How does it compare to Ghost, which also has an awesome nonprofit business model?
- philip1209 4y ago
  It's a little simpler and less expensive. Ghost is made for subscription businesses. Postcard is more for personal/hobbyist use, and is optimized for non-technical folks to get a custom domain online in just a few minutes!
jlawlz 4y ago
Hey! From a technical and product polish standpoint this looks great. That being said I have never really dived into making a personal website partly because I'm not sure what I'd do with it (looks like you've lowered the barrier to entry though). What do you see as the main use cases are for a personal website generally, and postcard specifically?
- nprateem 4y ago
  You're supposed to talk about your kids and pets and other random crap no one cares about. At least that's what we did in the 90s :D
tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
Hey OP, you’ve got a great project going! But have you considered that you might be violating TailwindUI’s license? I’m not sure either but bringing it your attention, just in case you might be. The License that TailwindUI provides (https://tailwindui.com/license https://tailwindui.com/license) states: Examples of usage not allowed by the license: - Creating a "website builder" project where end users can build their own websites using components or templates included with or derived from Tailwind UI. A way to circumvent this would be to create a branding and a design system for Postcard that looks distinct [as much as possible from TailwindUI components] and adhere to that design system for everything. Just use TailwindUI for the primitive blocks, not the design.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  Hmm, I'm not sure. Seems as though users just provide the content, rather than being allowed to actually 'build' a site from TailwindUI components.
  - tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
    The way I understand it, Postcard.page is letting users publish a personal website. One of the premium features is the custom domain which lets users have a website. Hence, the product is generating money on the premise of building a website for you that’s a completely new entity which makes me think this does in fact qualify as a website builder.
    - d1sxeyes 4y ago
      You might be right. I think it's difficult to determine. From the licence: You can: [snip] - Use the Components and Templates to create unlimited End Products for unlimited Clients. - Use the Components and Templates to create End Products where the End Product is sold to End Users. Personally I think this would be OK, but I'm not a lawyer, and probably worth getting one to review this.
- philip1209 4y ago
  My read of the terms is that I'm inline with the TailwindUI license. If you look at the pages generated by Postcard, they are a far more custom implementation. I rely on Tailwind UI more for the marketing site and the application. To be safe, I just emailed Tailwind Labs and Adam directly. If they think there are any issues, I'll absolutely address them.
ryandetzel 4y ago
It shouldn't instantly publish a page for signing up, I wanted to check it out not have my name and profile scraped and published. I don't see an unpublish? Can can I undo this ?
- philip1209 4y ago
  Email me and I'm happy to delete it! (Support email is in the in-app menu, too)
Brajeshwar 4y ago
This is nice. Congratulations and best of luck. For those looking for such similar offerings, I find Carrd a good alternative too. Last time I checked, for as low as __$20 a year__, you get a whole lot of templates and ready to publish (on your own domain) and you can build as many sites as you need. I just keep it one around for something real quick where I need just some text and information or a contact form. I do not even want to use my own website templates that I have. https://carrd.co/pro https://carrd.co/pro P.S. No relationship with Carrd. Just another happy customer.
- jacques-noris 4y ago
  I second that. Carrd looks better, has more templates and the support is awesome. And much cheaper. Have been using it for years, and can strongly recommend it for simple sites. Not affiliated with them.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Carrd is great! One thing I wanted that Carrd doesn't have is an integrated newsletter + mailing list. That harmonious integration of newsletter + about page is what defines Postcard for me.
  - Brajeshwar 4y ago
    To me, the beauty is that it is simple enough to not have them. I would like Newsletters to be maintained by someone who knows all about Newsletters -- such as Mailchimp, and the others (Card has options to connect to them).
autoexec 4y ago
Good on you for having an abuse@ address ready to go. These kinds of sites are very commonly targeted for phishing attacks.
s3000 4y ago
>I started Postcard when I deleted most social media Postcard feels like a better social network that isn't allowed to be. Could you imagine to implement ActivityPub so that accounts can be directly followed? >full-text RSS feed There is only "Subscribe to my updates" at the bottom. Where can the audience see that an RSS feed is available?
- philip1209 4y ago
  The RSS feed is exposed via a meta tag. My assumption is that readers can detect that RSS tag.
ianyanusko 4y ago
Would certainly rather pay $8 for this than for a verified twitter account. Nice work!

140 points by philip1209 4y ago

dankwizard 4y ago

All examples linking off the home page are down, such as yours Phillip. Error code 520.

philip1209 4y ago
Oh no! I have error and uptime monitoring, and it hasn't reported anything. As I'm clicking through, everything seems to be online. So, hopefully it was just an intermittent failure! Would you mind trying again?

vehemenz 4y ago

- I can tell immediately what the product is and how much it costs. - The profile photo as the favicon is a nice touch. - Price point looks about right. How about a dark mode?

philip1209 4y ago
Absolutely - dark mode is high on my list! If you subscribe to https://updates.postcard.page https://updates.postcard.page, I'll post there when it's ready.

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herzigma 4y ago

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philip1209 4y ago

(Source on the Revue rumor: https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/twitter-will-shut-down-newsletter-product-revue-by-year-end https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/twitter-will-shut-d... )

fraXis 4y ago

Nice work! Account signup was fast, and the interface was very easy intuitive and easy to use. A nice feature would be for the ability to process/save the collection of email addresses to my ConvertKit account (and have the email signup confirmation sent to the user sent from ConvertKit itself). What service do you use now to handle the email signups (and send confirmations) on our Postcard page? Edit: Sorry I just realized, that the email signup is for sending out updates when I update my Postcard page.

philip1209 4y ago
Hey, great feedback! I plan to add a Zapier integration to Postcard so that you can connect signups to wherever you want. (And, if you want to import your Converkit account to Postcard - just email me!) I was also using Convertkit for a personal newsletter, and got tired of using a business tool for an individual use case. So, the Postcard posts do send out via email. Posts also show up on the site - so that you can share it on any other networks you want. Thanks for the feedback - seems like I can make these details more clear in the app, including how posts work!

recuter 4y ago

I clicked the 'Make Your Website' CTA immediately hit the signup form and promptly bounced. That is not to say this thing won't be successful, just that I am clearly not the target audience. It might be worth it to expose a way to try it out and explain why I should use it over the many other ones like it. Or not. Whatever converts better. But if not on the website itself at least tell us these things here in the Show HN :) My question: whom are you targeting? And how will you get at 'em?

philip1209 4y ago
Hey! Yeah, some site builders don't require you to create an account to try the product. I take a different approach so that the site is mostly pre-filled by the time you see it. I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard example sites on the homepage. For why to use Postcard - I'm setting out to build "dependable tech tools" [1]. I think we need more unitasker applications that just do a good job, and just stick around. And, personal websites are something that I think more people should have - but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on because it's a small market. Postcards themself are a great personal website that's well-designed and has a nicely integrated newsletter. The newsletter posts also get featured on the site, and there's features like full-text RSS built-in. [1] https://www.contraption.co/news/introducing-contraption-co https://www.contraption.co/news/introducing-contraption-co
- recuter 4y ago
  > I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard example sites on the homepage. I think I've developed a sort of blindness to the social proof thing with <human head in a circle and positive text blurb> so it took me a bit to realize those are clickable examples of actual user websites and not just endorsements. Makes sense. > but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on because it's a small market. A ton have come and gone like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous (It even starts with a P, ha, time is a flat circle) I believe it had custom domains at some point and a built in newsletter/rss and the thing that made it popular at the time was that you could email it your posts. You should copy that feature. :) Cool, and good luck.

fraXis 4y ago

Can you talk a bit more about the tech stack you are using for this and how long it took you from the time you started working on it until you had it up and running?

philip1209 4y ago
Sure! Tech stack is Rails with Hotwire on the frontend. I'm hosting on Render.com, and using their custom domains support to issue certificates. It looks like I had an MVP done in May [1], then spend the Summer doing lots of testing and refinement. Speed was a big focus - I wanted sites to be ultra-quick. I do this with a mix of caching in Memcached, image optimization source sets, CDN, and more. Plus, I'm dynamically generating OpenGraph images for each page using headless Chrome. I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains: - If you already have a domain - I use https://entri.com https://entri.com to connect it, which is a new product that's like Plaid for domains - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain and automatically connect it to Postcard Let me know if you have any other questions! [1] https://www.philipithomas.com/posts/sharing-a-project-i-built-postcard https://www.philipithomas.com/posts/sharing-a-project-i-buil... [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express https://developers.google.com/domains/express
- EGreg 4y ago
  Would you be interested in upselling users to have their own community? It’s an open source solution that supports events, shows, and services (that you can pay to book). See what I mean at https://qbix.com https://qbix.com You can click on the example apps in there to see them on mobile/desktop. Discourse is great forum software. And Wordpress is great publishing software. Qbix integrates with those too. I can see your site to eventually attract a lot of people who want to get paid for their products or services. (However, I realize they can use calendly for booking events, zoom for the actual videoconferencing, youtube for videos, stripe for selling subscriptions, and maybe a Facebook/Telegram/Discord group for customers to connect… but then they also wouldn’t need Entri since they can make a Facebook or Linktree profile.)

turtlebits 4y ago

The problem I have with these "easy"/low code/push button type of services is that they're extremely bloated and generally slow. The few I clicked on are all over 1 mb. I remember seeing some others that built static sites off Notion and were even larger.

extr0pian 4y ago
Agreed. Although not super normie friendly, you can make a decent one-pager with some rudimentary HTML knowledge and a few lines of CSS to make it pretty. Though I appreciate the creator's intention, encouraging people to have their own public website separate from closed social media networks like LinkedIn.
philip1209 4y ago
Hmm, sites shouldn't be slow! Most Postcard pages can get a score of 100 on Google's pagespeed test. I do this through a mix of caching and image optimizations. What are you seeing that's slow? I'd love to dig into it!

Tijdreiziger 4y ago

Website is totally borked for me on iPad Safari. Looks like the CSS isn’t loading.

philip1209 4y ago
Oh no! It's looking ok on my end. Can you try reloading?
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. Just tried again and it looks fine now!

e-clinton 4y ago

Looks pretty good. Congrats. You selected good examples that make it feel relatable for me. Don’t love the price. I’m a big fan of small once/year pricing which makes it an impulse purchase… to justify this at $8/month I would need to actively be doing something with it

nonethewiser 4y ago
I opened the site and poked around quickly. I thought "Hm... simple. Kinda interesting. I wonder if hackernews comments will evaluate the utility of it." It was not until your comment that I realized it's a paid product. I never would have imagined that.
philip1209 4y ago
On the checkout page, there is an $80/year option. I just didn't want to complicate the marketing page, but it seems like I should add the optional yearly pricing there.
- greentea22 4y ago
  $8 a month is ridiculously overpriced.
  - flappyeagle 4y ago
    nothing is overpriced if someone is willing to pay
  - calculated 4y ago
    I second this but at the same time the founder has a point. Since the average user can't create a blog with GH Pages or whatever else for free, he'll be willing to pay $8 for this product. The average customer won't be from the tech space and $8 would seem like "oh just $8 and I can have a personal website? easy!" so I'd say keep the price as is.
    - nprateem 4y ago

stolenmerch 4y ago

Honest, good faith question here. One stated goal of building this is because you "deleted most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with friends and my network." How does this solve that? Keeping in touch is not about the web presence, it's about the network. How does this work differently than something like about.me?

davidbanham 4y ago
This has an email newsletter built in. People can subscribe via the site and you can publish newsletters through their back end.
- anthropodie 4y ago
  In India, the only thing people use email for is when they are applying for jobs or other official requirements. Email is never used for personal communication. Forget about general public even the IT crowd does not use email for anything personal.
philip1209 4y ago
Yes, like the other comment mentions - there's a built-in newsletter that also acts like a light blog. Check out how I use it on my personal site: https://www.philipithomas.com/ https://www.philipithomas.com/ I also custom-generate OpenGraph images for each page and post, which makes them look great when shared on social networks. My philosophy is that you should be able to write once, then share everywhere - which I chat more about in the launch post here: https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-postcard https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-postcard

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

Personal websites should be personalized tho. It's like Facebook vs Myspace. Myspace allowed you to easily personalize your page, and there were tons of really cool unique pages. Facebook killed personal expression; you get to pick a cover photo, a personal photo, make posts, and that's it. Then they dominated the world, and an entire generation grew up never knowing that the internet used to be fun.

philip1209 4y ago
I would like to see more personal websites in the world! And, the reality is that most site builders are not accessible. Single-digit activation rates are pretty common. And, most people won't spend thousands of dollars worth of money or time to build a personal site. So - I don't intend for Postcard to be used by everybody. But, for people who want a personal site but don't have the time or skills to customize a site - I made Postcard!
- 7thaccount 4y ago
  I do like the concept. Thanks!
katsura 4y ago
I think mmm.page [0] is supposed to take care of the fun and customization loving niche. It's been on HN before [1], and you can even try it without sign up. [0] https://mmm.page/ https://mmm.page/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424
- xhfloz 4y ago
  Creator of mmm.page here. Thank you for mentioning the project. Imo we need better, more expressive/accessible creation tools, before we can have an interesting internet filled with true variety (meaning content that isn't gate-kept by those who can code, or forced into templates). I've spent the past two years on the creation tool side, and it's nearing completion, with a beta rolling out soon. (Currently it's in alpha.) If you're interested in any part of this, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@xhfloz). A thread with some updates here: https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1590113525015674880 https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1590113525015674880 Separately, it's great to see more projects in this space. Congrats on the launch, philip1209.

cercatrova 4y ago

Interesting that I can immediately tell it's a Tailwind website, with the colors, Inter font, dot grid background etc. Regarding the content itself, looks good. Looks like it's following the classic $8/m model for hooking up a custom domain, like every other site builder.

tshaddox 4y ago
I mean it's a lot more Tailwind than the colors, font, and background. Some of the site is almost byte-for-byte HTML straight from Tailwind UI components such as: https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/feature-sections#component-64ac58e032276db96bf343a8d4f332a8 https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/feature... Which is the whole point of Tailwind UI, of course! It's a great product, but like Twitter Bootstrap before it is at risk of becoming a victim of its own ubiquity.
- philip1209 4y ago
  Totally fair! I also haven't spent much time polishing the marketing page - as you start to use the app, you'll see that a lot of the dashboard components are more custom.

shahahmed 4y ago

this is cool! i've always struggled supporting custom domains. what dns wizardry does one need to do to support custom domains?

philip1209 4y ago
I'm using Render.com's custom domain features, which issues TLS certificates and manages them using LetsEncrypt! Two other things that have been nifty are: I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains: - Entri [1] a new product that's like Plaid for domains. So, you can normally get the domain set up without copying records into the registrar. - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain and automatically connect it to Postcard, also without copying records into the registrar. [1] https://entri.com https://entri.com [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express https://developers.google.com/domains/express
- shahahmed 4y ago
  oh wow thank you!

madjam002 4y ago

This feels like a modern version of Matmice, anyone here remember that? :-)

qiller 4y ago
More like a-bit-more-recent Forrst

jaredcwhite 4y ago

Far be it for me to criticize solo startup products—any achievement in this space is immense! But in general…something that routinely irks me is the lack of truly outstanding design/typography in a lot of "start a website/blog/whatever in 5 minutes" stuff I see pop up. At least this isn't using some crappy monospaced font (that trend is so cringe), but…just a basic Tailwind theme isn't all that appealing IMHO. I think any indie project to help folks get a website online should offer something truly exciting/quirky/artistic on the design side so it's not just a clone of bland corporate media. All that aside, congrats on the launch and I hope it's the start of good things to come!

philip1209 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I plan to offer some alternative themes. I chose to spend my time making custom color support robust. For instance, there's dynamic code that determines which label colors have highest contrast on buttons depending on the theme color. So, there's some abstracted complexity there. While the Postcard marketing page looks a little tailwind-y, I hope that the individual homepages look more polished and distinct. I've been working with a designer to tune everything, and I'll continue to make improvements.
- jaredcwhite 4y ago
  Awesome to hear that, and again I don't wish to sound like I'm criticizing Postcard specifically, more just generically shouting into the interwebs. I look forward to seeing more themes down the road!
- tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
  It doesn’t look just a little Tailwind-y. It IS in fact a made of unmodified (in terms of design) components from TailwindUI stacked on a Hotwire+Rails website. An example (the hero section) - https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/heroes - https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/lists/grid-lists Since I’m guessing what the OP posted is an MVP, it’s perfectly acceptable and the product seems alright, just hope they do make homepages more distinct and polished like you said starting with their own. On a more serious note, the OP might want to radically modify the design of these asap (I’m not sure if even that would make this project fall under TailwindUI’s license). The License that TailwindUI provides (https://tailwindui.com/license https://tailwindui.com/license) states: Examples of usage not allowed by the license: - Creating a "website builder" project where end users can build their own websites using components or templates included with or derived from Tailwind UI.

suprjami 4y ago

Idea for improvement: show the webpage creation interface without needing signup. I want to see what it's like to use without making an account. I won't bother with sites which immediately ask for login. This doesn't have to be an interactive demo, just screenshots are fine. I suspect I'm not the target audience anyway. I'd rather write a custom Jekyll theme and use git to publish with the GitHub Pages push hook. This sounds like it's much simpler, maybe something like the Blogger interface.

philip1209 4y ago
Yes, that's fair feedback! A better site editor is on my queue. Thanks for the suggestion.
- suprjami 4y ago
  Good luck! Congrats on getting a product to market. This must feel pretty huge and exciting for you :)
ddm379 4y ago
I second this noting that folks reading here, specifically, probably wouldn't benefit the most from it. What I'm thinking is it'd be nice to see before referring it to a non-technical relative or friend who doesn't even know what git is.

last_responder 4y ago

Just signed up. I like the simplicity. I currently use Cloudflare pages for my personal site and I like the idea of using this in stead since I can fire up anything I have a make a quick post. Price is in a good spot for my taste. Quick question - - Do you have any plans for sub-pages? I like to keep my resume / CV handy on my personal site and don't really see a way to do this cleanly. - I don't see a way to edit or delete a post. - Posts with images see to show the raw filename like [[img111.jpg]] . Will there ever be thumbnail previews?

philip1209 4y ago
That's great! Sub-pages are something I'm considering. Some users have linked out to a Notion. Also, the site supports embedded files - so you could even embed a PDF on the homepage. Would you mind emailing me the formatting of the page you expect? Resumes formatting can get complex, so I want to make sure I support what you're envisioning.
- last_responder 4y ago
  Will do ! Thank you . Wanted to let you know I am now a paying customer. Cloudflare auth worked perfectly.
  - philip1209 4y ago
    Excellent, thanks so much! The DNS integration tool is is https://entri.com https://entri.com - they're doing a great job.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      Where is there pricing?
      - philip1209 4y ago
        It's "Call me" pricing :-(

creeble 4y ago

Weird -- I signed up a few months ago, from what I thought was an HN announcement. But search doesn't show anything else here. Anyway, great little website-maker!

philip1209 4y ago
I had mentioned it in a comment a couple months ago, which is probably how you found it! But, I hadn't submitted it yet as a Show HN yet. Here was the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869408

laurex 4y ago

How does it compare to Ghost, which also has an awesome nonprofit business model?

philip1209 4y ago
It's a little simpler and less expensive. Ghost is made for subscription businesses. Postcard is more for personal/hobbyist use, and is optimized for non-technical folks to get a custom domain online in just a few minutes!

jlawlz 4y ago

Hey! From a technical and product polish standpoint this looks great. That being said I have never really dived into making a personal website partly because I'm not sure what I'd do with it (looks like you've lowered the barrier to entry though). What do you see as the main use cases are for a personal website generally, and postcard specifically?

nprateem 4y ago
You're supposed to talk about your kids and pets and other random crap no one cares about. At least that's what we did in the 90s :D

tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago

Hey OP, you’ve got a great project going! But have you considered that you might be violating TailwindUI’s license? I’m not sure either but bringing it your attention, just in case you might be. The License that TailwindUI provides (https://tailwindui.com/license https://tailwindui.com/license) states: Examples of usage not allowed by the license: - Creating a "website builder" project where end users can build their own websites using components or templates included with or derived from Tailwind UI. A way to circumvent this would be to create a branding and a design system for Postcard that looks distinct [as much as possible from TailwindUI components] and adhere to that design system for everything. Just use TailwindUI for the primitive blocks, not the design.

d1sxeyes 4y ago
Hmm, I'm not sure. Seems as though users just provide the content, rather than being allowed to actually 'build' a site from TailwindUI components.
- tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
  The way I understand it, Postcard.page is letting users publish a personal website. One of the premium features is the custom domain which lets users have a website. Hence, the product is generating money on the premise of building a website for you that’s a completely new entity which makes me think this does in fact qualify as a website builder.
  - d1sxeyes 4y ago
    You might be right. I think it's difficult to determine. From the licence: You can: [snip] - Use the Components and Templates to create unlimited End Products for unlimited Clients. - Use the Components and Templates to create End Products where the End Product is sold to End Users. Personally I think this would be OK, but I'm not a lawyer, and probably worth getting one to review this.
philip1209 4y ago
My read of the terms is that I'm inline with the TailwindUI license. If you look at the pages generated by Postcard, they are a far more custom implementation. I rely on Tailwind UI more for the marketing site and the application. To be safe, I just emailed Tailwind Labs and Adam directly. If they think there are any issues, I'll absolutely address them.

ryandetzel 4y ago

It shouldn't instantly publish a page for signing up, I wanted to check it out not have my name and profile scraped and published. I don't see an unpublish? Can can I undo this ?

philip1209 4y ago
Email me and I'm happy to delete it! (Support email is in the in-app menu, too)

Brajeshwar 4y ago

This is nice. Congratulations and best of luck. For those looking for such similar offerings, I find Carrd a good alternative too. Last time I checked, for as low as __$20 a year__, you get a whole lot of templates and ready to publish (on your own domain) and you can build as many sites as you need. I just keep it one around for something real quick where I need just some text and information or a contact form. I do not even want to use my own website templates that I have. https://carrd.co/pro https://carrd.co/pro P.S. No relationship with Carrd. Just another happy customer.

jacques-noris 4y ago
I second that. Carrd looks better, has more templates and the support is awesome. And much cheaper. Have been using it for years, and can strongly recommend it for simple sites. Not affiliated with them.
philip1209 4y ago
Carrd is great! One thing I wanted that Carrd doesn't have is an integrated newsletter + mailing list. That harmonious integration of newsletter + about page is what defines Postcard for me.
- Brajeshwar 4y ago
  To me, the beauty is that it is simple enough to not have them. I would like Newsletters to be maintained by someone who knows all about Newsletters -- such as Mailchimp, and the others (Card has options to connect to them).

autoexec 4y ago

Good on you for having an abuse@ address ready to go. These kinds of sites are very commonly targeted for phishing attacks.

s3000 4y ago

>I started Postcard when I deleted most social media Postcard feels like a better social network that isn't allowed to be. Could you imagine to implement ActivityPub so that accounts can be directly followed? >full-text RSS feed There is only "Subscribe to my updates" at the bottom. Where can the audience see that an RSS feed is available?

philip1209 4y ago
The RSS feed is exposed via a meta tag. My assumption is that readers can detect that RSS tag.

ianyanusko 4y ago

Would certainly rather pay $8 for this than for a verified twitter account. Nice work!