23 ms·

Show HN: SinglePage – Quickly and anonymously publish a page to the web

175 points by ryandetzel 4y ago

Creating a basic webpage has become way too complicated and expensive. Often there are those times when you just want to share your thoughts with the world but don't want the overhead and complexities that come with maintaining a website. Sometimes, you have an interesting thought piece, an education article, or just a quick and simple bio page that doesn't need the heavy hand of a WordPress blog or Medium post. That's where Single Page comes in. Publish a single page instantly to the web with no fuss. I was laid off three weeks ago from Twitter and I decided to work through a couple of my projects and this was one of them. I've tried blogs over the years, Medium didn't feel right but yet I wanted to quickly post pages online and couldn't find an easy way to do it. So I created it. Feedback appreciated!

belkarx 4y ago
Does this fill a niche that pastebin and bearblog don't? (well designed, but I don't think there's a userbase)
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  I'm the userbase! I built it for myself and now I'm sharing it with the world. I doubt there is a huge market but even if a fee people find it useful that's good enough for me!
  - belkarx 4y ago
    Fair point. Hope you had fun :)
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    I felt like you may have created solutions anticipating problems that may or may not happen.
marcooliv 4y ago
Really liked the idea and execution, probably is something that I will use in the near future. And good luck with your moderation issue! hehehe
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Yeah, that was the reason I added the fee. Hoping, maybe naively that that will keep the baddies away.
qwertyuiop_ 4y ago
How is this anonymous when your user is providing you their intimate payment information.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  There is no connection between payment and the published page. No logs are kept either. It's open source if you want to host it yourself or audit the code
  - timemachine 4y ago
    Can you provide a link to the source, please?
    - phoenix24 4y ago
      https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    You may want to set up a different payment technique. Maybe a gofundme donation recipient.
  - CommitSyn 4y ago
    Still, the wording 'anonymous' goes out the window with 100% of your users when credit cards are mandatory, even if you pinky promise not to connect it to the page. I highly recommend BTCPayServer for handling (non-custodial) crypto payments.
sam_ezeh 4y ago
I think this idea is really cool, I just don't see myself using this due to the alternatives (GitHub pages, static blog generators etc.)
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  I've done all the static site generators, I just don't post enough to justify the maintenance, if you do they're probably a better solution! As is, it's pretty basic but I want to add features that GitHub pages don't support
  - w-ll 4y ago
    Care to tell what features GitHub pages are missing?
    - ryandetzel 4y ago
      Anonymity. Maybe I'm wrong but I thought it was only markdown which isn't ideal especially for no technical people.
      - w-ll 4y ago
        Last time I tried, there is no verification other than and email link for Github accounts. I think you could make an account and publish with just a throwaway email.
    - troymc 4y ago
      GitHub Pages have the unfortunate anti-feature of being impossible for normal people.
      - Proven 4y ago
  - odo1242 4y ago
    Creating a GitHub repo with one file titled “index.md” and publishing it to GitHub Pages creates a single-page site using relatively sane defaults. There's no maintenance involved whatsoever. You can add multiple pages as well by creating new .md files and publishing them.
kristianp 4y ago
I like the simplicity and convenience of this. Does the secret phrase allow user to delete the page? Probably a good application for crypto currencies, or would be if the dream of micropayments ever comes to fruition!
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Yeah, the secret phrase is the only way to delete the page once it's been published. It wouldn't be a big leap to accept crypto, the fees would just be crazy though for a single page. Thanks for the comment
  - culi 4y ago
    If you do go the crypto route, may I suggest you consider something... cleaner? A single BTC transaction uses ~2 months of electricity of the average household ETH is a bit better but still not there yet. There's "3rd generation" systems like Hedera[0] that use hashgraphs instead and consume about as much electricity as anything else you'd do on the internet. Or at least choose one that's actually dedicated to privacy like Monero Cool project! I like the design and hope you had fun with it [0] https://hedera.com/ https://hedera.com/
doodlebugging 4y ago
In what might be the only non-editable text on the page, there in the payment box you have two boxes that the user must agree to with a check mark. The text associated with those boxes could use some work. Perhaps you need a hammer to smooth out the grammar. >I agree to the not post anything illegal. >I have saved by secret phase and
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Agreed. That's me rushing to get it done this week, these were links to published Single Pages with more details but the content wasn't done so I removed them.
Jemm 4y ago
I like the concept but the act of paying $1 means it is no longer anonymous.
- ronsor 4y ago
  It could be anonymous if cryptocurrency were accepted. For now, I see now reason to use it over rentry[1]. [1] https://rentry.org https://rentry.org
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  It is anonymous but you're trusting the provider. The payment isn't tied to a page. No logs are kept. It's open source, but, in theory I could be running a version that does log or keep records but I have to reason to.
  - fileeditview 4y ago
    Don't forget that the payment provider (bank, cc, paypal) also has logs.. using the word anonymous here is a bit dishonest in my book.
    - ryandetzel 4y ago
      I'm using it in the sense of not named or identified Not, if someone really really wanted to track down who wrote a page they couldn't.
drekipus 4y ago
In terms of simple blogs, I use https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ I think your project suits more simple static pages. The competitor is more Notion rather than blogs and static site generators. Nice work all the same. I think what's really missing is a minimal copy of something like google sites. I want to be able to create something like my website at http://illabundavillage.com.au http://illabundavillage.com.au but I want it to be faster, not tied to google, and a little easier to edit. There's a spectrum of flashy sites to single page texts. Many projects should aim to be in various shades of the middle.
- renaissance_tea 4y ago
  Sweet thanks for sharing
- culi 4y ago
  Have you considered putting your community up on ic.org? https://www.ic.org/directory/ https://www.ic.org/directory/
webel0 4y ago
This sounds interesting! What are your thoughts on (for lack of a better term) the marketing of each single page? Is the idea that each page should live on an island, that writers will promote through their own separate channels, or is the idea to eventually have a sort of front page/recommended links? I jumped to this question because it seems like the urge to promote tends to undermine the privacy impetus. It’s not a black and white thing, though.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  There is no promotion or even an index page to list out what pages exist. The pages can be indexed by search engines if they're submitted. An idea for the future would be to allow people to opt in/out of notifying search indexes or making the pages not crawlable if they want
sarajevo 4y ago
This is so awesome, the concept is great and it is well made, simple and clean…
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
A good free alternative is Telegram's Telegraph service: https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph
- renaissance_tea 4y ago
  Didn’t they just release logs and ip addresses of users in India?
  - ignoramous 4y ago
    tbf, singlepage.cc can't claim to be anonymous if it requires credit card payments and runs over regular web (as opposed to .onion). I believe, the only way to take anonymous non-cash payments is via Monero. Besides, telegram has a massive userbase, which makes them a lucrative target for law enforcement.
flockonus 4y ago
Missing ToS or anything about the company / service, a 100% deal breaker. > secret phrase in a safe location Smart stuff with the secret phrase, but i'm afraid the security in the number of words there is just not sufficient for any practical safety. > Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now LOL seriously?? Maybe you're a more sure shot than I am but i even update my gists more often than not
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  It's a project I did in 9 days, it's not perfect or done. ;) Practical safety? It's a single page not a bank account. It's odd you would jump to that conclusion without know the dictionary. You don't think 5^1000 is secure enough for a single page? If you edit your pages, use a blog. This service isn't for the person that wants mutable pages. Different strokes my friend
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    I think you meant 1000^5?
    - gcanyon 4y ago
      Most definitely 1000^5. = 10^15 ~= 2^50 As long as the system to delete isn't fast, or has a max-tries-delay mechanism, it should be fine.
      - flockonus 4y ago
        For anyone considering creating private keys, 2^50 is borderline ok, but nowhere near safe to give someone true ownership of something, and I'm not just saying for some theoretical argument. 2^256 is considered extremely safe (altho arguably not quantum resistant depending on the hashing algo) See Bitcoin bips for an (optionally i18n) list of 2048 words that is fairly standard and several libs can help with implementation. Pick at least 10 words - don't worry, users won't remember either number of words for life, they have to back up somewhere safe anyway. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-003...
randomsofr 4y ago
Found the source code. https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage Looks like a nice idea, but looks a little incomplete.
deleted 4y ago
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culi 4y ago
My own collection: - [mmm.page](https://mmm.page/ https://mmm.page/) - [odie.us](https://odie.us/ https://odie.us/) - [carrd.co](https://carrd.co/ https://carrd.co/) - [write.as](https://write.as/ https://write.as/) - [withknown.com](https://withknown.com/ https://withknown.com/) - [micro.blog](https://micro.blog/ https://micro.blog/) - [neocities.org](https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/) From this thread: - https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ - https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph - https://rentry.org/ https://rentry.org/ - https://brick.do/ https://brick.do/ - https://prose.sh/ https://prose.sh/
- culi 4y ago
  I guess there's some category bleed going on here. I was originally maintaining a list of "micro-blog"-y sites I wanted to try out. Somewhere along the way it got mixed in with these "easy quick single static page" of services or "basically a txt file" site (e.g. rentry.org) At this point I feel the need to bring up Etherpad which is essentially an encrypted Google Docs alternative but can be used similarly. Ofc there's also Notion which is in a similar vein. You know, the more I think about this problem the more saddened I am by the state of social media. You can't share a FB or Instagram post without forcing people to sign in or make an account. Twitter is one of the last ones that allow their content to be freely shared but the char limit is a pretty significant limit and even that has popups It seems that the problem of "how do I make a quick and simple static site to share with anyone with internet access" isn't really a hard problem. Instead all these major social networking services have worked their ass off to make sure their platforms can't be used in that way
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    > Twitter is one of the last ones that allow their content to be freely shared but the char limit is a pretty significant limit and even that has popups. I do not believe this to be the case. If not logged in, it will lock the screen and block you reading after a few entries. That's not "free".
    - culi 4y ago
neongreen 4y ago
I run https://brick.do https://brick.do, which is almost the same thing but with optionally nested pages and CSS. I might be wrong, but I feel that if you're aiming to make money with this, you have three markets: 1. People who just want to put their own stuff on the internet, potentially/hopefully anonymously, but are not making any money from it. In this case it might be better to have free pages with ads (and write a small script that would try to catch phishing/spam — in my experience, the words "PDF" and "Microsoft Office" have been catching 95% so far). 2. People who actually use it for their business needs (one-page portfolios, business proposals, inventory lists, whatever) — then you need custom domains and possibly accounts but I dunno. 3. People who are doing dangerous things. This applies to drug dealers as much as it does to political dissidents. Then you probably need cryptocurrency payments. Regardless of what you do, I suggest you create some kind of a public discussion forum (FB group, Discord server) for this project. You can do it right now, and you'll likely learn a lot about what your users want and how they are actually using your product. At any rate, best of luck. I think it's a good idea and I'd like to have more projects in this space (as someone who wants to start new projects all the time and hates small obstacles).
gcanyon 4y ago
The obvious (to me) question is: what happens when something goes viral? I love the dollar-per-page idea.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  These are static html pages hosted on s3 behind cloutfront so I'm not sure of a better solution to handle high traffic spikes
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    Sure, I'm more asking about the economics than doubting the ability to handle the load. If the average page has a lifetime hosting/serving cost of $0.20, then great, you're making a tidy profit. But even if that is the average, if there's one page that incurs $100, $1,000... of serving costs, it will be painful to contemplate.
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
i personally dont know how you can beat rsyncing to a cloud bucket, but hey
TheDesolate0 4y ago
macshome 4y ago
Having a hard time believing that nobody has mentioned the Easter egg from The Net with now you can access your page after creating it!
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  I think this crowd is probably too young for that reference.. :-) Good catch though
throwaway_4988 4y ago
"Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now." Uh... okay.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Immutable pages
- pmontra 4y ago
  The most likely scenario is: edit, read, edit, read (repeat N times), publish the page, read it again, find a mistake, no way to fix it unless deleting the page and paying again.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  He's from Twitter. It's part of a culture.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  It's weird this is an issue. I don't think I ever edited a page when I posted on a blog and I maintain a couple WordPress blogs for businesses and associations and they never update posts after they've published either. I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, that or maybe people need to proofread before publishing?
  - wink 4y ago
    I don't think "issue" is the right term. It's a caveat and as long as it's displayed visibly (it is) it's fine. But JFTR, I think I've edited around 50% of all blog posts I've written in the last 10 years at least once. And not only because of typos. Some people might need to change their workflow.
s3000 4y ago
Since you have a Twitter background, what's your opinion of the social components of https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/? Could you imagine to have an RSS and ActivityPub stream for pages that want to gain publicity?
deleted 4y ago
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revskill 4y ago
No, things have become easier now. There're tools called SSG (static site generator) like Hugo where you write markdown and get beautiful pages. Its flexibility is optimal.
EMM_386 4y ago
A run a handful of sites I just toss up on Github Pages that are only HTML and CSS. The dynamic stuff is .Net in the background. I feel like I've time-travellled back 20 years sometimes, but this is now perceived as "cool" and given buzzwords like SPA SSR.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Cool. That's not really the purpose of this though, but github pages works for a bunch of people. SPA and SSR are not anything like this, or github pages for that matter...
  - EMM_386 4y ago
    No, but from my timeline 30 years into the industry, JS took off, a bunch of front-end developers created an entire slew of frameworks, then they realized that parts of it could be rendered first on the server and hydrated, etc etc. Then we're back to where we were. Might as well just use JS to fetch the async bits and serve the whole page from the server. I work on a massive Angular codebase for work, and then try to stay as plain as possible with any side projects.
tealpod 4y ago
This is beautiful. I made something similar, Write.wtf https://www.producthunt.com/products/retiring-write-anonymously https://www.producthunt.com/products/retiring-write-anonymou... Lack of interest killed it.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  I'm not excepting much traffic. It's 100% hosted on aws so no maintenance and is basically free to run indefinitely.
kortex 4y ago
I love the concept. It's really unique. I think the per-page cost is a bit high, especially given lack of editing. I think editing ability should be the first bridge to cross, even if it's really crude like delete-and-replace.
- mcculley 4y ago
  This is a good example of how microtransactions make more things possible. Going lower than $1 is difficult with standard transaction fees.
- shanehoban 4y ago
  Agree with you, but the CC fee's are like 26% @ €1 (at least here in the EU with stripe) - so around $0.50 would be more 'fun' but I can see why it's $1.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshjje 4y ago
    What they could do is change the model so that you can buy X number of unique tokens for $Y that can then be redeemed to create a page.
deleted 4y ago
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etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
Using stripe for payment processing is about the least anonymous thing you could do. You'll have my full name and country if I use this service.
- kupopuffs 4y ago
  Finally, a use for crypto!
robust-cactus 4y ago
Btw $1 might not be as unattractive to spammers/scammers as you'd expect. It all depends on their monetization scheme. I've seen scammers hire captcha farms if the scheme is scalably ROI positive.
- fdupress 4y ago
  I don't think the charge needs to be unattractive to spammers to mitigate the costs associated with them: 1$ likely covers the CPU time to produce the page, and then it only costs when displayed (which will be little, if spam).
mikkom 4y ago
It's really an opposite of anonymously as you have to pay for publishing using your credit card.
- akuji1993 4y ago
  Not when you use a stolen CC lel
  - stingraycharles 4y ago
    But from that perspective, everything can be anonymous.
- blisterpeanuts 4y ago
  According to the FAQ, the uploader’s identity is decoupled from the page after it is published. So, at least theoretically, they can maintain anonymity, except for maybe a list of people who have paid money.
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  Walk into a store with cash. Buy a pre-paid debt card. Use that card to publish. That's anonymous, isn't it? Or does this site not allow that?
  - seydor 4y ago
    not forgetting to steal the cash and car before going there, so they cant easily be traced
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Anything involving payment methods is where HN usually gets flooded with people from China and Scandinavia flogging the "cash is dead" horse and how wonderful their rainbows and unicorns world is now that absolutely nothing in they ever encounter requires the use of low-tech bits of evil legacy paper. Then someone like you brings up the value of anonymity, and it's all crickets crickets crickets.
tasuki 4y ago
> Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now. Excuse me?
- RadiozRadioz 4y ago
  OP worked at Twitter, we should expect as much ;)
  - giancarlostoro 4y ago
    Twitter started adding an edit feature its limited to 30 minutes, and I think its only allowed for original tweets, not replies. It's kind of neat for when you realize oh crap I typo'd.
    - wink 4y ago
      Yeah. "started adding", after 15 years. Technically correct but not what was meant.
      - giancarlostoro 4y ago
        I'm aware, mostly posted my comment to inform, honestly, I never understood the design choice.
raphinou 4y ago
Congrats for launching! Is it practical these days to accept 1$ payments? Is stripe the best option?
bfung 4y ago
Ya’ll complaining about not being able to update a published page: There is an edit and preview mode to draft the doc. Hence once something is published, it’s actual GOOD that the original cannot be edited. Write a correction/apology/I was wrong /I made a mistake instead and have some accountability.
- rpdillon 4y ago
  How would anyone find it if you can't link to it from the original?
shp0ngle 4y ago
One cautionary tale for you. Justpaste.it is a page that offers exactly what you do - free, anonymous sharing of formatted pages, with images and all. Accessible at Tor, very lightweight. Because it was so easy and anonymous, it started being used mostly by Islamic State to share their propaganda; so much that they needed to remove the "most popular" feature (as it was always either beheadings or other propaganda). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustPaste.it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustPaste.it edit: ah, you have credit card info down. So it's not really as anonymous as justpaste.it, as the ISIS guys won't share their credit card. OK that can work.
- filato 4y ago
  I'd also mention telegra.ph as a free, extremely simple and very fast alternative
- psychphysic 4y ago
  That is one hell of a cautionary tale. Better than modern VICE.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  > the ISIS guys won't share their credit card They will share someone else's (who will then get swated), won't they?
  - shp0ngle 4y ago
    Not really, if there is an easier way. Buying cards is risky; if there is a free service they will go for that instead
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  Technology advocate: Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to - The real world: PORN! BEHEADINGS! BOTNETS! STATE SECRETS! DOXXING! IDENTITY THEFT! FASCISM! Technology advocate: /sobs/
  - xeonmc 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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JayeshSidhwani 4y ago
This is a really great product. I do think I'd want to edit a page several times. Other feature that could be useful is optionally access control the page; may be via a fixed password. There are times where I share a text file via DocSend. The entire experience is very poor. Singlepage can be very useful for such use-cases
neilv 4y ago
You should clearly define for users what you mean by "anonymous". Right now, you, Google, Stripe, and possibly others (e.g., ISP, owner of LAN, etc.) could probably determine who the majority of users are.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Anonymous is this context means I don't want my name attached to the page, not that someone couldn't easily get a subpoena to get it.
pseingatl 4y ago
Where is the new page hosted? Only at singlepage.cc? Can I host it myself?
fattybob 4y ago
This really neat ! The idea is just straight back to the roots of web publishing
myoldohiohome 4y ago
grammar: "cost-prohibited" should be "cost prohibitive" Hope you can edit the page :)
shia 4y ago
Why did you choose to use Stripe, given you wanted an anonymous publishing platform? While the use doesn't need to enter their cardholder name, their card details, ip address and any reference numbers can be tracked in Stripe's dashboard (Payment method info, Risk Insights, Related Payments). While scheme payments are never truely anonymous, an approach you could use would be to tokenize card holder data and charge it to various linked PSPs. Such an approach would avoid all payments to one provider and obfuscate the user's ip address (since you are doing a server-to-server integration). Such a solution would typically add ~4c to your transaction costs.
- ryandetzel 4y ago
  Easy and I've never really used it before so I can add that to my skillset. This was a project I wanted to finished in two weeks so I didn't put a ton of time into it.
  - Exuma 4y ago
    It took you 2 weeks to put stripe library code, and wysiwyg editor library code on one page? This makes this even more funny to me with how you approach people who want an edit feature, as if its surprising and "weird" to you.
    - ryandetzel 4y ago
      Heh, I'm sure you're one of guys that always comments how you don't understand how company X has so many employees, and that you could just write the entire app in a weekend. lol. Note, I didn't say I spend two weeks writing it. If you read the original post you would know that I was doing it to refresh and learn new skills so research and planning went into it to. You win the Internet today bud, thanks for playing. edit: Holy hell, you're toxic. You comments are always negative, I feel bad for you man, I do...
      - Exuma 4y ago
        Hmm, I have over 100+ non-trivial projects under my belt which have ranged anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 years each, working as only a single developer (and my business partner)... everything from an arbitrage platform with more than 8 billion outgoing requests per day, multiple payment processing platforms (actually building them, not just interfacing with them), machine learning-based high volume routing systems. I built the 50th largest site in the world at one point with only 1 other person... so I would say I'm not "one of those guys." sorry to burst your bubble. I know it's probably much less painful on your ego though to think any person that criticizes you must not know what they're talking about.
kirchhoff 4y ago
I run a similar service which is free and editable. https://html.cafe https://html.cafe
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  Hah, I misread "editable" as "edible" the first time I read that. My subconscious must have seen "cafe" early.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  I love the domain name!
guico 4y ago
What are you using for the richttext editor? Works very well!
- guico 4y ago
  I see it's https://quilljs.com/ https://quilljs.com/ , if anyone is interested
jimmydddd 4y ago
Sorry, could you clarify what is a valid url? Is it a sub of singlepage? A url we already own?
efields 4y ago
> Can I modify my page after it's been published? > Not currently, but we're thinking about it. Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted … what? edit: I literally had to edit this post because the quote formatting was off
zulln 4y ago
I would like a link to an example page. Current there are none indexed by Google so I only have the preview to judge from.

175 points by ryandetzel 4y ago

belkarx 4y ago

Does this fill a niche that pastebin and bearblog don't? (well designed, but I don't think there's a userbase)

ryandetzel 4y ago
I'm the userbase! I built it for myself and now I'm sharing it with the world. I doubt there is a huge market but even if a fee people find it useful that's good enough for me!
- belkarx 4y ago
  Fair point. Hope you had fun :)
- nashashmi 4y ago
  I felt like you may have created solutions anticipating problems that may or may not happen.

marcooliv 4y ago

Really liked the idea and execution, probably is something that I will use in the near future. And good luck with your moderation issue! hehehe

ryandetzel 4y ago
Yeah, that was the reason I added the fee. Hoping, maybe naively that that will keep the baddies away.

qwertyuiop_ 4y ago

How is this anonymous when your user is providing you their intimate payment information.

ryandetzel 4y ago
There is no connection between payment and the published page. No logs are kept either. It's open source if you want to host it yourself or audit the code
- timemachine 4y ago
  Can you provide a link to the source, please?
  - phoenix24 4y ago
    https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage
- nashashmi 4y ago
  You may want to set up a different payment technique. Maybe a gofundme donation recipient.
- CommitSyn 4y ago
  Still, the wording 'anonymous' goes out the window with 100% of your users when credit cards are mandatory, even if you pinky promise not to connect it to the page. I highly recommend BTCPayServer for handling (non-custodial) crypto payments.

sam_ezeh 4y ago

I think this idea is really cool, I just don't see myself using this due to the alternatives (GitHub pages, static blog generators etc.)

ryandetzel 4y ago
I've done all the static site generators, I just don't post enough to justify the maintenance, if you do they're probably a better solution! As is, it's pretty basic but I want to add features that GitHub pages don't support
- w-ll 4y ago
  Care to tell what features GitHub pages are missing?
  - ryandetzel 4y ago
    Anonymity. Maybe I'm wrong but I thought it was only markdown which isn't ideal especially for no technical people.
    - w-ll 4y ago
      Last time I tried, there is no verification other than and email link for Github accounts. I think you could make an account and publish with just a throwaway email.
  - troymc 4y ago
    GitHub Pages have the unfortunate anti-feature of being impossible for normal people.
    - Proven 4y ago
- odo1242 4y ago
  Creating a GitHub repo with one file titled “index.md” and publishing it to GitHub Pages creates a single-page site using relatively sane defaults. There's no maintenance involved whatsoever. You can add multiple pages as well by creating new .md files and publishing them.

kristianp 4y ago

I like the simplicity and convenience of this. Does the secret phrase allow user to delete the page? Probably a good application for crypto currencies, or would be if the dream of micropayments ever comes to fruition!

ryandetzel 4y ago
Yeah, the secret phrase is the only way to delete the page once it's been published. It wouldn't be a big leap to accept crypto, the fees would just be crazy though for a single page. Thanks for the comment
- culi 4y ago
  If you do go the crypto route, may I suggest you consider something... cleaner? A single BTC transaction uses ~2 months of electricity of the average household ETH is a bit better but still not there yet. There's "3rd generation" systems like Hedera[0] that use hashgraphs instead and consume about as much electricity as anything else you'd do on the internet. Or at least choose one that's actually dedicated to privacy like Monero Cool project! I like the design and hope you had fun with it [0] https://hedera.com/ https://hedera.com/

doodlebugging 4y ago

In what might be the only non-editable text on the page, there in the payment box you have two boxes that the user must agree to with a check mark. The text associated with those boxes could use some work. Perhaps you need a hammer to smooth out the grammar. >I agree to the not post anything illegal. >I have saved by secret phase and

ryandetzel 4y ago
Agreed. That's me rushing to get it done this week, these were links to published Single Pages with more details but the content wasn't done so I removed them.

Jemm 4y ago

I like the concept but the act of paying $1 means it is no longer anonymous.

ronsor 4y ago
It could be anonymous if cryptocurrency were accepted. For now, I see now reason to use it over rentry[1]. [1] https://rentry.org https://rentry.org
ryandetzel 4y ago
It is anonymous but you're trusting the provider. The payment isn't tied to a page. No logs are kept. It's open source, but, in theory I could be running a version that does log or keep records but I have to reason to.
- fileeditview 4y ago
  Don't forget that the payment provider (bank, cc, paypal) also has logs.. using the word anonymous here is a bit dishonest in my book.
  - ryandetzel 4y ago
    I'm using it in the sense of not named or identified Not, if someone really really wanted to track down who wrote a page they couldn't.

drekipus 4y ago

In terms of simple blogs, I use https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ I think your project suits more simple static pages. The competitor is more Notion rather than blogs and static site generators. Nice work all the same. I think what's really missing is a minimal copy of something like google sites. I want to be able to create something like my website at http://illabundavillage.com.au http://illabundavillage.com.au but I want it to be faster, not tied to google, and a little easier to edit. There's a spectrum of flashy sites to single page texts. Many projects should aim to be in various shades of the middle.

renaissance_tea 4y ago
Sweet thanks for sharing
culi 4y ago
Have you considered putting your community up on ic.org? https://www.ic.org/directory/ https://www.ic.org/directory/

webel0 4y ago

This sounds interesting! What are your thoughts on (for lack of a better term) the marketing of each single page? Is the idea that each page should live on an island, that writers will promote through their own separate channels, or is the idea to eventually have a sort of front page/recommended links? I jumped to this question because it seems like the urge to promote tends to undermine the privacy impetus. It’s not a black and white thing, though.

ryandetzel 4y ago
There is no promotion or even an index page to list out what pages exist. The pages can be indexed by search engines if they're submitted. An idea for the future would be to allow people to opt in/out of notifying search indexes or making the pages not crawlable if they want

sarajevo 4y ago

This is so awesome, the concept is great and it is well made, simple and clean…

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

A good free alternative is Telegram's Telegraph service: https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph

renaissance_tea 4y ago
Didn’t they just release logs and ip addresses of users in India?
- ignoramous 4y ago
  tbf, singlepage.cc can't claim to be anonymous if it requires credit card payments and runs over regular web (as opposed to .onion). I believe, the only way to take anonymous non-cash payments is via Monero. Besides, telegram has a massive userbase, which makes them a lucrative target for law enforcement.

flockonus 4y ago

Missing ToS or anything about the company / service, a 100% deal breaker. > secret phrase in a safe location Smart stuff with the secret phrase, but i'm afraid the security in the number of words there is just not sufficient for any practical safety. > Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now LOL seriously?? Maybe you're a more sure shot than I am but i even update my gists more often than not

ryandetzel 4y ago
It's a project I did in 9 days, it's not perfect or done. ;) Practical safety? It's a single page not a bank account. It's odd you would jump to that conclusion without know the dictionary. You don't think 5^1000 is secure enough for a single page? If you edit your pages, use a blog. This service isn't for the person that wants mutable pages. Different strokes my friend
- notpushkin 4y ago
  I think you meant 1000^5?
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    Most definitely 1000^5. = 10^15 ~= 2^50 As long as the system to delete isn't fast, or has a max-tries-delay mechanism, it should be fine.
    - flockonus 4y ago
      For anyone considering creating private keys, 2^50 is borderline ok, but nowhere near safe to give someone true ownership of something, and I'm not just saying for some theoretical argument. 2^256 is considered extremely safe (altho arguably not quantum resistant depending on the hashing algo) See Bitcoin bips for an (optionally i18n) list of 2048 words that is fairly standard and several libs can help with implementation. Pick at least 10 words - don't worry, users won't remember either number of words for life, they have to back up somewhere safe anyway. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-003...

randomsofr 4y ago

Found the source code. https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage https://github.com/ryanrdetzel/SinglePage Looks like a nice idea, but looks a little incomplete.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

culi 4y ago

My own collection: - [mmm.page](https://mmm.page/ https://mmm.page/) - [odie.us](https://odie.us/ https://odie.us/) - [carrd.co](https://carrd.co/ https://carrd.co/) - [write.as](https://write.as/ https://write.as/) - [withknown.com](https://withknown.com/ https://withknown.com/) - [micro.blog](https://micro.blog/ https://micro.blog/) - [neocities.org](https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/) From this thread: - https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ - https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph - https://rentry.org/ https://rentry.org/ - https://brick.do/ https://brick.do/ - https://prose.sh/ https://prose.sh/

culi 4y ago
I guess there's some category bleed going on here. I was originally maintaining a list of "micro-blog"-y sites I wanted to try out. Somewhere along the way it got mixed in with these "easy quick single static page" of services or "basically a txt file" site (e.g. rentry.org) At this point I feel the need to bring up Etherpad which is essentially an encrypted Google Docs alternative but can be used similarly. Ofc there's also Notion which is in a similar vein. You know, the more I think about this problem the more saddened I am by the state of social media. You can't share a FB or Instagram post without forcing people to sign in or make an account. Twitter is one of the last ones that allow their content to be freely shared but the char limit is a pretty significant limit and even that has popups It seems that the problem of "how do I make a quick and simple static site to share with anyone with internet access" isn't really a hard problem. Instead all these major social networking services have worked their ass off to make sure their platforms can't be used in that way
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  > Twitter is one of the last ones that allow their content to be freely shared but the char limit is a pretty significant limit and even that has popups. I do not believe this to be the case. If not logged in, it will lock the screen and block you reading after a few entries. That's not "free".
  - culi 4y ago

neongreen 4y ago

I run https://brick.do https://brick.do, which is almost the same thing but with optionally nested pages and CSS. I might be wrong, but I feel that if you're aiming to make money with this, you have three markets: 1. People who just want to put their own stuff on the internet, potentially/hopefully anonymously, but are not making any money from it. In this case it might be better to have free pages with ads (and write a small script that would try to catch phishing/spam — in my experience, the words "PDF" and "Microsoft Office" have been catching 95% so far). 2. People who actually use it for their business needs (one-page portfolios, business proposals, inventory lists, whatever) — then you need custom domains and possibly accounts but I dunno. 3. People who are doing dangerous things. This applies to drug dealers as much as it does to political dissidents. Then you probably need cryptocurrency payments. Regardless of what you do, I suggest you create some kind of a public discussion forum (FB group, Discord server) for this project. You can do it right now, and you'll likely learn a lot about what your users want and how they are actually using your product. At any rate, best of luck. I think it's a good idea and I'd like to have more projects in this space (as someone who wants to start new projects all the time and hates small obstacles).

gcanyon 4y ago

The obvious (to me) question is: what happens when something goes viral? I love the dollar-per-page idea.

ryandetzel 4y ago
These are static html pages hosted on s3 behind cloutfront so I'm not sure of a better solution to handle high traffic spikes
- gcanyon 4y ago
  Sure, I'm more asking about the economics than doubting the ability to handle the load. If the average page has a lifetime hosting/serving cost of $0.20, then great, you're making a tidy profit. But even if that is the average, if there's one page that incurs $100, $1,000... of serving costs, it will be painful to contemplate.

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

i personally dont know how you can beat rsyncing to a cloud bucket, but hey

TheDesolate0 4y ago

macshome 4y ago

Having a hard time believing that nobody has mentioned the Easter egg from The Net with now you can access your page after creating it!

ryandetzel 4y ago
I think this crowd is probably too young for that reference.. :-) Good catch though

throwaway_4988 4y ago

"Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now." Uh... okay.

dboreham 4y ago
Immutable pages
pmontra 4y ago
The most likely scenario is: edit, read, edit, read (repeat N times), publish the page, read it again, find a mistake, no way to fix it unless deleting the page and paying again.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
He's from Twitter. It's part of a culture.
ryandetzel 4y ago
It's weird this is an issue. I don't think I ever edited a page when I posted on a blog and I maintain a couple WordPress blogs for businesses and associations and they never update posts after they've published either. I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, that or maybe people need to proofread before publishing?
- wink 4y ago
  I don't think "issue" is the right term. It's a caveat and as long as it's displayed visibly (it is) it's fine. But JFTR, I think I've edited around 50% of all blog posts I've written in the last 10 years at least once. And not only because of typos. Some people might need to change their workflow.

s3000 4y ago

Since you have a Twitter background, what's your opinion of the social components of https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/? Could you imagine to have an RSS and ActivityPub stream for pages that want to gain publicity?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

revskill 4y ago

No, things have become easier now. There're tools called SSG (static site generator) like Hugo where you write markdown and get beautiful pages. Its flexibility is optimal.

EMM_386 4y ago

A run a handful of sites I just toss up on Github Pages that are only HTML and CSS. The dynamic stuff is .Net in the background. I feel like I've time-travellled back 20 years sometimes, but this is now perceived as "cool" and given buzzwords like SPA SSR.

ryandetzel 4y ago
Cool. That's not really the purpose of this though, but github pages works for a bunch of people. SPA and SSR are not anything like this, or github pages for that matter...
- EMM_386 4y ago
  No, but from my timeline 30 years into the industry, JS took off, a bunch of front-end developers created an entire slew of frameworks, then they realized that parts of it could be rendered first on the server and hydrated, etc etc. Then we're back to where we were. Might as well just use JS to fetch the async bits and serve the whole page from the server. I work on a massive Angular codebase for work, and then try to stay as plain as possible with any side projects.

tealpod 4y ago

This is beautiful. I made something similar, Write.wtf https://www.producthunt.com/products/retiring-write-anonymously https://www.producthunt.com/products/retiring-write-anonymou... Lack of interest killed it.

ryandetzel 4y ago
I'm not excepting much traffic. It's 100% hosted on aws so no maintenance and is basically free to run indefinitely.

kortex 4y ago

I love the concept. It's really unique. I think the per-page cost is a bit high, especially given lack of editing. I think editing ability should be the first bridge to cross, even if it's really crude like delete-and-replace.

mcculley 4y ago
This is a good example of how microtransactions make more things possible. Going lower than $1 is difficult with standard transaction fees.
shanehoban 4y ago
Agree with you, but the CC fee's are like 26% @ €1 (at least here in the EU with stripe) - so around $0.50 would be more 'fun' but I can see why it's $1.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joshjje 4y ago
  What they could do is change the model so that you can buy X number of unique tokens for $Y that can then be redeemed to create a page.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago

Using stripe for payment processing is about the least anonymous thing you could do. You'll have my full name and country if I use this service.

kupopuffs 4y ago
Finally, a use for crypto!

robust-cactus 4y ago

Btw $1 might not be as unattractive to spammers/scammers as you'd expect. It all depends on their monetization scheme. I've seen scammers hire captcha farms if the scheme is scalably ROI positive.

fdupress 4y ago
I don't think the charge needs to be unattractive to spammers to mitigate the costs associated with them: 1$ likely covers the CPU time to produce the page, and then it only costs when displayed (which will be little, if spam).

mikkom 4y ago

It's really an opposite of anonymously as you have to pay for publishing using your credit card.

akuji1993 4y ago
Not when you use a stolen CC lel
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  But from that perspective, everything can be anonymous.
blisterpeanuts 4y ago
According to the FAQ, the uploader’s identity is decoupled from the page after it is published. So, at least theoretically, they can maintain anonymity, except for maybe a list of people who have paid money.
VikingCoder 4y ago
Walk into a store with cash. Buy a pre-paid debt card. Use that card to publish. That's anonymous, isn't it? Or does this site not allow that?
- seydor 4y ago
  not forgetting to steal the cash and car before going there, so they cant easily be traced
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Anything involving payment methods is where HN usually gets flooded with people from China and Scandinavia flogging the "cash is dead" horse and how wonderful their rainbows and unicorns world is now that absolutely nothing in they ever encounter requires the use of low-tech bits of evil legacy paper. Then someone like you brings up the value of anonymity, and it's all crickets crickets crickets.

tasuki 4y ago

> Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted so we punted on that feature for now. Excuse me?

RadiozRadioz 4y ago
OP worked at Twitter, we should expect as much ;)
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  Twitter started adding an edit feature its limited to 30 minutes, and I think its only allowed for original tweets, not replies. It's kind of neat for when you realize oh crap I typo'd.
  - wink 4y ago
    Yeah. "started adding", after 15 years. Technically correct but not what was meant.
    - giancarlostoro 4y ago
      I'm aware, mostly posted my comment to inform, honestly, I never understood the design choice.

raphinou 4y ago

Congrats for launching! Is it practical these days to accept 1$ payments? Is stripe the best option?

bfung 4y ago

Ya’ll complaining about not being able to update a published page: There is an edit and preview mode to draft the doc. Hence once something is published, it’s actual GOOD that the original cannot be edited. Write a correction/apology/I was wrong /I made a mistake instead and have some accountability.

rpdillon 4y ago
How would anyone find it if you can't link to it from the original?

shp0ngle 4y ago

One cautionary tale for you. Justpaste.it is a page that offers exactly what you do - free, anonymous sharing of formatted pages, with images and all. Accessible at Tor, very lightweight. Because it was so easy and anonymous, it started being used mostly by Islamic State to share their propaganda; so much that they needed to remove the "most popular" feature (as it was always either beheadings or other propaganda). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustPaste.it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustPaste.it edit: ah, you have credit card info down. So it's not really as anonymous as justpaste.it, as the ISIS guys won't share their credit card. OK that can work.

filato 4y ago
I'd also mention telegra.ph as a free, extremely simple and very fast alternative
psychphysic 4y ago
That is one hell of a cautionary tale. Better than modern VICE.
qwerty456127 4y ago
> the ISIS guys won't share their credit card They will share someone else's (who will then get swated), won't they?
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Not really, if there is an easier way. Buying cards is risky; if there is a free service they will go for that instead
VikingCoder 4y ago
Technology advocate: Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to - The real world: PORN! BEHEADINGS! BOTNETS! STATE SECRETS! DOXXING! IDENTITY THEFT! FASCISM! Technology advocate: /sobs/
- xeonmc 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JayeshSidhwani 4y ago

This is a really great product. I do think I'd want to edit a page several times. Other feature that could be useful is optionally access control the page; may be via a fixed password. There are times where I share a text file via DocSend. The entire experience is very poor. Singlepage can be very useful for such use-cases

neilv 4y ago

You should clearly define for users what you mean by "anonymous". Right now, you, Google, Stripe, and possibly others (e.g., ISP, owner of LAN, etc.) could probably determine who the majority of users are.

ryandetzel 4y ago
Anonymous is this context means I don't want my name attached to the page, not that someone couldn't easily get a subpoena to get it.

pseingatl 4y ago

Where is the new page hosted? Only at singlepage.cc? Can I host it myself?

fattybob 4y ago

This really neat ! The idea is just straight back to the roots of web publishing

myoldohiohome 4y ago

grammar: "cost-prohibited" should be "cost prohibitive" Hope you can edit the page :)

shia 4y ago

Why did you choose to use Stripe, given you wanted an anonymous publishing platform? While the use doesn't need to enter their cardholder name, their card details, ip address and any reference numbers can be tracked in Stripe's dashboard (Payment method info, Risk Insights, Related Payments). While scheme payments are never truely anonymous, an approach you could use would be to tokenize card holder data and charge it to various linked PSPs. Such an approach would avoid all payments to one provider and obfuscate the user's ip address (since you are doing a server-to-server integration). Such a solution would typically add ~4c to your transaction costs.

ryandetzel 4y ago
Easy and I've never really used it before so I can add that to my skillset. This was a project I wanted to finished in two weeks so I didn't put a ton of time into it.
- Exuma 4y ago
  It took you 2 weeks to put stripe library code, and wysiwyg editor library code on one page? This makes this even more funny to me with how you approach people who want an edit feature, as if its surprising and "weird" to you.
  - ryandetzel 4y ago
    Heh, I'm sure you're one of guys that always comments how you don't understand how company X has so many employees, and that you could just write the entire app in a weekend. lol. Note, I didn't say I spend two weeks writing it. If you read the original post you would know that I was doing it to refresh and learn new skills so research and planning went into it to. You win the Internet today bud, thanks for playing. edit: Holy hell, you're toxic. You comments are always negative, I feel bad for you man, I do...
    - Exuma 4y ago
      Hmm, I have over 100+ non-trivial projects under my belt which have ranged anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 years each, working as only a single developer (and my business partner)... everything from an arbitrage platform with more than 8 billion outgoing requests per day, multiple payment processing platforms (actually building them, not just interfacing with them), machine learning-based high volume routing systems. I built the 50th largest site in the world at one point with only 1 other person... so I would say I'm not "one of those guys." sorry to burst your bubble. I know it's probably much less painful on your ego though to think any person that criticizes you must not know what they're talking about.

kirchhoff 4y ago

I run a similar service which is free and editable. https://html.cafe https://html.cafe

foobarbecue 4y ago
Hah, I misread "editable" as "edible" the first time I read that. My subconscious must have seen "cafe" early.
mxuribe 4y ago
I love the domain name!

guico 4y ago

What are you using for the richttext editor? Works very well!

guico 4y ago
I see it's https://quilljs.com/ https://quilljs.com/ , if anyone is interested

jimmydddd 4y ago

Sorry, could you clarify what is a valid url? Is it a sub of singlepage? A url we already own?

efields 4y ago

> Can I modify my page after it's been published? > Not currently, but we're thinking about it. Very rarely do you need to update a page once it's been posted … what? edit: I literally had to edit this post because the quote formatting was off

zulln 4y ago

I would like a link to an example page. Current there are none indexed by Google so I only have the preview to judge from.